Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Alexander Magnus

This is from the enormous anthology of distich poetry assembled by Barthold Nihus, Epigrammata Disticha, published in 1642; the poem is anonymous.

Alexander Magnus
Sufficit huic tumulus, cui non suffecerat orbis;
Res brevis huic ampla est, cui fuit ampla brevis.

The vocabulary is keyed to the DCC Latin Vocabulary list. There are two words in this poem that are not on the DCC list:

sufficiō, sufficere, suffēcī: be sufficient, be enough
tumulus (tumulī, m.): mound, hill, tomb

amplus -a -um: large, spacious
brevis -e: short, shallow, brief; adv. breviter
hic haec hoc: this; hōc: on this account
māgnus -a -um great
nōn: not
orbis -is m.: circle; orbis terrārum: world
rēs reī f.: thing (rēs pūblica, commonwealth; rēs familiāris, family property, estate; rēs mīlitāris, art of war; rēs novae, revolution)
sum, esse, fuī: be, exist