I was just wondering if you could help me out with a English to Latin translation. I am trying to find out the most accurate/direct translation for a famous Marcus Aurelius quote
"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present"
Thank you very much
Juliet
Answer Hi Juliet,
First of all I have to point out that the original text of this Marcus Aurelius quote we read in his Meditations (Book VII, paragraph 8) is in ancient Greek, as Marcus Aurelius, emperor from 161 to 180 AD, wrote his meditations just in the Greek language he was good at as he was at Latin, his mother tongue.
So the Greek text of “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present” would sound as follows in Latin:
“Numquam te futura perturbent. Ea enim, si opus erit, adibis eadem ratione praeditus, qua nunc ad praesentia uteris”.
Note that in this Latin translation you have to modify the ending of the adjective PRAEDITUS which becomes PRAEDITA, if it refers to a female person.
Therefore here’s the version of the same sentence in the feminine:
“Numquam te futura perturbent. Ea enim, si opus erit, adibis eadem ratione praedita, qua nunc ad praesentia uteris”.
See below for grammatical analysis and original Greek.
Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:
-Never = NUMQUAM
-let …disturb = PERTURBENT (subjunctive, 3rd person plural,of PERTURBO)
-the future = FUTURA (subject in the nominative neuter plural of FUTURUM. Latin in fact uses the plural)
-you = TE (direct object in the accusative)
-You will meet = ADIBIS (future of ADEO)
-it = EA (pronoun IS in the accusative plural neuter agreed with FUTURA). In Latin we add the conjunction ENIM.
-if = SI
-you have to = OPUS ERIT (in Latin we use the future of SUM plus OPUS in the impersonal form)
-with the same = EADEM (ablative feminine of IDEM, agreed with RATIONE)
-weapons of reason = RATIONE (ablative of means of RATIO, reason) PRAEDITUS in the masculine / PRAEDITA in the feminine
-which = QUA (ablative of the relative pronoun QUI agreed with RATIONE)
-today = NUNC
-arm you = UTERIS (from UTOR which takes the above ablative QUA))
-against = AD (preposition which takes the accusative)
Latin word order is different from English, as you can see.
This however is not a problem as Latin declension by cases gets everyone to discern the case of a word. Latin is in fact an inflected language where the words change ending according to their grammatical role.
