Post naufragium maria temptantur.
(Anonymous)
The seas are tried (tested, distressed) after a shipwreck.
(pron = pohst now-FRAH-ghee-oom mah-REE-ah tehmp-TAHN-toor)
Comment: I am not sure at all what this proverb means. After a shipwreck, it
would seem to me that the ship itself is what has been tested, what has been
distressed.
The only implication that I can draw from this is perhaps from a nuministic
approach--that ancient view of the world that everything is charged with living
energy, that everything is alive and responsive to everything else.
>From such a view, a ship load of people that has wrecked in the sea has left the
sea, which is itself a divine energy, grieved or, as the proverb says,
distressed at the event.
Imagine that the clouds were moved by our pain. Imagine that the trees felt
compassion toward us as we passed them by on our way to work today. Imagine
the sun laughing at our jokes, the wind catching our thoughts. And imagine
that we began to feel the distress of wildlife recently displaced by clear
cutting for another subdivision of homes, or that our bodies resonated with the
earth as she finds another segment of her skin buried under asphalt.
Actually, I sense that all of these interactive responses do happen. It's just
not a popular view.
Bob Patrick
(Used with permission)
Latin Proverb of the Day is now available on the web.
Addenda 03/28/06:
This is a note revisiting the proverb for March 27. I received more than one
email from individuals who identified this proverb as part of a longer
quotation from Seneca's Epistulae Morales. In context, of course, as always,
it makes much more sense and has a very different meaning than I gave it
yesterday.
In short--if at first you don't succeed (or have a shipwreck--or do a poor job
writing about a Latin Proverb!!!) try the sees again.
My thanks to those who wrote in, and especially to John Muccigrosso of Drew
University Classics Department who sent the reference below.
Bob
>> Post naufragium maria temptantur
L. Annaeus Seneca iunior. Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (L. Annaei
Senecae ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales. Vols. 1-2, ed. L. D.
Reynolds, 1965). (1017: 015)
letter 81, section 2, line 4