The movie Cutthroat Island (1995) is well-known for being one of the biggest flops in Hollywood history. This "pirates of the Caribbean" film, which starred Geena Davis and Matthew Modine, cost $120 million to produce but only earned a paltry $10 million at the domestic box office. Reviews and ticket sales were so embarrassing, in fact, that the studio pulled the film from theatres after just two weeks.
The plot of the film actually revolves around a treasure map written in Latin. Davis's character, the "notorious lady pyrate" Morgan Adams, acquires the map, but no one on her ship is capable of translating the Latin. In Port Royal, Jamaica, however, she finds a slave available for sale - William Shaw, portrayed by Matthew Modine - who claims to know Latin.
"I have it on authority that you are fluent in Latin," Adams says.
"Ah, Latin. The romance language," Shaw replies. "I can speak Latin like I was born in the ancient senate. A regular Cicero!" Shaw assumes that Adams is seeking a tutor for her children. As he rambles on about his qualifications, she interrupts him.
"Stop your chatter and say something Latinish."
Modine then pauses, looking down carefully at the ground. (Perhaps he's reading a cue card?)
"Pulchrissima mulier es. Pedes lavare volo." (The superlative, of course, should be pulcherrima, not pulchrissima.)
"What did you say?"
"'You're a very beautiful woman. I'd like to wash your feet.'"
With such brilliant dialogue, how did this movie ever fail?
At any rate, here is the map, assembled together from three separate pieces:
In looking at various screen shots, here is what the Latin reads (insomuch as I am able to decipher the blood-stained handwriting):
1. A via (?) crucis ad occidentem, passus nonaginta.
2. In via quae ad Capitani Jacobi oculos tendit, passus quattuordecim. Hic situs est thesaurus.
3. Directe procede passus septem.
4. Hac carta, advenias ad illius (?) miseri ___ (?) thesauri longitudinem.
The Latin is, by and large, grammatically correct. Here is how each statement would translate:
1. From the path of the cross to the west, 90 paces.
2. On the road which extends to the eyes of Captain Jacob, 14 paces. Here the treasure is buried.
3. Proceed 7 paces directly.
4. By this map, may you arrive at the longitude of that miserable treasure.
Shaw's translation of the map, however, in no way lines up with the Latin. According to him, the map includes fragments of three biblical Psalms (11, 75, and 42). At one point, he translates the Latin as "75 paces from the rock pillar," and at another, he finds a poem: "Mouth of darkness, teeth of stone, down the throat to the belly of the gold, guarded by those who never grew old."
Considering that the producers spent $120 million on this film, they could have at least given some starving grad student in Classics some dinner money to write some Latin for the prop map that would actually match the script. After all, they obviously hired some sort of Latinist to compose the Latin text which does appear on the map. Why couldn't it actually be correct?
Finally, the map also includes a code in Roman numerals. Part of the map is written in English: "May cruel death leave victims immortal." Shaw concludes that the first letter of each word corresponds to a Roman numeral: MCDLVI, 1456. He somehow determines that this is a code for the coordinates of Cutthroat Island, the location of the buried treasure: "14 degrees latitude, 5 minutes, 6 seconds north."
Like any good action movie, the end of Cutthroat Island is calculated to set up a sequel, with Adams, Shaw, and their surviving crew preparing to set sail to find treasure off the coast of Madagascar. There could have been another movie with a Latin treasure map, but, alas, Cutthroat Island was such an abysmal disaster that the sequel never happened.
