Panem
So I remembered the phrase “panem et circenses” to-day. When I first read the Hunger Games, I hadn’t taken Latin. Now that I have, I realised something interesting.
In the original phrase (that and more details here), it’s in the accusative case. In Latin, this results in the -em ending of “panem,” since “panis” is a third declension masculine noun.
The interesting thing: in The Hunger Games, the place of Panem retains this accusative ending, even where - grammatically speaking - it should have the nominative ending - “panis.”* However, with the accusative ending always present, it becomes clear that there’s an-other reference buried within the name, namely the phrase “bread and circuses.”
This is one of those things about grammar that I like - you can either have everything bow to the grammatical rules, or you can change it and get sentences with more depth of meaning.
*To be clear, even the name of a city could take different cases, but they’re difficult to see in English. Panem, the city, always retains this accusative ending when it’s in English.
