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group004

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Latin Via Proverbs: Home - Previous - Next

 

Group 4: Latin

 

41. Rarus fidus amicus.

42. Locus medius tutus est.

43. Heri servus, hodie liber.

44. Semel malus, semper malus.

45. Neque pessimus neque primus.

46. Optimus magister bonus liber.

47. Bonus liber amicus optimus.

48. Libri muti magistri sunt.

49. Pauci sed boni.

50. Amici nec multi nec nulli.

51. Montani semper liberi.

 

Audio Online

 

Proverbs 41-50  Proverbs 51-60 

 

Study Guide

 

41. A faithful friend is hard-to-find. (Note that the predicate rarus comes before the subject fidus amicus. The saying is found in Thomas à Kempis, On The Imitation of Christ. Thomas goes on to compare human friendship as a poor substitute for the inimitable faithfulness of God: Tu Domine, tu solus es fidelissimus in omnibus, et praeter te non est alter talis, "Lord, you alone are the most faithful in all things, and besides you there is no other like you.")

 

42. The middle place is safe. (This is one of many Latin proverbs promoting the "golden mean." Notice that in Latin the adjective can follow the noun in a phrase, locus medius, but this is not possible in English. This saying is quote by Bernard of Clairvaux, De Consideratione.)

 

43. A slave yesterday, a free man today. (The words heri and hodie are adverbs, and so they do not decline. Watch out for liber meaning "free" (as in the English word "liberty") and liber meaning "book" (as in the English word "library") in this set of proverbs!)

 

44. Once bad, always bad. (The words semel and semper are adverbs and do not decline. Notice the nice parallel construction here; parallelism is a very popular style used in proverbs. This dictum forms part of the Latin legal tradition.)

 

45. Neither worst nor first. (This proverb is even a bit better in English than in Latin since it rhymes so nicely! It is one of the proverbs in Erasmus's Adagia, 4.4.22.)

 

46. A good book is the best teacher. (You could also translate this as "The best teacher is a good book." Either translation would be just fine... but instead of worrying about the English translation, see if you can appreciate the Latin on its own terms, for its own sake!)

 

47. A good book is the best friend. (I didn't have a lot of friends when I was a child, so this was literally true for me: my best friends really were books!)

 

48. Books are silent teachers. (Be careful with subject and predicate here; if you translate this as "mute books are teachers" it just does not make sense. There is not a grammatical rule to tell you how to identify the predicate and the subject in the Latin sentence, so you need to figure that out based on context.)

 

49. Few, but good. (The Latin makes it very clear that something plural is being referred to here. In fact, something masculine and plural, such as "men." To spell out what is implicit in the Latin, you could say: [The men are] few, but [they are] good.)

 

50. Neither many friends, nor none. (In other words, this is another proverb about the "golden mean." It's best to have not too many friends, but to have at least some friends!)

 

51. Mountain-men are always free. (Notice that there is no confusion here between liberi meaning "free" and libri meaning "books." The confusion arises only in the nominative singular forms of the words, not in their plural forms or in any of the other cases. This is the state motto of West Virginia! You can see a list of state mottoes in Latin at the Bestiaria Latina blog.)

 

 

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