"I renounce the gods; I've reached the summit of my desires."
-Atreus, father of Agamemnon and Menalaus, after serving his nephews to his brother Thyestes at a supposed peace-making feast. From Thyestes, by Seneca.
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Actually, while I'm not sure of the spelling, I find "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" memorable, along with the imagery of choking on chlorine gas.
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No idea- my latin is limited to a knowledge of French, English and a tinsy bit of latin itself, picked up from not being able to avoid it.
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Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram; multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem, inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum, Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae. --The proem of the Aeneid.
VIVAMUS mea Lesbia, atque amemus, rumoresque senum seueriorum omnes unius aestimemus assis! soles occidere et redire possunt: nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda. da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum. dein, cum milia multa fecerimus, conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus, aut ne quis malus inuidere possit, cum tantum sciat esse basiorum. -- Catullus, #5
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quote: quote: -------------------------------------------------- picked up from not being able to avoid it. --------------------------------------------------
This is my favorite line of the whole day.
Well even in Stargate for goodness sake, basic latinized words show up, so talking about anything the slightest bit literary...
Edit:
Ah. See? I really have no idea. I thought catapult was a little bit to obvious but, ah, hm.
I ran across this while writing a paper about the fall of the Roman Republic. I like it because it captures Cicero so well - overblown and self important, but an idealist with conviction. He believed that to be a Roman meant something, and dispaired when the Republic became a tool for individual ambition.
Man, if I were better at languages I would have been a classicist.
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quote:overblown and self important, but an idealist with conviction. He believed that to be a Roman meant something, and dispaired when the Republic became a tool for individual ambition.
I LOVE Cicero. I named my fish Cicero. When my Latin club did the reenactment of the fall of the Republic, I played Cicero and came very close to rallying the Senate enough to vanquish the would-be dictators. The gods killed me off to prevent it from happening. Something about the idealistic, honest, eloquent, socially-clueless Cicero appeals to every part of me.
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Wow, Katie, it sounds to me like you're as attatched to Cicero as I've always been to Tom Paine. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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The first one: "Arms and the man I sing, who first from the shores of Troy, banished by fate, came to Italy and the Lavinian coast, hurled about endlessly by land and sea, by the will of the gods, by cruel Juno’s remorseless anger, long suffering also in war, until he founded a city and brought his gods to Latium: from that the Latin people came, the lords of Alba Longa, the walls of noble Rome."
And the second: "Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and count all the rumors of stearn old men at a penny's fee. Suns can set and rise again: we when once our brief light has set must sleep through a perpetual night. Give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then another thousand without resting, then a hundred. Then, when we have made many thousands, we will confuse the count lest we know the numbering, so that no one can cast an evil eye on us through knowing the number of our kisses."
I also love Cicero, and Caesar, and I enjoy medieval Latin as well, though I'm less good at that. Seneca Minor is pretty funny. The only Latin I've done and really NOT enjoyed was Lucretius.
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Heh. Cicero would never have made it as a dictator for life. He wasn't subtle enough.
quote:I named my fish Cicero.
I like it when people name things for a reason. It means they're interesting and care about the world. I named my last fish Optimus Prime, because the Transformers movie made me cry when I was twelve.
Anyway, I think this is the sort of thing that Cicero would have done. But for an entirely different reason. Posts: 794 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. Catullus again
Translation: I hate and I love. Why do I do it, perchance you might ask? I don't know, but I feel it happening to me and I'm burning up.
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"O tempora or mores senatus haec intellegit consul videt hic tamen vivit vivit immo vero etiam in senatum venit fit publici consili particeps notat et designat oculis ad caedem unum quemque nostrum." Cicero In Catilinam I.2
"Oh times, or customs! The senate knows this; the consul sees this! yet he lives! He lives? On the contrary, in truth he comes even into the senate, he takes part in public meetings, he marks out and designates each one of us with murder in his eyes."
I like this because it's classic Cicero. The latin just rolls off the tongue, but the words are so dramatic that you would laugh at the extremism, if it weren't a real person making these statements.
"Cenabis bene mi Fabulle apud me paucis si tibi di favent diebus si tecum attuleris bonum atque magnam cenam non sine candida puella et vino et sale et omnibus cachinnis haec si inquam attuleris venuste noster cenabis bene nam tui Catulli plenus sacculus est aranearum sed contra accipies meros amores seu quid sauvius elegantiusve est nam unguentum dabo quod meae puellae donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque quod tu cum olfacies deos rogabis totum ut te faciant Fabulle nasum." Cattullus 13
Rough translation: "You will dine well, my Fabullus, a few at my house, if the gods show favor to you in a few days, if you bring with you a good and great dinner, not without a pretty girl, and wine and salt and many laughs that is if you say you will bring [these things]our lovely friend, you will dine well; for your Catullus's purse is full of cobwebs, but on the other hand you will recieve pure love, or, what is more pleasant and elegant, I will give you perfume which my girl recieved from Venus and Cupid, which when you smell you will ask the Gods that they make all of you into a nose."
The humor is difficult to translate, but I think it funny that he invites his friend to dinner, provided the friend brings just about everything with him. In return the friend gets either pure love, or to smell this wonderful perfume.
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Si hoc legere scis, nimium eruditionis habes (if you can read this you have toomuch education)
Quid rides? Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur (why do you laugh? just change the name and the tale is told of you- Horace)
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I'm sorry, but I just don't agree that CIcero's actions when consul could be seen as dictatorial. He was putting down a rebellion, and there was martial law. Despite Publius Clodius Pulcher's retroactive attempts to exile him, Cicero was acting within the bounds of what the res publica permitted in times of crisis (if just barely). Besides, it was really Cato who pushed for the execution of the Catilinarians (the first of many of his disagreements with Julius Caesar).
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