Momento Mori: Fear of death - what is it and where does it come from? Memento mori - translation and origin of Memento mori - the meaning of a phraseological unit.

“Latin has gone out of fashion today,” wrote Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin in Eugene Onegin. And I was mistaken - Latin expressions often flash in our speech so far! “Money does not smell”, “bread and circuses”, “a healthy mind in a healthy body”… We all use these aphorisms, some of which are twenty centuries old! We have selected 10 of the most famous.

1. Ab ovo

According to Roman customs, lunch began with eggs and ended with fruit. It is from here that it is customary to derive the expression "from the egg" or in Latin "ab ovo", meaning "from the very beginning." It is they, eggs and apples, that are mentioned in Horace's satires. But the same Roman poet Quintus Horace Flaccus blurs the picture when he uses the expression "ab ovo" in the "Science of Poetry", in relation to a too lengthy preface. And here the meaning is different: to start from time immemorial. And the eggs are different: Horace cites as an example the story of the Trojan War, which began with the eggs of Leda. From one egg laid by this mythological heroine from a connection with Zeus in the form of a Swan, Elena the Beautiful was born. And her abduction, as is known from mythology, was the reason for the Trojan War.

2. O tempora! About mores!

On October 21, 63 BC, the consul Cicero delivered a fiery speech in the Senate, and it was of crucial importance for Ancient Rome. The day before, Cicero received information about the intentions of the leader of the plebs and youth, Lucius Sergius Catiline, to carry out a coup and assassinate Mark Tullius Cicero himself. The plans were publicized, the plans of the conspirators were frustrated. Catiline was expelled from Rome and declared an enemy of the state. And Cicero, on the contrary, had a triumph and was awarded the title "father of the fatherland." So, this confrontation between Cicero and Catiline enriched our language: it was in speeches against Catiline that Cicero first used the expression “O tempora! O mores!”, which in Russian means “O times! Oh manners!

3. Feci quod potui faciant meliora potentes

Feci quod potui faciant meliora potentes, i.e. "I did my best, let those who can do better." An elegant wording does not obscure the essence: here are my achievements, judge, someone says, summing up his activities. However, why someone? At the source of the expression, quite specific people are found - the Roman consuls. It was they who had a verbal formula with which they ended their reporting speech when they transferred powers to successors. These were not exactly these words - the phrase acquired refinement in poetic retelling. And it is in this finished form that it is carved on the tombstone of the famous Polish philosopher and writer Stanislaw Lem.

4. Panem et circles

This people has long been, since we have our voices
We do not sell, all worries are forgotten, and Rome, that once
He distributed everything: legions, and power, and bundles of lictors,
Restrained now and restlessly dreams of only two things:
Meal'n'Real!

In the original of the 10th satire of the ancient Roman satirist Juvenal, there is "panem et circenses", that is, "bread and circus games." Decimus Junius Juvenal, who lived in the 1st century AD, truthfully described the mores of contemporary Roman society. The mob demanded food and entertainment, the politicians gladly corrupted the plebs with handouts and thus bought support. Manuscripts do not burn, and in the presentation of Juvenal, the cry of the Roman mob of the times of Octavian Augustus, Nero and Trajan, has overcome the thickness of centuries and still means the simple needs of thoughtless people who are easy to buy a populist politician.

5.Pecunianonolet

Everyone knows that money doesn't smell. Much less people know who said this famous phrase, and where the theme of smells suddenly emerged from. Meanwhile, the aphorism is almost twenty centuries old: according to the Roman historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquill, "Pecunia non olet" is the answer of the Roman emperor Vespasian, who ruled in the 1st century AD, to the reproach of his son Titus. The offspring reproached Vespasian for imposing a tax on public latrines. Vespasian brought the money received as this tax to his son's nose and asked if it smelled. Titus replied in the negative. “And yet they are from urine,” Vespasian stated. And thus provided an excuse for all lovers of impure income.

6. Memento mori

When the Roman commander returned from the battlefield to the capital, he was met by a jubilant crowd. The triumph could have turned his head, but the Romans prudently included in the script a state slave with a single line. He stood behind the commander, held a golden wreath over his head and repeated from time to time: "Memento mori." That is: "Remember death." “Remember that you are mortal,” the Romans conjured the victor, “remember that you are a man, and you will have to die. Glory is transient, but life is not eternal. There is, however, a version that the real phrase sounded like this: “Respice post te! Hominem te memento! Memento mori", translated: "Turn around! Remember that you are human! Memento Mori". In this form, the phrase was found in the "Apologetics" of the early Christian writer Quintus Septimius Florence Tertullian, who lived at the turn of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. “Instantly at sea” - they joked in the film “Prisoner of the Caucasus”.

