Expert: Maria - 12/17/2007

Question
would it be better to describe the word 'through' with per or via?  like audacia per silentio?

a friend of mine who took three years of latin told me it was debatable

Answer
Hello,

First of all the English preposition 'through' cannot  be translated  VIA  into Latin as this Latin term is the nominative or the ablative singular of the feminine noun “via”(1st.declension) meaning “road” /”street” and then VIA can mean either “the road / the street” as a nominative, i.e. the subject of a sentence, like in “Via Appia regina est viarum” meaning “The Appian way is the queen of roads”, or “through the road/ street” as an ablative of  motion through, like in  the phrase “ Hac eamus via” meaning “Let’s go through this road / street”.

Note that in English there is  the preposition VIA which however  is nothing but the ablative case  of the Latin noun which means “road”, NOT “through” .

Therefore if you want to translate “through”  into Latin, you must use  the preposition   PER followed by the accusative case.

This in general, of course,  as  we need to know the sentence where there is the preposition  'through'  to say how it must be translated, according to its function in the context and the sense of the phrase.

To conclude,  your example “Audacia per silentio” is wrong because PER  takes the accusative and then you should have written “Audacia per silentium”.

Best,
Maria