Operatives, welcome to Operation FALX. This CODEX was put together in a hurry, after the trouble inside the TSTT had already begun, and it will help you with whatever you meet in there.

Promētheus

Ūranus, Sāturnus, Juppiter

Three Jobs in Every Sentence

Most sentences in the key-texts are built from just a few parts, and each part has a job. Learn the names of those jobs now, because you will use them for as long as you read Latin.

The subject is the person or thing doing the action, and the verb is the action itself. The object is whoever or whatever receives the action. In the English sentence "Prometheus loves humans," Prometheus is the subject, loves is the verb, and humans is the object.

Now look at the same idea in the key-text: Promētheus hominēs amat. Word for word, it says "Prometheus humans loves." All three parts are there, but one of them is not where you would expect it. The next CODEX comes back to that.

Some sentences have no object at all, because nothing receives an action. The key-texts are full of them: Promētheus est deus, Prometheus is a god, and Mōns Olympus est altus, Mount Olympus is tall. The verb est means "is." It works like an equals sign: it tells you what something is, instead of doing something to it. You will see est more than any other word in Latin, so learn to spot it right away.

Considera: Find Promētheus ignem capit in the key-text. It means "Prometheus takes the fire." Which word is the subject, which is the verb, and which is the object? How did you figure it out?

Two Families of Gods

The second key-text gives you three kings in a row: Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter. Each one ruled until his own son took the throne from him, and that pattern is one of the biggest ideas in the old Greek and Roman myths.

The Titans, Tītānēs in Latin, were the children of Uranus and Tellus, and Saturn was one of them. They were huge and ancient, and their power was like the power of the sea or a storm. Saturn, Sāturnus in Latin, became king by overthrowing his father. People said his reign was a golden age, a time when there was plenty for everyone and no one went to war.

The second family is the Olympians. Jupiter, Juppiter in Latin, led his brothers and sisters against Saturn and overthrew him, just as Saturn had overthrown Uranus. The Olympians took their name from Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece, where they made their home. They are the gods most Romans knew and worshipped: Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Minerva, Venus, Mars, and the rest.

Prometheus is a Titan, so he belongs to the older family. When the Olympians came to power, most of the Titans were locked away or pushed aside. Prometheus stayed free, and he chose to help humans, even when it cost him everything.

Considera: Saturn overthrew his father, and then Jupiter overthrew his. What does that pattern tell you about how power works in this world?

What Prometheus Did, and What It Cost Him

The first key-text says that without fire, humans were miserī, miserable. In the ancient world, fire meant light in the dark, heat for cooking, and safety from wild animals. It also sat at the center of every home and every city. Humans without it had almost nothing, and Prometheus could not bear to watch them live that way.

So he stole fire from the gods and carried it down to earth. In some tellings of the myth, he hid it inside a hollow fennel stalk and smuggled it right past the gods.

Jupiter was furious. He had Prometheus chained to a rock high in the Caucasus Mountains, at the edge of the world, and every day he sent an eagle to tear at him. Every night Prometheus healed, so the punishment started over each morning and never came to an end.

The key-text ends with Promētheus in vinculīs est, Prometheus is in chains. You have already stood beside those chains on the Caucasus rock, and you know they are broken and empty now.

Considera: Prometheus knew he would be punished, and he helped humans anyway. Do you think it was worth it?

Tellus: The Earth Beneath Everything

The second key-text also names Tellus, whose name means Earth. Romans called her Terra too, and that name gave English words we still use, like terrain and territory.

Tellus is older than the Olympians, older than the Titans, older than nearly everything. She is the earth itself, the ground under every story in these myths. Saturn is her son, and the whole chain of fathers and sons taking the throne from one another begins with her.

You will meet Tellus yourself during this operation. When you do, remember that she has been here longer than anyone else you will meet. She is slow and patient, and a thousand years does not seem very long to her.

Considera: Every king in these stories comes from Tellus: Saturn is her son, and Jupiter is her grandson. What does it mean that the earth herself is the mother of them all?

A Note on Names

Many of the gods you are meeting have a Greek name as well as a Roman one. The Greeks called Jupiter Zeus, they called Saturn Cronus, and they called Tellus Gaia. The sky god has two names even in Latin. The key-texts call him Ūranus, a name the Romans borrowed from the Greeks. Romans also called him Caelus, which simply means "sky," and that is the name you will hear inside the TSTT.

The Romans took many of their myths from the Greeks and made them their own. Operation FALX uses the Roman names, because the world you are working in is the Roman version of these stories.