Rebekah

Find me. Hold me. Love me.
2012-08-08 08:36:13 (UTC)

Latin Wisdom

[...] iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli / uendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim / imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se / continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, / panem et circenses. [...]
(Juvenal, Satire 10.77–81)

… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses


Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi
finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
temptaris numeros. ut melius, quidquid erit, pati.
seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare Tyrrhenum:
sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi
spem longam reseces. dum loquimur, fugerit invida
aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
Horace, Odes 1.11

Don't ask (it's forbidden to know) what end
the gods have granted to me or you, Leuconoe. Don't play with Babylonian
fortune-telling either. How much better it is to endure whatever will be!
Whether Jupiter has allotted to sink you many more winters or this final one
which even now wears out the Tyrrhenian sea on the rocks placed opposite
— be wise, strain the wine, and scale back your long hopes
to a short period. While we speak, envious time will have {already} fled
Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.


Cui peccare licet peccat minus. Ipsa potestas semina nequitiae languidiora facit.
Ovid, Amores III, 4, 9

He who sins easily, sins less. The very power renders less vigorous the roots of evil.




Ad: