Proverbs/Grammar ~ Grammar/Proverbs: Latin Lesson #16: Some participles!

The focus for today's lesson is a new kind of adjective: the verbal adjective known as a participle. You will be learning a lot about Latin participles in the weeks to come!

So, the first saying is Rex est lex vivens, "The king is the living law." You've seen Rex est lex before, and the new word that's been added, vivens, is a participle: "living," from the verb vivere, to live.

The other participles you will see in today's sayings are loquens, "speaking" (as in English "eloquent"), patiens, "patient" (which is where we get English "patient"), and sapiens, "wise" (as in homo sapiens). These participles are each from different verbs, but you can see the pattern they share: the -ns ending is the participle ending, much like "-ing" is the participle ending in English.

So, here are today's proverbs:

1. Rex est lex vivens.
(The) king is (the) living law.
REX EST LEX VI-vens.

From the root in Latin vivens we get English words like "vivid" and "vivacious."

This is actually a principle of the Latin legal tradition; you can see the saying included in the entry for REX in Black’s Law Dictionary.

2. Judex est lex loquens.
(The) judge is (the) law, speaking.
JU-dex EST LEX LO-quens.

Latin judex (also spelled iudex) gives us English "judge," "judicial," etc.
Latin loquens, "speaking," is from the verb loqui, "to speak," as in English "loquacious" and "soliloquy."

You can actually translate these Latin participles in varying ways in English: you can use an English participle, "speaking," or you can turn the participle into a verbal clause of its own: "The judge is the law that speaks." You'll learn more about those translation options later on.

3. Nemo sapiens nisi patiens.
Nobody (is) wise unless (he is) patient.
NE-mo SA-pi-ens NI-si PA-ti-ens.

You've seen nemo before: Nemo magister natus.

Latin sapiens is usually translated as "wise," but as you can see from the form, sapiens is a participle. It is from the verb sapere, which literally means "to taste, to have a sense of taste." That is the basic meaning, and then metaphorically it comes to mean "to have sense, be sensible, be wise." You've already seen a noun formed from the participle: sapientia, "wisdom," in the saying Sapientia felicitas, "Wisdom is happiness."

Latin nisi is a contraction: ni-si, "not if" or "if not," which in English is often equivalent to "unless."

Latin patiens is a participle from the verb pati, "to experience, undergo, suffer." So, someone who is patiens, "patient," is someone who is experiencing things, often negative things, someone who is suffering. From this Latin root we get the word "patient," and also the word "passion" (hence "passion of Christ," i.e. the suffering of Christ).

The idea is that there is no way to become wise without being patient, which might include some patient suffering as well. (Hopefully, you are not suffering too much with these Latin lessons!)

4. Nemo nisi sapiens liber est.
Nobody is free unless (he is) wise.
NE-mo NI-si SA-pi-ens LI-ber EST.

With the word liber, you are meeting your first Latin homograph, i.e. two different words that are written the same way (homo-graph). English has lots of homographs ("the wind blows, but you wind your watch," etc.); Latin has homographs too, but not as many as English.

Earlier, you learned the word liber meaning "book" (as in English "library").

Now, you are learning the word liber meaning "free," as in the word libertas, "liberty."

The words are written the same, but in classical Latin they were pronounced somewhat differently. The word for book, liber, has a short i (like in the English word "bit"), but the word for free, līber, has a long i (something like in the English word "beet," but we don't really have long vowels in English). The ancient Romans did not have any kind of marking to indicate whether a vowel was long or short, but later scholars used the "macron" ("long" mark) to indicate that a vowel was long, ā ē ī ō ū, and you will see macrons used in Latin dictionaries to identify long vowels.

So, the idea is that true freedom comes only with wisdom; nobody is free, nemo liber est, unless he is wise, nisi sapiens.

5. Bis puer est senex.
(An) old man is (a) boy (for the) second (time).
BIS PU-er EST SE-nex.

Latin bis means "twice," and you can see this root in all the bi- words in English, like "bilateral" and "bigamy."

Latin puer, "boy," gives us English "puerile."

Latin senex, "old man," is technically an adjective, "old," which is usually used to mean "old man." You can see this root in the English word "senile."
The idea behind this saying is that a person can become childlike in their old age. Compare the English saying, "Once a man; twice a child."

Here's a recap: