Hi. I was watching some episodes of HBO Rome yesterday. I noticed that slaves et al refer to women like Atia & Servilia as Domina. But, servants seem to address upper class men like Caesar as Dominus. That should be Domine, right? TIA. ASD -------------------------------------------------------------------- <snip>
The vocative would indeed be used in direct discourse. So yes, the slaves ought to use domine, but you'd hardly expect even this level of Latin knowledge from the same people who believe that the Romans spoke like Elizabethan englishmen.
To be fair, though, the main point was not to give the viewer a lesson in noun declension, but just to let them know that in Ancient Rome these people would have been known as 'dominus' and 'domina' to their slaves.
I agree. It's not too normal for english to import more cases than nominative, so they should stick to it and hence be more regular towards their own language. - We could then also start using latin genitive (domini instead "of dominus") et cetera...
