Romani ite domum

The scene features John Cleese as a centurion and Graham Chapman as Brian, at that stage a would-be member of the revolutionary group the "People's Front of Judea".

Instead, the centurion corrects Brian's grammatical mistakes in the manner of a traditional Latin teacher, as he has written "People called 'Romanes' they go the house".

[1] He forces Brian to use the proper imperative verb form and accusative case and write the correct phrase, Romani ite domum, one hundred times, threatening to "cut [his] balls off" if he has not done so by sunrise.

[1] As a number of works on Latin note, the centurion was mistaken in accepting Brian's answer of the locative case, although the result was correct.

[6] From the perspective of realism, the scene has been noted as accurately reflecting the ancientness of the practice of writing graffiti on walls as a form of political protest.

[7][8] As an example of humour derived from the use of language, the scene is discussed in Cognitive Linguistics and Humor Research as an instance where the expected actions of the characters—the Romans detecting a vandal in the act and immediately arresting or punishing him—are replaced by a satirical representation of classroom discourse.

He proceeds to walk Brian through the process of correcting his mistakes by making him analyse each word in the sentence, thereby determining the proper grammatical form.

The centurion then subverts the humorous substitution of a schoolmaster-pupil relationship for that of soldier and rebel by threatening Brian with castration should he fail to complete his punishment within a reasonable amount of time.