Expert: Maria - 7/25/2010

Question
hi i was wondering if you could translate this into Latin for me:

'fortune favors the brave for only the brave enjoy noble and glorious deaths'

thankyou for your help

Answer
Hello,

“Audaces fortuna iuvat quia solum audaces gloriosa nobilique gaudent morte” is the translation you asked me.

Note that “Audaces fortuna iuvat” is an adaptation of “Audentes fortuna iuvat”  we read in Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 10, line 284, where “Audentes” corresponds to” Audaces”.

See below for grammatical analysis.

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-fortune = FORTUNA ( subject, nominative case, 1st.declension)

-favors = IUVAT (from the verb IUVO which requires the accusative case)

-the brave = AUDACES ( accusative masculine plural  of the adjective AUDAX)

-for = QUIA

-only = SOLUM (adverb)

-the brave = AUDACES (subject, nominative masculine plural of AUDAX, whose nominative and accusative plural are the same)

-enjoy = GAUDENT (3rd.person plural, present indicative of the verb GAUDEO which requires the ablative case)

-noble = NOBILI (ablative of the adjective NOBILIS)

-and =-QUE (enclitic particle attached to the end of  NOBILI)

-glorious= GLORIOSA (ablative feminine of the adjective GLORIOSUS agreed with MORTE)

-deaths= MORTE (ablative of MORS, 3rd.declension).

As you can see, Latin word order can be 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.