"E Pluribus Unum" and Roman Salad

[Allen D. Maberry]

FWIW, in Vergil's Moretum, the phrase itself comes from a description of grinding the salad ingredients together so that they make a single color, not a description of making a single salad out of many ingredients:
"... color est e pluribus unus" translated by Joseph H. Mooney "The minor poems of Vergil (Birmingham, 1916) as " ... and out of many / A single colour ..."

allen
maberry at u.washington.edu

On Sun, 8 Feb 2004 Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

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> Subject:      "E Pluribus Unum" and Roman Salad
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>
> http://www.tvgameshows.net/scoreboard.htm
> MONDAY, JAN. 26
> Jeopardy!: Wagering was important going into Final Jeopardy! as champion Lili
> Williams and Rob Poodiack each had $12,000 at that point. For the third
> straight day, no one came up with the correct final response.
>    Category: Latin Lingo. Answer: this three-word phrase, familiar in the
> U.S., originated in an ancient poem and described assembling foods to make salad.
> Correct response: what is E Pluribus Unum?
>    Williams made the more conservative wager and ended with $6,800 to retain
> the title and a two-day total of $15,400.
>
>    JEOPARDY! watcher and ADS member David Shulman spotted this...After this
> question, JEOPARDY! host Alex Trebek had one-too-many salads and drove his car
> into a ditch.
>    "E PLURIBUS UNUM," one out of many, is how Virgil described making a
> salad.  There are many Google hits.
>    Shulman told me that some restaurants called their salads "E Pluribus
> Unum."  I checked Newspaperarchive.com.  There are 29 hits, but nothing to
> indicate a threat to "Caesar."