July 25, 2008

Vade ad formicam, o piger!

In English: Turn to the ant, you lazy person!

Here's the latest in my ongoing series of animal proverbs in Latin, although this time the animal is not a furry creature, but instead a tiny insect - formica, the ant - and the source for this saying is not Roman, but rather the Vulgate Latin translation of the Bible. The verse in the Book of Proverbs reads as follows: Vade ad formicam, o piger, et considera vias eius, et disce sapientiam.

The King James version renders the saying in English as "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, and consider her ways, and be wise." I especially appreciate how the King James Bible lets the ant keep her gender; in Latin, the ant, formica, is feminine, as she also is in Hebrew: ‎ nemâlâh. (Not so, however, in Greek: μύμηξ is masculine.)

Anyone who has watched ants working knows how busy they are, and the busy-ness of the ants provides the basis for one of the most famous of Aesop's fables - the story of the ant and grasshopper. Here is a simple Latin version of that story by the 13th-century scholar, Vincent of Beauvais:
Formica hieme frumentum ex caverna trahens siccabat quod aestate colligens coagulaverat. Cicada autem eam rogabat esuriens ut daret aliquid illi de cibo, ut viveret. Cui Formica: Quid faciebas, inquit, in aestate? At illa: Non mihi vacabat: per saepes oberrabam cantando. Formica igitur, ridens et frumentum includens, ait: Si aestate cantasti, hieme salta.

During winter the ant dragged out and drained grain from its hole which she had collected and conglomerated in summer. The grasshopper, on the other hand, was hungry and asked the ant to give her some of the food so that she could live. The ant said to her: What were you doing while it was summer? The grasshopper replied: I was very busy: I wandered through all the hedgerows singing. So the ant, laughing and shutting away her grain, said: As you sang in summer, so you must dance in winter.
The fable is good example of the harshness of Aesop's world: the ant's role in this story is not to help a fellow creature, but instead to point out her mistakes. If only the grasshopper had read the Biblical Book of Proverbs and learned to look to the ant, before it was too late!

So, hoping you are finding time for both singing this summer and preparing for winter (school starts in just a month - eee!), here is today's proverb read out loud:

2421. Vade ad formicam, o piger!

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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For more Latin proverbs, fables and commentary, visit the Bestiaria Latina blog, where you can subscribe to the latest posts by email or by RSS.

July 18, 2008

Audacem reddit felis absentia murem

In English: The cat's absence makes the mouse grow bold.

I thought I would post this animal proverb in honor of our new cat, Ralph, who is busily consuming a lizard as I write this. Yes, despite the ready abundance of cat chow in a bowl on the porch (on which Ralph eagerly chows down), our cat is a killer. My husband had just remarked a few days ago that since we had gotten the cat, we weren't seeing so many lizards running around our garden as we used to. Clearly, the lizards know that when the cat is around, life is not safe.

And, in fact, when I went out to see the cat just a few minutes ago, he was meowing piteously, gripping a still-twitching lizard tail in his paw, looking about frantically to find where the rest of the lizard had gone. After digging around in the grass for a few minutes, he emerged with a good-sized lizard (a skink perhaps?) dangling from his mouth. I left him to eat his meal in peace.

Ralph came to us as a stray about a month ago, and he is a wonderful cat. Watching him in our yard (he is an all-outdoor cat, and doesn't even seem to understand what doors are for; I suspect he has never been inside a house), we have seen him eating grasshoppers and also lizards. Probably that is how he survived on his own. Now that he has adopted us, he is in seventh heaven, since he has all this human affection he could want (he was even more starved for affection than he was for food), and he has several acres of grass and woods to hunt for grasshoppers and lizards - plus cat chow on the porch, tame and tedious as it may seem compared to lizard sushi.

So, whether they might be mice or lizards, the little creatures need to know to watch out for the cat, and to take advantage of the cat's absence whenever possible, as the Latin proverb tells us. Or, as the English saying has it, "when the cat's away, the mice play." Although I like the idea of the bold mouse, the audax mus, which the Latin version emphasizes.

Meanwhile, hoping that you have managed to avoid any predators in your world today, here is the Latin proverb read out loud:

1822. Audacem reddit felis absentia murem.

The number here is the number for this proverb in Latin Via Proverbs: 4000 Proverbs, Mottoes and Sayings for Students of Latin.

If you are reading this via RSS: The Flash audio content is not syndicated via RSS; please visit the Latin Audio Proverbs blog to listen to the audio.
For more Latin proverbs, fables and commentary, visit the Bestiaria Latina blog, where you can subscribe to the latest posts by email or by RSS.

July 11, 2008

Et canis in somnis vestigia latrat

In English: A dog also barks at the trail when dreaming.

A fuller version of the Latin saying reads, et canis in somnis leporis vestigia latrat, "A dog also barks at the rabbit's trail when dreaming." I thought I would choose this for today's animal proverb, since a friend sent me an email this morning where he mentioned his little Beagle chasing rabbits in her sleep. Of course, cats do this too - my new cat spends a lot of time lounging on the porch, while chasing after lizards in his dreams (so far in real life, all the lizards in our garden have escaped his reach). The little et in the proverb, et canis, expresses the idea that dogs to this, too, just like humans.

