Mons, montes (n.) For this acta I chose the word mons, a third-declension word meaning mountain: partly because I like the mountains, but also because I was curious what Romans thought of them. Occasionally they were protected by them (the Alps), blocked by them (the Apennines), or betrayed by them (Vesuvius). Did any of all of these affect their perceptions?
It was commonly used (it is 350th in Lewis & Short’s online dictionary) in the very literal sense, a mountain or range of mountains, but was also used to describe massive things—houses, piles of coins, etc. We still use it in much the same way today. It originally derived from the Proto-Indo-European ‘men-’, which meant to stand out/to tower, and it is eventually responsible, through a brief transmutation through Spanish, for the name of the state of Montana!
Though it was mostly used in its geographic or quantitative sense, none other than Quintus Horatius Flaccus included it in a proverb: “parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus,” or “where much is said but little is performed.” (Hor. A. P. 139.) I can see how close it is to something like “mountains out of molehills,” too. P. Terentius Afer used it to coin the phrase “montes auri polliceri,”: to promise mountains of gold/to make great promises. (Ter. Phorm. 1, 2, 18)
- https://logeion.uchicago.edu/mons
- https://logeion.uchicago.edu/monshttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mons#Latin
Above: The Apennine Mountains, Italy.