Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim Tu...

krakker

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Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem
Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim
Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito

I'm thinking of a tattoo and I need to check both grammar and context so what I put on my body is correct (or else I will look like a complete fool =). The text is a combo of Horace, Ovid and some other so it should not be that far off...

My perception of the context:
Remember when life's path is steep to keep your mind even.
Be patient and tough; some day this pain will be useful to you.
Yield not to misfortunes, but advance all the more boldly against them.

BR
/Fredrik
 

socratidion

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I can't see any errors. Are you only going to have the semicolon in the middle of line 2, and no full-stops or anything elsewhere? You could (if you wanted) leave all the punctuation out, or have a colon or a full-stop in line 2.
 

krakker

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With limited knowledge and some google-searches I beleive latin does not make use of punctuation but I'll be the first to admit if that is an erroneus understanding... =)

This is a mix of "oneliners", first row Horace, the next Ovid and the third is to me unknown so maybe it should be left the way it is? The intention is to have it punctuated much like the english version but since my findings on punctuation I'm unsure.
 

Kosmokrator

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It's by Virgil, the greatest Latin poet.
he's the most important, not the best. The best poets are Ovid and Horace, than follows Virgil ...
 

malleolus

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he's the most important, not the best. The best poets are Ovid and Horace, than follows Virgil ...
I do not think it's for any of us to pass judgement on Virgil's verse.
 

socratidion

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Re punctuation: true, the ancients didn't use it, so (as I said) you could just leave it out altogether. On the other hand, if you put in a semicolon once, you might think about putting some punctuation mark at the end of each sentence.
 

Cambrinus

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To be more precise, socratidion, the ancients did not use punctuation consistently. The point or stop which one finds occasionally on stone inscriptions would look elegant. Punctuate as follows:

Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem ·
Perfer et obdura · dolor hic tibi proderit olim ·
Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito ·

It also works well acrostically....
 

socratidion

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... to be precise, not the way we use it. It's always hard to generalise about what people do, because there's always some counterexample lurking somewhere, but on the whole they use that dot to separate words, don't they?
 

Cambrinus

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Do they? Not consistently. My main point was aesthetic and thus addressed to the OP's purpose.
 
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