Expert: Maria - 7/29/2007

Question
Hi Maria - regarding the quote attributed to Leonidas at the battle of Thermopylae (eat a good breakfast, for tonight we dine with the shades) - i remember translating it from latin in college and have been trying to remember the Latin for awhile now.  Would you happen to know the Latin translation of this quote? thanks so much! ben

Answer
Hello,

The English translation you mention, i.e. “Eat a good breakfast, for tonight we dine with the shades”, is nothing but the  adaptation of one Greek quotation  from Plutarch and two Latin quotations from Cicero and Valerius Maximus.

So here are the Latin quotations.

1-“Pergite animo forti, Lacedaemonii, hodie apud inferos fortasse cenabimus!”(literally,“Fight courageously,Spartans; perhaps we will dine today among the ghosts!”)
From Cicero, “Tusculanae Disputationes” (Tusculan Disputations”) , book 1. paragraph 101.

2-"Sic prandete, conmilitones, tamquam apud inferos cenaturi'"( literally, “Eat your breakfast, as if you had to dine in the underworld”)
From Valerius Maximus, “Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri ix “( “Nine Books of Memorable Deeds ), book  3.2 ext 3.

As for the ancient Greek text, here it is:
“τοις δέ στρατιώταις παρήγγειλεν  αριστοποιεϊσθαι  ως εν Αδου δειπνησομένοις” (literally, “He bade his soldiers eat their breakfast as if they were to eat their dinner in the Underworld”).
From Plutarch, “Apophthegmata Laconica”( Sayings of the Spartans) ,13.

If on the contrary you want a literal translation of “Eat a good breakfast, for tonight we dine with the shades”,
here it is:
“Bene  prandète, quia hodie vesperi apud umbras cenabimus”.

Best regards,
Maria
___________________________________________________________
-Cicero (106 BC-43 BC)
-Valerius Maximus, flourished 20 AD
-Plutarch (46-died after 119 AD)

-Eat = PRANDETE (imperative, 2nd.person plural, of PRANDEO)
-a good breakfast = BENE
-for = QUIA
-tonight= HODIE VESPERI
-we dine = CENABIMUS (future from CENO)
-with the shades=APUD UMBRAS