Verbum Sap

I HAVE long wondered what I might do with the scraps of Latin that I picked up in high school and college, and have at last found a use for them.

If one strolls about the world at all, one cannot help remarking the mottoes that adorn the letterheads and shop fronts of our best-known institutions. Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, and many other universities, the various publishing companies, military commands, clubs, fraternities, political subdivisions, all have a tasty motto from some foreign tongue engraved on their shields.

There is no doubt about it, it gives them an air of — well, of je ne sais quoi exactly — but at any rate an air. Take the well-known clothier whose motto is Honore et labore. If he put that into English, would anyone look twice? Or the equally well-known Boston grocer who stands under the twin ægis of Puritas et cura. Is there not something almost noble in the heart that conceals its anxiety in that manner? Or is the motto an hendiadys? In which case — no, no translation could do it justice.

Grocers have a finer sense for Latin than other tradesmen. Puritas et cura is pathos, but sometimes there is a roguish twinkle in their eyes, as when another Bostonian cynically advertised Luxuria cum economia. Straitlaced Puritans might rightly object to that. Luxuria is one of the Seven Deadlies, if I am not mistaken. Coupled with economia it becomes a household pastime. But by keeping it in Latin the grocer avoids unpleasant comment. Or does he mean that his specialty is love philtres?

Another satisfier of human needs is a scholastic philosopher. Non quantitas sed qualitas is his boast. Boast it is, but how refined a boast! If he were in France, his sign would be Au petit Saint Thomas, for no other than the doctor angelicus would be able to elucidate the exact meaning of the phrase. And what of the hotel in St. Louis, which calls itself reassuringly fortis sed non ferox, I believe? Or of the New Haven department store which frankly admits that it is nihil nisi differens ? Do its customers ever expect to receive their goods on time? Is it trying to encourage the cash-and-carry system?

Now I propose to set myself up in business as a vendor of Latin mottoes. After all, I have read Sallust, Cæsar, Vergil, Horace, Juvenal, Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, Terence, and Plautus in school; and, out of school, Petronius, Apuleius (in selections), Sabinus, Calpurnius, Gratius Faliscus, Nemesianus, Valerius Cato, Vestritius Spurinna, Lupercus Servastus, Arborius, Pentadius, and the haughty Eucheria. (The last ten, in fact, can be easily procured in one volume for two francs fifty. They were. And the volume includes a French translation. But qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare.) It would indeed be a pity if out of all those early and late Romans I should not be able to gather a few irrelevant pearls to hang about the necks of our tradesmen.

Some trades one would have no difficulty with. You are an undertaker? What more natural than De mortuis nil nisi bonum? You are a dentist? For you sublime words which take on a new meaning: Non dolet. You are an innkeeper? Persuade your customers that de gustibus non disputandum and you will have peace. You are a photographer? For you the words of Father Ricci, Sint ut sunt aut non sint. Though, if you live up to it, your trade is likely to suffer.

I have two mottoes ready for a correspondence school: the first, Timeo hominem unius libri; the second, the grim (only my — er — client won’t know how grim it is) Tu Marcellus eris. The interior decorator will flaunt the sign, Trahit sua quemque voluptas; the barber, Unguibus et rostra; the banker, Solve senescentem; the contractor, Impavidum ferient ruinœ. I have not even forgotten the bootlegger, whose coat of arms will bear the words, Testis unus, testis nullus.

This, then, is my little plan for looking out for my old age. As none of my customers will know Latin, I shall have a delightful time — like the antiquarian who sold a rich Westerner a portrait of Ben Butler for his gallery of ancestors. This paper is simply a forecast, a sample of my wares. Should you like two more? Here’s one for a Ph.D.: Vixit. And for a sophomore: De omni re scibili et quibusdam ahis.