If I told you that Beethoven, you know, the man
who composed the sweeping transcendent Ode to
Joy, also sat down to write a multi -part vocal
harmony entirely about feces, you'd probably
think I was, like, making it up. Right. I mean,
it completely contradicts the image of the pristine,
untouched classical genius. We tend to project
this intense reverence onto the past. We really
do. When you picture the ancient Romans or, you
know, medieval scholars, it is just so easy to
imagine these imposs - visibly stern marble statues
just staring blankly into the distance. Yes,
speaking only in high -minded philosophy or stoic
ideals. Exactly. But welcome to today's Deep
Dive, where we are going to completely dismantle
that illusion. We have a set of sources today
that proves the ancients were just as petty,
profound, and, well, wonderfully messily human
as you and I are today. And we're working from
a surprisingly rich, albeit unconventional source
text for this. It's a comprehensive Wikipedia
list of Latin phrases beginning with the letter
C. Which sounds dry, but it's really not. No,
not at all. Our mission is to basically rescue
Latin from the dusty halls of academia. We're
bypassing all the dry legal jargon to extract
the most fascinating, hilarious, and timeless
nuggets of human nature hidden within this specific
slice of the alphabet. It's essentially a massive
hysterical rabbit hole. And honestly, the sheer
level of snark is incredible. OK, let's unpack
this, because right out of the gate, this list
proves Latin was the ultimate language for delivering
absolute scorching burns. It really was. Which
brings us back to Beethoven and the phrase, Cacatum
non espictum. Right, which translates. quite
literally to, that's shat, not painted. It's
just such a visceral insult. And what's fascinating
is the timeline of how this phrase was weaponized.
It was a known Latin burn that classical composers
apparently found hilarious. Yeah, both Joseph
Hayden and Ludwig van Beethoven actually wrote
vocal canons based entirely on the text cacidum
non est pictum. Which is just wild to think about.
But it didn't stop as an inside joke among musicians
either. It crossed over into legitimate art criticism.
Oh right, the British painter. Exactly. In the
1820s and 1830s, contemporary critics hurled
this exact Latin phrase at JMW Turner. They were
specifically targeting his painting, Regulus.
I mean, they looked at a painting by one of history's
great masters of light and atmosphere and essentially
published a review saying, ah, that is feces,
not art. It really completely shifts how you
view the language. Yeah. Latin wasn't just a
sacred, untouchable relic. It was a living tool
for art critics to blow off steam and, frankly,
publicly mock people. It reveals a society that
was highly observant of human flaws and highly
motivated to call them out. We see that same
critical eye applied to literature, right? With
the phrase cacahuethes grubendi. Yes, which translates
to an insatiable desire to write. Today, we might
romanticize the idea of writing constantly. We
think of the creative muse descending, driving
an author to fill pages and pages. But the ancients
viewed it through a much, much harsher lens.
They absolutely did. The phrase derives from
the Roman poet Juvenal and his satires. And,
you know, he wasn't praising prolific writers.
He was describing an incurable itch. An itch?
Yeah. In fact, if you look at the medical context,
the Greek root cacothes literally means a malignant
disease. Juvenal was diagnosing people with a
malignant disease of the pen. That is amazing.
It's the ancient Roman equivalent of someone
who just cannot stop. posting online. The eternal
reply guys. Exactly. You see these reply guys
on social media who have to inject their opinion
into every single conversation, regardless of
whether they have anything valuable to say. Juvenile
was looking around Rome, seeing the exact same
impulse and labeling it an illness. It's so relatable.
Juvenile's frustration highlights how deeply
annoying the Romans could be by their own society's
excesses. But when it came to insults, the absolute
sharpest ones were reserved for politics. Oh,
ways. The historian Tacitus provides perhaps
the ultimate professional takedown with the phrase,
Capax Imperianisi Imperi set. This was applied
to the Roman Emperor Galba, right? It translates
to, and I love this, capable of imperial power,
if only he had not held it. