It's not uncommon for students at the liceo classico (grammar school) in Italy, especially in their early years, to boast about their classical knowledge by casually dropping Latin and Greek quotes. One of the first things you learn there is the Greek alphabet, which inevitably leads to the annoying habit of starting to write your name in Greek letters to show off. It's an exercise that makes you feel as though you've magically absorbed the wisdom of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides all at once. Fear not, though - this habit quickly fades as soon as you realize there are countless complicated grammar rules to memorize, most of which you'll never fully retain. By the time you start tackling the Greek aorist tense, you're probably questioning your decision to enroll in this school and wondering why you have to suffer through learning two dead languages.
I started grammar school in the late '80s, and at the time, quoting Latin and Greek wasn't just a schoolyard fad - it was encouraged by fashion trends. At the time, Benetton had just released a collection of shirts with various Latin and Greek quotes. As an insufferable first-year student, I proudly wore a maxi T-shirt featuring an excerpt from Phaedrus' fable about the wolf and the lamb, complete with cute illustrations of the animals (the lamb was particularly adorable). I paired it with cycling shorts and high-top sneakers - the idea was reproducing the look of Madonna jogging in Hyde Park during her "Who's That Girl World Tour," but with a classical twist to flaunt my (at the time, obviously extremely very limited) knowledge of the classics.
Time passed, my hubris was tempered by poor grades in Latin and Greek, and I came to realize that you don't need to be obnoxious when quoting things - you can share your knowledge in a much kinder and humble way. I also discovered that, in our times, dead languages are used in curious ways. In films, particularly American ones, characters often recite meaningless Latin phrases to confuse audiences. In a horror film, a scene involving an exorcism, may start with "In nomine Patris..." only to be followed by some Latin-sounding gibberish like "quibusdam novi dissertatio excursus."
A recent instance of this can be found in the Amazon Prime Video series "Cruel Intentions", based on the eponymous 1999 film (which in turn was inspired by the 1782 novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses...). The main characters revolve around fraternities and sororities with Greek-inspired names (Alpha Gamma, Delta Phi Pi, Sigma...), and the Latin pledge of one sorority is a random excerpt from St. Thomas Aquinas' "Adoro Te Devote". Why a Eucharistic hymn was chosen for this purpose is beyond me, but I suspect they just needed something that sounded solemn in Latin and stumbled upon it.
So why all this rambling about Latin and classical Greek? Well, because it seems that the annoying 14-year-old version of myself is now trendy, as evidenced by the new look of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta (the company behind the Facebook, Instagram and Threads platforms, and the messaging app WhatsApp).
It actually took Zuckerberg about three years to reinvent himself. When he announced the company's name change to Meta (another nod to classical Greek - μετα, meaning "beyond," "after," or "behind") and excitedly promoted a metaverse that never materialized, he was still in his short-hair, plain-shirt phase - an evolution of his robotic, penitent look from the 2018 US Senate hearing in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Fast forward through numerous layoffs and a shift to Artificial Intelligence, and Zuckerberg has undergone a transformation. Last week, at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, he appeared with longer, curly hair - a clear rebellion against his formerly close-cropped style - and a custom black shirt he co-designed with fashion designer Mike Amiri. The oversized, loose-fit shirt, somewhere between a Riccardo Tisci-era Givenchy runway piece from 2010 and a training top, bore the message "Aut Zuck aut nihil" (either Zuck or nothing). A play on the original Latin phrase "aut Caesar aut nihil" (either Caesar or nothing), the shirt gave him the air of a rowdy frat member.
Historically, the quote referenced the motto of Ladislaus I of Anjou-Durazzo, a prominent figure in the history of Naples during the late 14th and early 15th centuries. This powerful declaration was later adopted by Cardinal Cesare Borgia, a notorious Italian nobleman and military leader of the Renaissance, yet the phrase is often attributed to Julius Caesar himself, symbolizing not just personal ambition but a broader historical narrative about the pursuit of power and influence in a turbulent era.
