Before you can tell anyone what to do, you need to get their attention first. There are many ways to call someone's attention, either to yourself or to something else. You can perform an outrageous act and wind up in the newspaper, of course, but looks, gestures, and words are by far more frequent.

The only part of speech that has thus far not been addressed is the interjection. While they were surely common in the everyday speech of the average Roman, they do not find their way into literature very often. Interjections are those little, often nonsense-sounding words yelled to call attention (e.g., “Hey!”). They do more, however, than merely call attention — a simple scream could do that! They bear meaning, calling attention and expressing a speaker's emotions at the same time. Consider the range of meanings these English interjections represent: “Ouch!” “Yea!” “Uh-oh!” “Wow!” “Damn!” Like all words, interjections come and go, either changing over time (like “halloa!” to “hello!”) or being completely abandoned and replaced. For example, the nineteenth-century cheer “huzzah!” was exchanged for “hurrah!” then “hooray!” and now, at the time of this writing, we hear “woo-hoo!”

Here are some of the more common interjections in Latin. Since interjections tend to be colloquial, there are probably many more — especially the “colorful” ones — that we will never know.

• E-n! ecce! (Look!)

• Ehem! eī a!ī ! vā h! (surprise)

• Pol! edepol! mē herclē ! pro di! (surprise with religious reference)

• Heu!ē heu! vae! (pain or anger)

• Papae! iī ! euge! eugepae! (happiness)

• Eho! ehodum! heus! ho! st! (calling attention)