Name: 5 Latin phrases that are still meaningful today | BBC Ideas
Uploaded: 2020-04-05T09:39:32.000Z
Duration: 3 min 45 s
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There are good reasons you see so many people with Latin tattoos.

For a start, Latin is a highly economical language -

you can say a lot in just a handful of words.

are often as applicable to us now as they were to the Romans.

We cannot see the baggage that's on our own back.

the Latin love poet, Catullus, observed a common human trait.

While we find it easy to recognise faults in other people,

we tend to be more or less blind to our own.

"Each of us has been assigned his own fault," he wrote,

"but we cannot see the baggage that's on our own back."

Catullus' message then, from over 2,000 years ago,

is to think about your own faults before criticising others.

Love, in Virgil's line, isn't just a human emotion,

He will strike you with his arrow and make you fall hopelessly in love.

The love-sick poet who sighed, "Omnia vincit amor"

knew that to be in love isn't necessarily to be happy.

Virgil shows us there's no point in trying to fight it.

"Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori" he continues.

than trying to shield yourself from his spell."

Si hortum in bibliotheca habes deerit nihil.

If you have a garden and a library, you'll lack nothing.

"If you have a garden in the library, you'll lack nothing."

Houses in Rome typically had the garden in the middle of the house

In the ancient world there was a tradition for learning outside.

Students at Plato's academy in Greece, for instance,

Cicero's message is if you have books and nature you have everything.

Anyone who has drunk a few glasses can vouch for this.

It may make you talk a lot of nonsense but as the ancients knew,

it could also make you spill your secrets.

The historian Pliny the Elder alluded to a popular saying,

At the same time, he pitied the drunks who do not see the Sun rising

Donec eris sospes multos numerabis amicos.

For as long as you're doing well, you'll have many friends.

Ovid was one of the leading poets of his day

and was banished to the coast of modern Romania.

While there he wrote about his miserable fate,

The poem was full of advice about how to love and make love

What the mistake was remains a mystery to this day.

In exile, the once popular poet found himself friendless.

The message is surely to work out who your real friends are

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5 Latin phrases that are still meaningful today | BBC Ideas

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