unoriginalname38 – the blog of Dave Cole

Vae Victis!

Matt Sinclair sent me a link to Tim Worstall posting about Cato's frequent appeals for the destruction of Carthage. A decade of studying Latin mean that I was able to point out some errors... for posterity, my post appears below.

1. The Latin for union is conventus

2. As conventus is a 4th declension neuter noun and European is an adjective, it should be conventum europæeum in the accusative voice.

3. Ceterum does not mean therefore. Therefore is 'igitur' or 'ergo', as in cogito ergo sum. Moreover, et cetera gives it away.

4. Ceterum does not mean therefore. It means 'but'; I think this, **but** Carthage must [still] be destroyed

5. Censere means to argue rather than to think. Minor detail, but to think is putare

6. When trying to write it in Latin, you neglected to use the æ dipthong. Correctly written, it would be CETERVM CENSEO CONVENTUM EVROPÆAM ESSE DELENDAM if it has to be in capitals for ease of carving into stone.

Vae victis. Literally, 'woe to the defeated' but idiomatically ... well, insert your own idiom here.

In other words, I pwned a big blogger :)

It's not much, but it makes me happy.

Actually, reading that post I come across as a right arse, but I did it after work, so I was understandably and justifiably in a bad mood.

xD.

Links to this post: