Scire Futura
Cursus fatorum nescit mens ulla virorum;
Solius est proprium scire futura Dei.
Source: Florilegium Gottingense (ed. Voigt), 250. Meter: Elegiac. Note the rhyme: fatorum-virorum. Note also that cursus is plural: cursūs, object of nescit. The contrast in this poem is between the world of men in the first line and the power that belongs to God alone in the second line. Notice the lovely way that the noun phrase solius Dei wraps around the entire pentameter line. God is all-encompassing in the line!
No mind of man can know (nescit ulla mens virorum) the course of fate (cursus fatorum); it is properly for God alone (proprium est solius Dei) to know the future (scire futura).
The vocabulary is keyed to the DCC Latin Vocabulary list. All the words in this poem are on that list!
cursus -ūs m.: course, advance
deus -ī m.; dea -ae f. god; goddess
fātum -ī n.: fate
mēns mentis f.: mind
nesciō -scīre: not know, be ignorant
proprius -a -um: one’s own, peculiar
sciō -īre -īvī/-iī -ītum: know
sōlus -a -um: only, alone; sōlum (adv.), only, merely
sum, esse, fuī: be, exist
sum, esse, fuī: be, exist
ūllus -a -um: any, anyone
vir virī m.: man
