Yesterday, I was looking up ancient Latin mottos, and I found a delightful book from 1866 called Choice of Emblems. There was a whole list of mottos inside that I had never heard before, and each one held a wealth of emotions: happy, sad, cynical, hopeful or (surprisingly) threatening. It showed very clearly that a few small words could send a very big message.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of the mottos expressed warrior hubris, my favourite being audaces fortuna iuvat: fortune helps
the daring. I also found quite a bit of pessimism, notably interminabilis humanse vitee labor, which means 'endless the labour of human life'. One can almost hear the sigh that follows that one. The funniest, I think, was ludus, luctus, luxus: gaming, grief, gluttony. I guess that person knew what they were doing for the weekend.
I want to leave you with three mysterious ones. What do you think is the backstory for these?
- In studiosum captum amore: on the student caught by love
- Scribit in marmore laesus: being injured he writes on marble
- Sobrie potandum: we must drink soberly
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