Metaphorically, the phrase embodies therefore a relentless drive for supremacy, encapsulating the mindset of individuals who aspire to greatness. It signifies the insatiable desire to achieve not merely success but to dominate one's rivals, in this case with a new device or product. At the event, Zuckerberg introduced indeed the new Orion AR glasses, which feature lenses capable of displaying text messages, video calls, and even YouTube videos directly into the user's field of vision. This could represent a hands-free alternative to the smartphone, potentially saving us from the neck pain we've all experienced from spending hours hunched over our devices (but they may also alienate us further, projecting things directly in front of our eyeballs...).
Essentially, the Meta CEO was signaling that he's here to conquer - an idea he had already hinted at in May when he wore another Latin-inscribed shirt to his 40th birthday party. The shirt read "Carthago delenda est," a famous quote from Cato the Elder meaning "Carthage must be destroyed," which was Rome's rallying cry before attacking Carthage during the Punic Wars, culminating in its destruction in 146 BC. In Zuckerberg's case, the quote was aimed at his rivals: he actually referenced the slogan once before in 2011, when Google launched Google+, a competitor of Facebook.
But that wasn’t all: during the recent Acquired podcast interview, he sported another shirt, this time featuring the ancient Greek phrase "πάθει μάθος," a quote from Aeschylus meaning "learning through suffering." While this quote makes one wonder when exactly Zuckerberg suffered in his learning, it could refer to the backlash he faced after Facebook was criticized for enabling fake news, election interferences, and failing to curb hate speech and misinformation. Yet, through all this and even though the metaverse may have flopped, Zuckerberg is definitely not suffering, since he is still the fourth richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg's Billionaire Index- trailing only Elon Musk (CEO of Tesla and X), Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon), and Bernard Arnault (CEO of luxury conglomerate LVMH).
It's surprising that Zuckerberg hasn't yet appeared in a "veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered) shirt. But this fascination with classical references isn't new. Zuckerberg actually studied Latin in high school and developed a passion for Virgil's Aeneid, which he was quoting in interviews as early as 2010. Naturally, he interprets the epic through his own lenses (pun intended considering the Orion glasses…). In a 2010 interview with The New Yorker, Zuckerberg quoted Aeneas, who founded Rome, making a parallelism between the Trojan hero and himself as someone who's built his own empire. Zuckerberg is actually a fan of the Roman Empire (he event spent his honeymoon in Rome, and two of his children, August and Aurelia, are named after the emperors Augustus and Marcus Aurelius).
The main difference between 14-year-old me using Latin and Greek to show off and Zuckerberg and his shirts stands indeed in this - he doesn't just quote; he filters these references through his personal narrative, using them to liken himself to Julius Caesar - a general, ruler, and, in his case, tech competitor - or to the grandeur of Augustus, who conquered Egypt, North Africa, and Europe.
Fashion-wise, there was a moment of apprehension in what he stated on the Acquired podcast when he was asked about his shirt: "I started working with people to design some of my own clothes. So I figured we're going to design eyewear, we're going to design other stuff that people wear. Let's get good at this (...) I've started working on this series of shirts with some of my favorite classical sayings on them." What if this rebranding spills over into fashion? What if he ends up releasing shirts emblazoned with his fave Latin and Greek quotes? I suppose that would be my nemesis - trendy shirts with classical quotes "designed" by a billionaire.
Yet, as I reflect on this, I can't help but finding the situation slightly amusing: fascism was mesmerised by imperial Rome, by the Romanità and the myth of Roman glories, which is why Federico Fellini lampooned the Romans in his Satyricon. Perhaps Zuckerberg's fascination with antiquity should be satirized in a similar manner. After all, this latest rebranding feels like adopting a persona - a term that, in Latin, means "mask" (remember also Gucci's A/W 2019 collection?) and all this seems indeed just like another mask for a billionaire trying to appear friendly, knowledgeable, and classically cool.
There are actually other classical authors he may want to explore and more quotes that - haud dubie (without doubt) - Zuckerberg might need to learn, quotes that aren't about winning, conquering, and vanquishing enemies. For instance, Seneca's "Divitias nego bonum esse; nam si essent, bonos facerent" (I deny that riches are a good thing; for if they were, they would make men good). Seneca emphasized with these words virtue and criticized the pursuit of material wealth, believing true happiness comes from moral integrity and living in alignment with virtue, not from external possessions. We can only wish that some of these tech billionaires may one day opt to print such wisdom on their shirts instead of boisterous quotes about conquests.
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