7. Mens sana in corpore sano

When we want to say that only a physically healthy person is energetic and can do a lot, we often use the formula: "a healthy mind in a healthy body." But its author had something completely different in mind! In his tenth satire, the Roman poet Decimus Junius Juvenal wrote:

We must pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.
Ask a cheerful spirit that does not know the fear of death,
Who considers the limit of his life as a gift of nature,
To be able to endure any difficulties...

Thus, the Roman satirist in no way connected the health of the mind and spirit with the health of the body. Rather, he was sure that a mountain of muscles does not contribute to good spirits and quickness of mind. Who edited the text, created in the 2nd century AD? The English philosopher John Locke repeated Juvenal's phrase in his Thoughts on Education, giving it the appearance of an aphorism and completely distorting the meaning. This aphorism was made popular by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: he inserted it into the book Emile, or On Education.

8. Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto

In the 2nd century BC, the Roman comedian Publius Terentius Aphrus presented to the public a remake of the comedy by the Greek writer Menander, who lived in the 4th century BC. In a comedy called "The Self-Tormentor", old Medenem reproaches old Khremet for interfering in other people's affairs and retelling gossip.

Do you really have little to do, Khremet?
You are in someone else's business! yes it is you
Not at all relevant.
Hremet is justified:
I am human!
Nothing human is alien to me.

Khremet's argument has been heard and repeated for more than two millennia. The phrase "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto", that is, "I am a man, and nothing human is alien to me", entered our speech. And it usually means that anyone, even a highly intelligent person, bears in himself all the weaknesses of human nature.

9 Veni, vidi, vici

On August 2, according to the current calendar, 47 BC, Guy Julius Caesar won a victory near the Pontic city of Zela over the king of the Bosporan state Farnak. Farnak ran into himself: after the recent victory over the Romans, he was self-confident and desperately brave. But fortune betrayed the Black Sea people: Farnak's army was defeated, the fortified camp was taken by storm, Farnak himself barely managed to get away. Recovering his breath after a short battle, Caesar wrote a letter to his friend Matius in Rome, in which he announced the victory in just three words: "I came, I saw, I conquered." "Veni, vidi, vici" if in Latin.

10. In vino veritas

And these are Latin rehashes of Greek philosophical thought! The phrase "Wine is a sweet child, it is also true" is attributed to Alcaeus, who worked at the turn of the 7th - 6th centuries BC. After Alcaeus, it was repeated in the XIV book of Natural History by Pliny the Elder: "According to the proverb, the truth is in wine." The ancient Roman writer-encyclopedist wanted to emphasize that wine unties tongues, and the secret comes out. The judgment of Pliny the Elder is confirmed, by the way, by Russian folk wisdom: “What a sober man has on his mind, a drunkard has on his tongue.” But in pursuit of a red word, Gaius Pliny Secundus cut off the proverb, which is longer in Latin and means something completely different. “In vino veritas, in aqua sanitas”, that is, loosely translated from Latin, “Truth may be in wine, but health is in water.”

In the section on the question How to translate correctly and what is the history of these words? Momento more (Momento mori) given by the author to settle down the best answer is

Sometimes the expression is erroneously written as memento more, which changes its meaning to "remember the custom."

Answer from Salted[active]
Memento mori (Latin “remember that you will die”; the form memento mortis is also used - “remember death”) is a Latin expression that has become a catch phrase.

In ancient Rome, this phrase was uttered during the triumphal procession of Roman generals returning with victory. A slave was placed behind the back of the commander, who was obliged to periodically remind the victor that, despite his glory, he remains mortal. Perhaps the real phrase sounded like: Respice post te! Hominem te memento! ("Turn around! Remember that you are a man!") (chapter 33 of Tertullian's Apologetics).

In Russian, after an episode in the film "Prisoner of the Caucasus", the phrase is sometimes jokingly played up as "Instantly - in the sea!" .