I read somewhere in fact that all mammals dream (with exception of anteaters? there was some exception to the rule - I just don't remember which creature it was!). Dreaming is definitely a mystery in Darwinian terms, because sleeping is a quite dangerous thing for a creature to do, especially the deep sleep in which dreaming takes place. When animals, be they dogs or humans, are dreaming, they are extremely vulnerable to attack. So there has to be some huge advantage of dreaming, an advantage big enough to outweigh the vulnerability that goes with it. If you are curious about some of the science here, check out these researchers at MIT, and what they learned from studying the dreams of rats: Animals have complex dreams, MIT researcher proves. And for some mind-blowing ideas about dreaming in general, the best book I know is Ursula LeGuin's Lathe of Heaven - a genius combination of science fiction, dream physiology, and Eastern philosophy. Plus the Beatles. :-)

The Latin saying about dogs and their dreams comes from a poem which is preserved in a medieval (ninth-century) manuscript. It appears with two other poems that are found in the ancient novel by Petronius, the Satyricon, leading some scholars to believe that perhaps this poem also had its place in the novel, which has only survived in part. Since I was not able to find a handy version of the poem online (and no English translation at all), I've transcribed the poem here, with a rough-and-ready English translation:

Somnia, quae mentes ludunt volitantibus umbris,
non delubra deum nec ab aethere numina mittunt.
sed sibi quisque facit, nam cum prostrata sopore
urguet membra quies et mens sine pondere ludit,
quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit. oppida bello
qui quatit et flammis miserandas eruit urbes,
tela videt versasque acies et funera regum
atque exundantes profuso sanguine campos.
qui causas orare solent, legesque forumque
et pavidi cernunt inclusum cordi tribunal.
condit avarus opes defossumque invenit aurum.
venator saltus canibus quatit. eripit undis
aut premit eversam periturus navita puppem.
scribit amatori meretrix, dat adultera munus.
et canis in somnis leporis vestigia latrat.
in noctis spatium miserorum vulnera durant.

Dreams, whose fleeting shadows toy with the mind, are not sent by the shrines of the gods nor by the divinities in heaven. Rather, each person dreams for himself: when sleep weighs upon the body's members stretched out at rest, and the mind is at play, free from weight, then whatever happened in day light unfolds in the darkness. The person who shatters towns with warfare and topples pitiable cities with fires - he sees weapons and the battle line routed and the deaths of kings and fields flowing with spilled blood. The people who plead cases by profession - they witness writs and courts and the tribunal enclosed within the coward's heart. The greedy man heaps up wealth and discovers buried gold. The hunter bursts through the thickets with his dogs. The sailor survives the waves or faces death, clinging to his overturned ship. The prostitute writes to her lover, the adulterer gives her gifts. The dog, too, barks at the rabbit's trail in dreams. The wounds of the afflicted last into the night time.

So, hoping you are able to follow your own dream trail in your waking life today, here is the Latin saying read out loud:

1163. Et canis in somnis vestigia latrat.

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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For more Latin proverbs, fables and commentary, visit the Bestiaria Latina blog, where you can subscribe to the latest posts by email or by RSS.

July 01, 2008

Est avis in dextra melior quam quattuor extra

In English: A bird in the right hand is better than four outside.

This latest "animal proverb" in Latin is most familiar in the English form, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," where the stylistic charm of the saying is based on the assonance of "bird...bush." The Latin has a wonderful stylistic charm of its own, of course, because it rhymes: Est avis in dextra melior quam quattuor extra.

Rhyme is one of the distinctive features of medieval Latin proverbs and poetry which I find enormously charming. The classical Romans, for whatever reasons, tended to avoid rhyme, rather than to cultivate it. So, when you find a rhyming proverb, the odds are that it will be a medieval Latin saying, rather than a classical one.

Here's another rhyming Latin variation on the same idea: Capta avis est pluris quam mille in gramine ruris, "A caught bird is better than a thousand in the grass of the field."

In the medieval tradition of legends of Reynard the Fox (sometimes called the "beast epic" tradition), you can find this version: Una avis in laqueo plus valet octo vagis, "One bird in the snare is worth more than eight at large."

As you can see, the number really doesn't matter - one bird compared to two, or four or eight - or, in this variation, compared to ten: Melior est avis in manu vel nido, quam decem in aere, "Better is a bird in the hand or its nest, than ten in the air."

It's also possible to base the comparison on size rather than number, as in this variant: plus valet in manibus passer, quam sub dubio grus, "a sparrow in the hands is worth more than a dubious crane."

This simple idea can be expanded into a full-blow elegiac couplet, as here in this couplet about the crane and the sparrow: Grus quae pennarum celeri secat aera motu, / Passere Iam capto dicitur esse minor, "A crane which cuts the sky with the swift motion of its feathers can be said to be less than a sparrow which is already captured."

I also found this couplet about counting the number of birds in hand and at large: Plus certa comprensa manu valet una volucris / Innumeris, alte quas levis aura vehit, "One bird is worth more, caught with a sure hand, than countless birds which the light air carries aloft."

So, hoping that you have got your birds firmly in hand today, certa manu, here the rhyming version of the proverb read out loud:

754. Est avis in dextra melior quam quattuor extra.

The number here is the number for this proverb in Latin Via Proverbs: 4000 Proverbs, Mottoes and Sayings for Students of Latin.

If you are reading this via RSS: The Flash audio content is not syndicated via RSS; please visit the Latin Audio Proverbs blog to listen to the audio.
For more Latin proverbs, fables and commentary, visit the Bestiaria Latina blog, where you can subscribe to the latest posts by email or by RSS.