Saturday, April 28, 2012

O Tempora!

Here is today's distich by John Owen, with an English translation by Thomas Harvey, 8.58.

O Tempora!
“Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.”
Quomodo? Fit semper tempore peior homo.


O THE TIMES!
The Times are Chang’d, and in them Chang’d are we:
How? Man as Times grow worse, grows worse we see.

The vocabulary is keyed to the DCC Latin Vocabulary list. There is only one word in this poem that is not on the DCC list:

pēior, pēiōris - worse

et: and
fīo fierī factus sum: become
homo hominis m.: human being
ille, illa, illud: that
in: in, on (+ abl.); into onto (+ acc)
mūto -āre: change
nōs, nostrum/nostrī nobis nōs: we
quōmodo: in what way, how?
semper: always, ever
tempus -oris n.: time