Thank you dear, I'm really glad you liked it!! Especially that you're a Latinist and you felt I did right by the classics elements, I'm so so proud! :D
Re: the Latin thing, I figured that in those times they mastered Latin much more than we do today (I mean, even more than students/scholars that are specialized in it today), because they practiced/studied it much more intensely, especially nobles...? That's what I pictured in my mind anyway. Masses still being in Latin for Catholics and only nobles being able to understand them and all that. I also think that nobles in that time and throughout Europe spoke more languages and more fluently than we do today (I remain forever amazed at the fact that French was the chosen language (written and spoken) for royal courts around Europe at the time of Louis XIV; I mean French people speaking French, okay, but what a shit language for other people to learn!).
So anyway, I do think Athos was able to read Ovid "aperto libro", even at 15 (well granted he would *still* have to be pretty skilled, but since Athos is TEH PURFEKSHUN in Dumas' canon and is super awesome at everything except he's a drunkard, I don't think I stretched it too much, by Dumas standards at least); but it's true that my timeline here is deliberately fuzzy; he could have been reading Ovid for days before moving on to Plato (which is the translated vernacular version here)
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Re: the Latin thing, I figured that in those times they mastered Latin much more than we do today (I mean, even more than students/scholars that are specialized in it today), because they practiced/studied it much more intensely, especially nobles...? That's what I pictured in my mind anyway. Masses still being in Latin for Catholics and only nobles being able to understand them and all that. I also think that nobles in that time and throughout Europe spoke more languages and more fluently than we do today (I remain forever amazed at the fact that French was the chosen language (written and spoken) for royal courts around Europe at the time of Louis XIV; I mean French people speaking French, okay, but what a shit language for other people to learn!).
So anyway, I do think Athos was able to read Ovid "aperto libro", even at 15 (well granted he would *still* have to be pretty skilled, but since Athos is TEH PURFEKSHUN in Dumas' canon and is super awesome at everything except he's a drunkard, I don't think I stretched it too much, by Dumas standards at least); but it's true that my timeline here is deliberately fuzzy; he could have been reading Ovid for days before moving on to Plato (which is the translated vernacular version here)
Thanks again for commenting!!