An interesting fact: “Memento mori” was a form of greeting exchanged when meeting the monks of the Trappist order, founded in 1663.

Sometimes the expression is erroneously written as memento more, which changes its meaning to "remember the custom."

1 memento mori

Memento Mori.

The form of greeting that the monks of the Trappist Order, founded in 1664, exchanged at a meeting. It is also used as a reminder of the inevitability of death, the transience of life, and figuratively - about threatening danger or about something sad, sad.

Time is a tyrant, it leaves a shadow of the past, and barely lifts the veil of the future. Centuries will pass, and the new year will inspire someone with the same thoughts, the same dreams. Where will I be then? Will we be the same together, Nathalie? New Year is a periodic memento mori. (A. I. Herzen, Excerpts from the diary of 1839.)

For several days - she walked meekly sad, depicting with her whole appearance a renunciation of the blessings of the earth. Everything about her said memento mori. WITH. (V. Kovalevskaya, My sister. Memoirs and letters.)

When we forget ourselves and begin to imagine ourselves immortal, how refreshing is this simple expression: memento mori! (M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, History of one city.)

After the deaths of her son and husband, which followed so quickly one after another, she [the countess] felt herself an unintentionally forgotten creature in this world, having no purpose and meaning. She ate, drank, slept, was awake, but she did not live ... This state of the old woman was understood by all the household, although no one ever spoke about it and everyone made every possible effort to satisfy these needs of hers. Only in a rare look and a sad half-smile addressed to each other between Nikolai, Pierre, Natasha and Countess Marya, this mutual understanding of her situation was expressed. But these views, besides, said something else; they talked about the fact that she had already done her job in life, that she was not all in what is now visible in her, that we all would be the same and that we would joyfully submit to her, restrain ourselves for this once precious, once life as full as we are, and now a miserable being. Memento mori, these glances said. (L. N. Tolstoy, War and Peace.)

I will come to you every day, pale and upset. I will make you sad. Give up the house - I will wander under the windows, meet you in the theater, on the street, everywhere, like a ghost, like memento mori. (I. A. Goncharov, Ordinary history.)

Franz, sick with a hangover, lazily dragged his aching legs along the deck, violently shaking his bell. Memento mori - said the commander, when we agreed on this call to the wardroom for the dining table ... (I. A. Bunin, Spear of the Lord.)

Tchaikovsky always glorifies life through some kind of sad veil. Tchaikovsky's music is an extremely elegant world of human feelings with a constant memento mori. (A. V. Lunacharsky, What can A. P. Chekhov be for us.)

□ Aggressors can be brought to their senses in only one way: it is necessary that they have no doubt that if they decide to unleash a new war, then everywhere - both at the front and in the rear - a formidable force will rise up against them, which will not let them evade fair retribution. This force must constantly remind the enemies of the world; memento mori! - Memento Mori! If you start a war, you will be hanged, as the Nazi leaders were hanged in Nuremberg! Crimes against humanity do not go unpunished. (O. Kuusinen, Report at the ceremonial meeting in Moscow dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin.)

2 memento mori

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Books

memento mori. Stories are not for the nervous,. 1992 edition. The safety is good. Translation from English. The collection contains stories written in the style of "fantasy". In the USA, England, Western Europe, works of this genre ...

Memento mori - remember death

Memento mori is a Latin expression: remember that someday you will have to die. In a modern, more literary and familiar sound - memento Mori. Allegorically, memento mori is a warning to people who are chasing every minute, vain, worried, offended, torn somewhere, infinitely preoccupied with something, that all this is empty, everything will pass and nothing will remain and there will be no need, that everything needs to be discarded petty, stupid, meaningless, preventing you from enjoying the life that is given, because - (the difficulty, however, is to distinguish the small from the large, the meaningless from the useful, stupidity from prudence)

Memento mori - words of greeting exchanged between members of the religious Order of the Trappists

The Trappist Order is a reformist branch of the Catholic monastic order of the Cistercians, which in turn separated from the Order of St. Benedict (Benedictines) - the oldest monastic association, created in the VI century. In the Charter of St. Benedict, which all his followers adhered to and adhere to, in addition to the rules to love the Lord God, love your neighbor, do not kill, do not indulge in fornication, do not steal, do not envy, do not bear false witness, respect all people, paragraph 44 calls for remembering the day of judgment, i.e. about death

The use of phraseology in literature

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