Pacuvius

O you soul-bending queen of all the world, Eloquence!

Marcus Pacuvius (220 – c. 130 BC) was an ancient Roman tragic poet. He is regarded as the greatest of their tragedians prior to Lucius Accius.

Quotes

Text and translation: E. H. Warmington, Remains of Old Latin, Vol. 2, LCL 314 (1936)

Variants: Norbert Gutterman, A Book of Latin Quotations (1966), pp. 28–31

• Men servasse ut essent qui me perderent?
  • Ah! Did I save those men that they might be
    Men who would ruin me?
  • Fragment of Armorium iudicium, quoted by Suetonius, Divus Julius, 84

• Flucti flacciscunt, silescunt venti, mollitur mare.
  • Meanwhile the billows droop and drop, the winds
    Fall quiet, the sea sinks soft.
  • Fragment of Chryses, quoted by Nonius, 488, 10

• O flexanima atque omnium regina rerum oratio!
  • O you soul-bending queen of all the world,
    Eloquence!
  • Fragment of Hermiona, quoted by Nonius, 113, 24

• Conqueri fortunam advorsam, non lamentari decet;
  id viri est officium, fletus muliebri ingenio additust.
  • You may complain of adverse fortune, not
    Lament. This is man's duty; weeping is
    A quality bestowed on woman's nature.
  • Fragment of Niptra, quoted by Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes, II, 21, 50
  • Cp. Sophocles, Odysseus Acanthoplex

• Patria est, ubicumque est bene.
  • Wherever all is well—there is one's native land.
  • Fragment of Teucer, quoted by Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes, V, 37, 108

• Adulescens, tam etsi properas te hoc saxum rogat
  Ut sese aspicias, deinde quod scriptum est legas.
  Hic sunt poetae Pacuvi Marci sita
  Ossa. Hoc volebam nescius ne esses. Vale.
  • Young man, although you hurry, yet this stone
    Asks that you look upon itself, and then
    Read what is written there. Here lie at rest
    Marcus Pacuvius his bones. I wished
    That you should be aware of this. Farewell.
  • Epigramma, quoted by Gellius, I, 24, 4
  • Other translations: Geoffrey Johnson, "His Own Epitaph" in L. R. Lind, ed., Latin Poetry in Verse Translation (1957), p. 6

• Fortunam insanam esse et caecam et brutam perhibent philosophi, ...
  Insanam autem esse aiunt quia atrox incerta instabilisque sit;
  caecam ob eam rem esse iterant quia nil cernat quo sese adplicet;
  brutam quia dignum atque indignum nequeat internoscere.
  Sunt autem alii philosophi qui contra Fortunam negant
  esse ullam sed temeritate res regi umnes autumant.
  Id magis verisimile esse usus reapse experiundo edocet.
  • Dame Fortune, some philosophers maintain,
    Is witless, sightless, brutish; ...
    That she is witless for that she is cruel,
    Untrustworthy, unstaid; and, they repeat,
    Sightless she is because she nothing sees
    Whereto she'll steer herself: and brutish too
    Because she cannot tell between the man
    That's worthy and the unworthy. But there are
    Other philosophers who against all this
    Deny that there is any goddess Fortune,
    Saying it is Chance Medley rules the world.
    That this is more like unto truth and fact
    Practice doth teach us by the experience.
  • Ex incertis fabulis, quoted in ad Herennium, II, 23, 36