Jason Whong: Renaissance Man-in-Training

The name of the seventh episode of Heroes this season is called “ERIS QUOD SUM.” I’ve been wanting to write about NBC’s Monday night lineup all morning, since I noticed that people were looking up the hummingbird position on Google after last night’s episode of My Own Worst Enemy, appropriately titled “Hummingbird”. But I’d rather be opportunist at something new.

So, what does ERIS QUOD SUM actually mean? First of all, it’s in Latin, which explains why it is in all capital letters. (The Romans used what we call capital letters for formal things, like titles of show episodes.) Here’s the rest of what I can get from the rest of my reading:

ERIS - second person singular, future tense of “to be”: You will be
QUOD - neuter singular nominative or accusative pronoun (in this case, I think the accusative): which or that
SUM - most people who have taken latin at least recall the first person singular, present tense form of to be: I am

That gives us a transliteration of “You will be that I am,” which translates a bit better as “You will be that which I am.”

My gut is telling me that there’s a mistake here; I think there is probably some word other than SUM to be used in this sentence, because now there are two verbs wrestling for control of the sentence, as they’re both in indicative mood. I think SUM needs to take a subjunctive mood to balance things out.

The first person singular, present tense form of “to be” (in subjunctive mood) is SIM. Plugging it in to the sentence, we get “ERIS QUOD SIM” as a better rendering of the Latin.

But I think I’ve at least discerned the writer’s intent in translating it to English. Now the mystery remains: Who is saying “You will be that which I am” to whom? Future Peter to Peter? Future Hiro to Hiro? Sylar to Peter? Peter to Sylar? Papa Petrelli to Nathan? The possibilities are endless.

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