Full transcript
0:04There are good reasons you see so many people with Latin tattoos.
0:07For a start, Latin is a highly economical language -
0:11you can say a lot in just a handful of words.
0:13Another reason is that Latin literature
0:16is full of timeless truisms.
0:18Observations made over 2,000 years ago
0:21are often as applicable to us now as they were to the Romans.
0:24Here are five quotes from Latin authors
0:27I feel are just as relevant to us today.
0:30Number one:
0:32Non videmus manticae quod in tergo est.
0:36We cannot see the baggage that's on our own back.
0:39In the mid-1st Century BC,
0:41the Latin love poet, Catullus, observed a common human trait.
0:45While we find it easy to recognise faults in other people,
0:48we tend to be more or less blind to our own.
0:50"Each of us has been assigned his own fault," he wrote,
0:54"but we cannot see the baggage that's on our own back."
0:57Catullus' message then, from over 2,000 years ago,
1:00is to think about your own faults before criticising others.
1:04Two:
1:06Omnia vincit amor.
1:09Love conquers all.
1:11Love, in Virgil's line, isn't just a human emotion,
1:14it's a divine force.
1:16Love, amor, is Cupid,
1:19the son of Venus, the goddess of love.
1:22He will strike you with his arrow and make you fall hopelessly in love.
1:26The love-sick poet who sighed, "Omnia vincit amor"
1:29knew that to be in love isn't necessarily to be happy.
1:32To be in love is also to be in pain.
1:34Virgil shows us there's no point in trying to fight it.
1:37"Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori" he continues.
1:41"You're better off yielding to love
1:43than trying to shield yourself from his spell."
1:46Three:
1:47Si hortum in bibliotheca habes deerit nihil.
1:52If you have a garden and a library, you'll lack nothing.
1:58Cicero actually wrote,
1:59"If you have a garden in the library, you'll lack nothing."
2:03Houses in Rome typically had the garden in the middle of the house
2:06rather than at the back.
2:08In the ancient world there was a tradition for learning outside.
2:12Students at Plato's academy in Greece, for instance,
2:14used to learn among the trees.
2:16Cicero's message is if you have books and nature you have everything.
2:21Four:
2:22In vino veritas.
2:25In wine is truth.
2:27Anyone who has drunk a few glasses can vouch for this.
2:30Wine loosens the tongue.
2:31It may make you talk a lot of nonsense but as the ancients knew,
2:35it could also make you spill your secrets.
2:37The historian Pliny the Elder alluded to a popular saying,
2:41about wine bringing out the truth.
2:43"Veritas vino est."
2:45At the same time, he pitied the drunks who do not see the Sun rising
2:49and therefore live shorter lives.
2:51Five:
2:53Donec eris sospes multos numerabis amicos.
2:59For as long as you're doing well, you'll have many friends.
3:02Ovid was one of the leading poets of his day
3:05but fell foul of the emperor
3:07and was banished to the coast of modern Romania.
3:09While there he wrote about his miserable fate,
3:12which he blamed on a poem and a mistake.
3:15The poem was full of advice about how to love and make love
3:18and was far too raunchy for his times.
3:21What the mistake was remains a mystery to this day.
3:25In exile, the once popular poet found himself friendless.
3:29The message is surely to work out who your real friends are
3:31before it's too late.
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3:41See you again soon!