Who is the villain of the incredible story of Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata: Familia Romana, Hanz Orbergs’ amazing book used as the primary text for the Latin program at Wyoming Catholic College? A few obvious answers pop to the mind almost immediately. Marcus isn’t portrayed that well so he seems like a good story villain. Maybe also the slave Medus, who while he is redeemed somewhat at the end, still happens to be a thief. Maybe if you got to the end of the book, you might even think of the barbarians mentioned near the end of the story.
But what if the story, while seemingly written at a beginner’s level, is actually far more complicated and far deeper than it seems. What if the real villain is actually someone completely unexpected? What if the seeming protagonists are actually at the heart of Rome’s corruption and heads of a massive criminal syndicate? What if the teacher seemingly has it in for Marcus because the teacher himself is in on the deal and doesn’t want anything exposed?
I believe this all is most definitely the case, and everything comes down and points to the young, seemingly incredibly smart, friendly, and relatively well-behaved Sextus being the archvillain of the entire story.
For one, don’t you find it odd that young Sextus never gets into any trouble? He’s a young Roman boy and he’s definitely no perfect saint. Marcus a Sexto pulsatus est, for crying out loud. He did undeniably hit Marcus as this picture below proves. And he never got in trouble for that as far as I remember. But what’s important to notice is that while he’s always around when trouble happens, Sextus never gets in trouble personally.
What do you think is more likely, Sextus always gets lucky and gets off easy? Or how about if he’s actually the one pulling the strings? What if he never gets in trouble because he’s the ultimate pulling all the strings throughout all of the story? What if he’s the one paying off the barbarians? What if he framed Medus for the theft at the beginning of the story, or is even secretly working for Sparta, or China, or some other ancient empire we don’t know anything about.
Keep a close eye on Sextus. I think we need a deeper investigation to be made into this. Because Karen Clark could be working for Sextus. Or maybe Karen Clark is the new Sextus. Or maybe even Sextus is Karen Clark.
Watch out. Because if somehow Sextus is still around, he might just be the reason we’re reading Familia Romana at WCC. Which would mean that Sextus or his allies have infiltrated the WCC administration. Which means…. Okay you probably don’t want to even know what that means.
And we haven’t even gotten into the definitely not-conspiracy theory that Iulius himself in the story is involved in “dirty work”, as he forced Medus to do the same (as Medus admits to his girlfriend Lydia) which can only mean that he’s also a criminal mastermind…
#sextusbodycount
More to come