Rambling On in Latin with History Explored: multa et sine ordine loqui

By DAVID MYTON

Dear Subscribers - This is my regular Rambling On history post - not the usual referenced, research-essay style. Please feel free to chip in with (preferably polite, informative) comments and/or examples.

I was sitting here in my little office thinking a torrential stream of consciousness when one word lodged in my brain and wouldn’t budge. That word was Latin. As in the language, as in what the Romans spoke.

Perhaps it was triggered by my recent reading of Wilfred Owen’s poem Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori which featured in my previous Rambling On post.

The Latin means something like “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country”. And it struck me that the phrase - coined by the Roman poet Horace - sounds far more persuasive in Latin than it does in bog-standard English. As do many sayings.

Latin is cool, I wish I could speak it like some 19th century posh chap who went to Oxford or Cambridge. Anyone out there in Terra Substack who speaks Latin?

Roman political power

So, Latin the language goes way back in time. It was originally spoken by small groups of people living along the lower Tiber River in Italy. According to the online encyclopedia Britannica:

“Latin spread with the increase of Roman political power, first throughout Italy and then throughout most of western and southern Europe and the central and western Mediterranean coastal regions of Africa. The modern Romance languages developed from the spoken Latin of various parts of the Roman Empire. During the Middle Ages and until comparatively recent times, Latin was the language most widely used in the West for scholarly and literary purposes. Until the latter part of the 20th century its use was required in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Also influential in promoting the spread of Latin was the Vulgate Latin Bible, which remained the standard Bible for many centuries with revised versions being published as recently as 1979 and 1986.

In 1965 a commission was established by the Second Vatican Council to revise the Vulgate, and in 1979 the Nova Vulgata, also known as the Neovulgata, was published. It was promulgated in April of that year by Pope John Paul II as the official Latin text of the Roman Catholic Church. A second edition was released in 1986.

Anyway, much to my surprise I have discovered that Latin is still taught at many schools and universities across the world. There is also a Latin language Wikipedia - Vicipaedia or Vicipaedia Latina - and to all those nerds I say Benedictat tibi Deus.

There’s also a host of famous people who have studied Latin including Benjamin Franklin, Teddy Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill.

And now for your delectation I have put together a random collection of Latin phrases and sayings for you to learn and so impress your friends. Most of them and their translations come from The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of Quotations, Oxford University Press, 1981 - so don’t blame me if they’re wrong. Apologies in advance for any other errors.

Let me know if you have any favourite Latin sayings/phrases.

Inventarium verborum

Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus aut differemus, rectum aut justitian - To no man will we sell, or deny, or delay, right or justice - Magna Carta 1215 CE

Oderint, dum metuant - Let them hate, so long as they fear - Lucius Accius (170– c86 BCE) Roman poet and literary scholar

Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit - And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness (Letter to Charlemagne 800CE, Works - Alcuin 732-804 CE Anglo-Latin scholar, clergyman, poet, and teacher from York, England)

Si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more, si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi - When in Rome do as the Romans do. - St Ambrose (c339-397 CE) theologian, statesman and Bishop of Milan 374 to 397CE

Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant - Hail Caesar (or Emperor); those who are about to die salute you - Suetonius, De vita Caesarum (The Life of the Caesars)

Et in Arcadia ego - Common phrase often used as a memento mori (remember you have to die)

Gaudeamus igitur/juvenus dum sumus/post jucundam juven tutem/post molestam senectulem/nos haberbit humus

Let us then rejoice/While we are young/After the pleasures of youth/And the tiresomeness of old age/Earth will hold us - Medieval students’ song traced to 1267 but revised in the 18th century, now a popular academic commercium song, mainly performed at university graduation ceremonies

Per ardua ad astra - Through adversity to the stars. Motto of the UK Royal Air Force and other Commonwealth air forces, including the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF)

Post coitum omne animal triste - After sexual intercourse every animal is sad

Quidquid agas prudenter agas, et respice finem - Whatever you do, do it cautiously, and look to the end. In other words, look before you leap…

Sic transit gloria mundi - Thus passes the glory of the world (Spoken during the coronation of a new Pope)

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamor in illis - Times are changed; we too are changed with them. Example of hexameter verse used in Greek and Latin epic poetry.

Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo - Give me chastity and continence, but not just yet! From Augustine of Hippo Confessions

Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitorum - With love for mankind and hatred of sins. Often associated with St. Augustine, who used it in his writings. Sometimes shortened to “Love the sinner, hate the sin”

Roma locuta est; causa finita est - Rome has spoken; the cause is finished. Derives from a sermon by Augustine early in the fifth century after the Pope had ratified the condemnation of the Pelagian heresy

Pax vobiscum - Peace be with you. A common liturgical blessing used in various Christian traditions

Ecce homo - Behold the man. In John’s Gospel (19:5) Pontius Pilate says these words as he presents Jesus to the crowd before his crucifixion

Nam in omni adversitate fortunae infelicissimum est genus infortunii, fuisse felicem. For in every ill-turn of fortune the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy. From Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae

Enita non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem - No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary - Occam’s razor (William of Ockham, a 14th-century English philosopher and theologian, declared that “of two competing theories, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred”.

Dominus vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo - The Lord be with you. And with thy spirit The Mass in Latin