Weathering the storm

Abstract This paper explores Latin’s metaphorical construal of crisis, especially through the image of a storm. It shows that Latin speakers utilise the terms tempestas and procellae (both ‘storm’), along with a cluster of semantically related words, to convey this concept. It then goes on to argue that this metaphorical conceptualisation constitutes an ethnographic datum. The metaphor of “crisis” as a storm, it is argued, helps crystallise for Roman culture the idea that a crisis is both destructive and unpredictable, but also even potentially creative and beneficial. The paper thus aims to elucidate a highly conventionalised aspect of Latin’s figurative lexicon of “crisis” and to characterise, from an anthropological perspective, a distinctive aspect of Latin speakers’ worldview.