latin maxims and epigrams and martial and eram quod es; eris quod sum and eheu fugaces labuntur anni

A maxim "works" if it captures the essence of some experience or various experiences in life concisely. The common law tradition lived by maxims for a few centuries; Bacon's collection from around 1600 suggests that the goal of the first legal "digesters" was not to summarize cases but rather to incorporate many cases under one inclusive maxim. A maxim, then, had the force of law or an influence even exceeding statutory law because of its flexibility in application as well as its seeming moral certitude. I am enamored of legal maxims as a historical notion (i.e., why people felt that law was best communicated by maxims at a particular time); I like maxims in general, in whatever language, because they aid the process of visualizing as well as summarizing life. They challenge us to reflect on life.

1. Well, let's begin ironically today with a maxim which talks about the inutility, or at least the secondary importance, of rules or maxims. "Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exempla." This statement, from Seneca, may be translated, "The journey is long when you make use of rules, but it is short and effective through use of examples." Here the contrast is between rules and pictures. When they are put side by side, they both may teach the same thing, but the lesson is learned more quickly, and probably more firmly, through pictures. In this regard, law has it exactly wrong. Law would love to to come up with a rule or a covering law that applies to a variety of disparate factual circumstances. Well, judges may need to do that in order to make their life easier and to render consistent judgments. But why should the interest of judges be determinative of how the rest of us look at law and learning? If learning is through pictures, or exempla, then the attempt to reduce things to "rules" is a sort of roundabout way of learning. Hence my "tension" as a law instructor. Do I help students learn or do I teach them rules? This maxim would have it that the learn more slowly through mastering rules. I agree.

2. "Eheu fugaces labuntur anni." This statement from Horace may be translated, "Alas, the fleeing years slip away." The verb "labi" means to "lapse" or to "glide, slip, fall." The picture I get is that years are like fugitives, fleeing the scene, but they do so as if gliding away down the ice. This is the time of the year that you most naturally think about years gliding away, when nostalgia returns and you enjoy, and suffer from, the memories of the past. When flipping channels last night, I came across a showing of the Wizard of Oz, my favorite childhood movie. The movie had just begun, and the tornado was whipping through Kansas. When the movie turned from black and white to color (when Dorothy opened the door in Munchkinland), I was taken back in my mind to the early 1960s in Connecticut where we had just gotten our first color TV set. I returned reluctantly to 2005, with Horace on my lips. But we can't stop merely with the realization that the fleeing years are slipping away. We must go on to the harder topic--what have you made of the years? That is a subject for long and loving conversations with friends who have ready ears.

3. But sometimes people don't have those conversational companions or, for whatever reason, the meaning of the past is lost to some. Many people suffer alone and quietly. To those, the following maxim applies. "Ille dolet vere, qui sine teste dolet." This epigram, from Martial, may be translated, "That one mourns truly, who mourns without witnesses." The most lonely feeling in the world is to awaken alone in the night and be in pain, to suffer and know that no one is near, that you have to wait until the morning (or longer) to get the relief you need. But the word "witness," derived from the Latin "testis," from which many English words derive, suggests that a witness to suffering wouldn't simply be someone who sees an accident, like someone watching when two cars plow into each other, but someone who can "testify" truly, from personal experience, what something is like. To suffer without someone who knows the contours of your pain is true pain. Why does understanding by another lighten the load of our dolor? There seems to be no reason, so you tell me.

4. But sometimes the result of all the suffering is that you die. Horace's maxim "Eram quod es; eris quod sum," was taken over on early generations of New England gravestones. It may be translated, "I was what you are; you will be what I am." This message appealed to the New England Puritans because it suggested the centrality of self-examination before you breathed your last. A typical New England grave inscription from colonial days is: "Stranger, stop and cast an eye/ As you are now, so once was I/ As I am now, so you will be/ Remember Death and follow me." Or, on other gravestones, "Death is a debt/ To Nature due/ That I have paid/ And so must you." These maxims emphasize the seriousness of life and the resultant need to take an account of one's life. A more cynical or devil-may-care view of life is found in Epicurean philosophy. One such inscription said, "Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo," which is translated, "I was not, I came into being, I am not, and I don't care." Which is it for you?

5. Then, in brief conclusion, let's quote Martial. "Rident stulti verba Latina." "Fools laugh at the Latin language." Latin is very hard to learn, and few people know it well. But it is so much a part of our speech and thinking that we fool ourselves,and become fools, by talking about it as a "dead" language or by not taking time to develop a rudimentary knowledge of it. All don't need to read Horace; but a few Latin maxims are money in the bank.

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