Expert: Maria - 6/12/2007

Question
Hello, I have recently become very interested in the phrase "know thyself". I am a very big fan of the Matrix trilogy and all the gnostic symbolism and philisophy therein . in the movie, "temet nosce" is above the doorway of the oracle, synonymous with the phrase @ The Oracle of Delphi. However, the phrase from the temple, I have found to read "nosce te ipsum". Again, in Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem, the title is "gnothi seauton". How is it that all these are latin translations of the same phrase: "know thyself"? Are they in fact, all latin translation or have I been confused?

Answer
Hello,

The ancient Greek phrase  carved on the pediment of the temple of Apollo at Delphi was the following:

-"Gnőthi seautón" meaning exactly “Know thyself”(see below).

This wise exhortation has been translated into Latin as follows:

“Temet nosce” or  “Nosce te ipsum”.

Both these translations in fact are correct and correspond exactly to "Gnőthi seautón", as you can see below where I’m giving you  the grammatical analysis of the ancient Greek and Latin phrases.

In the meantime I want to point out that the only one seeming difference between “Temet nosce” and  “Nosce te ipsum” is TEMET instead of TE IPSUM, but however TEMET is merely a variation of TE IPSUM as they both have the same meaning, i.e. “thyself” (See below).

Best regards,
Maria
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GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS of  "Nosce te ipsum" /”Temet nosce”:

-NOSCE (2nd.person singular, imperative of the verb NOSCO, I know) = Know

-TE IPSUM ( accusative of the pronoun TU meaning ‘you’  plus the accusative masculine singular of the pronoun IPSE meaning ‘self’) = yourself, thyself.

-TEMET (accusative of the pronoun TU meaning ‘you’  plus the enclitic particle –MET meaning ‘self’,  as –MET is an intensifying particle.
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GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS of  “Gnőthi seautón" or “Gnőthi sautón":

-GNOTHI (aorist imperative, 2nd.person singular, of the verb ‘Gignósko’, I know) = know

-SAUTON / SEAUTON (personal pronoun, 2nd.person singular, accusative case) = thyself

Please note that this is a Latin transliteration since unfortunately the  system does not allow the use of the Greek characters and therefore I had  to write the Greek sentence into corresponding letters of Latin alphabet.

Anyway, I can try to write  “Gnőthi seautón” in Greek fonts and hope you can read them.

Here it is:
-gnőthi =Гνῶθι(gamma as capital letter-nu-omega with the circumflex accent-theta-iota)

-sautón /seautón= σεαυτόν or σαυτόν (sigma, using the one that looks like a ‘6’-epsilon-alpha-upsilon-tau-omicron with the acute accent-nu) or (sigma-alpha-upsilon-tau-omicron with the acute accent-nu).

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See the Greek alphabet at:
http://people.msoe.edu/~tritt/greek.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/koine/greek/lessons/alphabet.html