Latin phrases

Suetonius says that in his Pontic triumph Caesar "displayed among the show-pieces of the procession an inscription of but three words, 'I came, I saw, I conquered,'" (Rolfe's translation), "not indicating the events of the war, as the others did, but the speed with which it was finished." Plutarch says it was a letter: "to one of his friends at Rome, Amantius, Caesar wrote three words". Both are reports; neither quotes a document by Caesar that survives. Our longer look at the phrase is Veni, vidi, vici: meaning and sources.

Plutarch tells it differently: Caesar was "calling out in Greek to the bystanders these words only, 'Let the die be cast,'" (Perrin's translation, Pompey 60), a phrase "with which men usually prelude their plunge into desperate and daring fortunes" (Caesar 32). The same Greek saying turns up in a comedy by Menander, quoted by Athenaeus, where it is about getting married: "δεδογμένον τὸ πρᾶγμ· ἀνερρίφθω κύβος", "the thing's decided; let the die be cast".

Suetonius says Caesar died "uttering not a word, but merely a groan at the first stroke, though some have written that when Marcus Brutus rushed at him, he said in Greek, 'You too, my child?'" (Rolfe). Cassius Dio prefers the silent version: "This is the truest account". Plutarch has Caesar cry out in Latin at the first blow, "Accursed Casca, what does thou?" (Perrin), but gives him nothing to say to Brutus: "it is said by some writers" that, seeing Brutus's dagger, "he pulled his toga down over his head and sank". The Greek teknon means "child"; the "my" is the translator's.

We go into the caveats in Older Than You Think.

His reason follows: "Nemo prouocare, nemo audet offendere quem intellegit superiorem esse, si pugnet", "no one dares provoke or offend someone he knows would be the stronger in a fight". The thought is older than Vegetius. Cicero said, in his seventh Philippic, "si pace frui volumus, bellum gerendum est", "if we want to enjoy peace, we must wage war" (7.19), and Nepos has Epaminondas say "paritur pax bello", "peace is produced by war" (Epaminondas 5.4). The short si vis pacem form does not occur in book 3, and we did not find where it first appears.

The Latin "Ego cogito, ergo sum" is in his Principia philosophiae, which the same edition dates to 1644. His second Meditation, where the argument is most famous, says something slightly different: "Ego sum, ego existo", "I am, I exist". The words ergo sum do not occur in the Second Meditation.

The Library of Virginia records that the design for the state's great seal was proposed "on July 5, 1776", and "the Latin Sic Semper Tyrannis ('Thus Always to Tyrants') chosen for the obverse, or front, of the seal became the state motto". It is also what John Wilkes Booth shouted when he shot Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on 14 April 1865. The sources place it differently. Booth's own journal says: "I shouted Sic Semper before I fired." The National Park Service says "numerous witnesses mention Booth brandishing the dagger while shouting 'Sic Semper Tyrannis' and running out to the back of the stage", which is after the shot. The two need not contradict each other. In the sources we checked, only the shout on the stage is reported by others; the one before the shot rests on Booth's own journal, in an entry the Park Service says was likely written between 17 and 20 April, while he was hiding.

It is not about government. The text is also uncertain: the edition we used prints the line twice, once inside square brackets.

The lead-in names the reason: "Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares". Ramsay renders circenses as "Games". In our reading, Juvenal's target is the people who stopped caring, not a ruler distracting them.

Ramsay: "Nevertheless that you may have something to pray for", "you should pray for a sound mind in a sound body; for a stout heart that has no fear of death". Then Juvenal turns it round: "What I commend to you, you can give to yourself". Most of what it asks for is character, not fitness.

Pliny the Elder, in a disapproving passage on drunkenness, says "volgoque veritas iam attributa vino est", "and truth has now commonly been attributed to wine", after warning that drinkers let out secrets and words that will get them killed. In Greek, Athenaeus reports the saying "οἶνος καὶ ἀλήθεια", "wine and truth", and Theocritus opens a poem with it: "οἶνος ὦ φίλε παῖ λέγεται καὶ ἀλάθεα", "'wine, dear boy,' they say, 'and truth'". We did not find the earliest text with the exact Latin.

In Vergil's Aeneid 9, Apollo praises the boy Ascanius after his first kill in battle: "macte nova virtute, puer, sic itur ad astra", "blessings on your new courage, boy; this is the way to the stars". Neither text has per aspera, and we did not find where the four-word motto first appears.

Suetonius puts it in a passage on generalship: "He thought nothing less becoming in a well-trained leader than haste and rashness" (Rolfe). Aulus Gellius reports it at second hand: "we are told that he used to say in conversation, and write in his letters, σπεῦδε βραδέως, that is, 'make haste slowly,'" and Rolfe's note adds: "Hence the common festina lente". The Latin form does not occur in either ancient text.

He was admitting that he and the Senate had been wrong. Augustine, in a sermon about the Donatists who would not admit they had been wrong, supplies the second half people now add: "Humanum fuit errare, diabolicum est per animositatem in errore manere", "to err was human; to remain in error out of stubbornness is devilish". Neither has the words errare humanum est or perseverare diabolicum, and we did not find the first text that does.