Expert: Maria - 3/19/2009

Question
what does this say:

"impia tortorum longos hic turba furores sanguinis innocui, hon satiata, aluit.  Sespite nunc patria, fraco nunc funens, antro, mors ubi dira fuit uita salusque patent."



and also this:

autos-de-fe

Answer
Hello,

First of all the correct Latin text of this quatrain we read at the beginning of E.A. Poe's short story “The pit and the pendulum” is the following:

Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores
Sanguinis innocui non satiata aluit.
Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,
Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.

So this quatrain,  which seems to have been composed for the gates of a market to be erected upon the site of the Jacobin Club House at Paris, the political club of the French Revolution, responsible for the Reign of Terror in 1793, means:

“Here the impious mob of the torturers, unsated with innocent blood, fomented endless hatred and fury. Now that the fatherland is safe and the cave of massacre has been destroyed, life and salvation appear where cruel death has been".[See below for grammatical analysis]


As for “Autos-de-fe” (same as the Portuguese “auto-da-fé), it is not Latin, but Spanish and means “act of  faith” as it  was originally a  solemn abjuration of heresy uttered by a repentant heretic.
If on the contrary the heretic did not repent, the “Auto-da-fé”  was the ceremony accompanying the pronouncement of judgment by the Inquisition and was followed by the execution of sentence by the secular   authorities.  Later however  “Auto-da-fé” meant  broadly “the burning of a heretic”.

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-IMPIA ( nominative feminine of the adjective IMPIUS  agreed with TURBA) = the impious

-TORTORUM (genitive plural of TORTOR, torturer) = of the torturers

-LONGOS (direct object, accusative plural of the adjective LONGUS agreed with FURORES) = endless

-HIC  (adverb) = here

-TURBA (nominative feminine, 1st.declension) = mob

-FURORES ( direct object, accusative plural of FUROR, 3rd.declension) = hatred and fury

-SANGUINIS (genitive of SANGUIS, 3rd.declension) = with blood

-INNOCUI (genitive of the adjective INNOCUUS agreed with SANGUINIS) = innocent

-NON SATIATA (nominative feminine of NON SATIATUS agreed with TURBA) = unsated

-ALUIT  (past tense of the verb ALO) = fomented

-NUNC (adverb) SOSPITE (ablative of SOSPES agreed with PATRIA)  PATRIA (ablative absolute)= Now that the fatherland is safe

-FRACTO (ablative of FRACTUS agreed with ANTRO) NUNC ..…ANTRO (ablative absolute of ANTRUM) =  now that the cave of death  has been destroyed

-FUNERIS (genitive of FUNUS, 3rd.declension) = of massacre

-MORS (nominative, 3rd.declension)= death

-UBI = where

-DIRA (nominative feminine of DIRUS agreed with MORS)= cruel

-FUIT (past tense of SUM) = has been / was

-VITA (nominative, 1st.declension) = life

-SALUSQUE ( nominative of SALUS  plus the enclitic conjunction –QUE, and) = and salvation

-PATENT (presen of PATEO) = appear

As you can see, Latin word order is different from English as Latin  is an inflected language where syntactical relationships are indicated by the endings of each term, not by the order of the words.