Here is another of the nemo proverbs; this time it is a warning about not calling anyone blessed or happy, beatus, before he's experienced all that life has had to offer.
There are a variety of different forms of this particular saying. For example, you might say obitus instead of mors: Ante obitum nemo beatus. Other versions of the saying are more specific about not being too quick to call someone happy: Ante obitum nemo beatus dici potest, "Before his passing, no one can be called happy."
For a literary source, consider Ovid's Metamorphoses:
[...] scilicet ultima semperThe context is the story of Cadmus, who has just founded the city of Thebes and taken the goddess Harmonia as his wife. All seems to be going well for Cadmus:
exspectanda dies hominis, dicique beatus
ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet.
For a man's final day is always to be waited for, and no one should be called blessed before his passing and his last funeral rites.
Iam stabant Thebae, poteras iam, Cadme, videriUnfortunately, Cadmus's offspring bring him all kinds of grief! His daughter Autonoe had a son, Actaeon, who was eaten by his own dogs. Another daughter, Semele, was burned up in the fiery blaze of Zeus's epiphany. Yet another daughter, Agave, killed her own son in a fit of madness, and Cadmus's fourth daughter, Ino, when pursued by her husband in a murderous rage, jumped into the sea desperately trying to save herself and her son.
exilio felix: soceri tibi Marsque Venusque
contigerant; huc adde genus de coniuge tanta,
tot natos natasque et, pignora cara, nepotes,
hos quoque iam iuvenes...
Thebes was now standing, and you could now seem, Cadmus, to be happy in your exile. Mars and Venus have become your parents-in-law; add to this your offspring by such a wife, so many sons and daughters, and grandchildren, those precious descendants, and they too grown into men...
Sadly, in the end, after all these disasters had undone all his success, Cadmus turned into a snake, as did his wife. They are gentle snakes, Cadmus and Harmonia, as Ovid explains:
nunc quoque nec fugiunt hominem nec vulnere laeduntSo, remembering the fate of the mighty Cadmus and his wife Harmonia, here is today's proverb read out loud:
quidque prius fuerint, placidi meminere dracones,
even now they do not flee from a person nor do they bite, peaceable dragons, they remember what they once were.
412. Nemo ante mortem beatus.
The number here is the number for this proverb in Latin Via Proverbs: 4000 Proverbs, Mottoes and Sayings for Students of Latin.
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