I want to have one of my characters in AD 11055 discovering that the only language he has in common with the posthuman self-aware machinery covering the earth from pole to pole is Latin say to himself “All roads lead men forever to Rome.”
What is the correct grammatical way to say this? My untutored guess is
Omnes via ducunt homines per saecula Romam
– but if any of ya’ll Latin scholars out there can help me not embarrass myself before I go to press, I’d be grateful.
Almost grammatically correct, but it should be “viae” instead of via.
Besides that, I decided to try to put the same sentence in a few different ways and a few different word orders. Your word order is most like the quote in the earliest form that we have, but it seems a little choppy to me. See what you think:
Omnes viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam. (your word order)
Omnes viae ducunt homines semper Romam. (Substituting the synonymous semper=”always” for per saecula, though that makes it less like the original Latin quote)
Per saecula ducunt omnes viae homines Romam. (Another word order to try to add emphasis to the words “always” and “to Rome”)
Omnes viae homines Romam semper ducunt. (Most “standard” Latin word order)
Or you can basically arrange it however you want if you think it sounds better.
Hope that helps!
Omnia itinera perpetua homines Romam ducunt. “Via” is more of a street. “Perpetua” is an adverb, which I figure expresses the time better. If you want to say “for/in eternity,” then “in saecula.” And of course, feel free to mess with the order–”subject, DO, verb” is the more classical form.
It seems grammatically correct to my eye, although I’d think something like “in omne tempus ” would be a more common way to say forever, alternatively “in aeternum,” but ultimately I guess it’s just what sounds better to you.
I can’t believe I missed the via/viae thing, sigh.
Hey, you seen one way, you seen ‘em all.
No. The phrase is: “When you’ve seen one shopping center, you’ve seen the mall.”
Omnes viae – nominative plural!!!
Random thoughts
The proverb first appeared in 1175 in the Liber Parabolarum, #591, by Alain de Lille as:
Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam
(“A thousand roads lead men forever to Rome”)
Change mille to omnes and you’re set.
Since ducere means to lead in the sense of command – think “duke” or “Il Duce” – you may want to use adducere which means “lead up to” or detach the prepositon and write:
Omnes viae ducunt homines per saecula ad Romam, which disambiguates homines from Romam as the object of the verb. Of course, by the 12th century, word order was taking over from case endings, so it would have been clearer to de Lille’s readers than to Cicero’s.
My own impulse would have been to use semper instead of per saecula. The latter means “forever” in the sense of “through the ages”. The former means “forever” in the sense of “always.” So an alternative rendering is:
Omnes viae ducunt homines semper ad Romam. (“…always to Rome”) or …semper ducunt… (“always lead”).
The original saying is in Alain de Lille (circa 1175): Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam. (‘A thousand roads’ rather than ‘all roads’, but the meaning is the same.) It might perhaps be best to quote that exactly.
If it did not suit you to quote that exactly, I believe the correct phrasing would be omnes viae (note the plural of via); or, alternatively, omnis via ducit, ‘every road leads’.
Apropos of…well, what I hope you’re writing, I just finished Count To A Trillion.
The next book is coming soon, yes? Please?
Next book is out in December of this year. I am hard at work writing CONCUBINE VECTOR. I have also written the first one-and-a-half volumes of my next trilogy, SOMEWHITHER.
So, I am at work. My wife sees to that.
Coming at Christmas time.
Just a heads up on another of your posts. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/9532983/Sir-Terry-Pratchett-I-thought-my-Alzheimers-would-be-a-lot-worse-than-this-by-now.html. Funny how things work out. If only someone had been humane. No one should have to live like that!
I note the article says that he is too young, under British NHS rules, to receive medication for his disease.
This is unrelated, but I thought you’d like to know about it:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1112688718/quantum-teleportation-record-set-090612/
Ansibles!
What, John, not philological enough to make a semi-constructed version of Latin that sings more easily than one’s native language and has its own purty technological symbols to indicate its use as an operating system language for the world itself?
Granted, it’s a lot of work, but some people will do it, even for a game that had at best middling success (and furthermore had almost nothing but boilerplate music outside of these parts.)
I don’t understand this comment nor what it is in reference to. I don’t recognize the music. I don’t play any computer games aside from City of Heroes, and that is closing.
On a slightly related note, I wonder if any local scholar of Greek can render the phrase “They shall not pass”? (Preferably in the Latin alphabet.) I have a Greek-descended army trying to defend Siberia from Japanese invasion. The foremost Japanese elements are in the suburbs of New Byzantium, and can see the very spires of the Alexandros Cathedral that overlooks the Forum Romanum. The women have been given rifles; the children are digging trenches. They shall not pass!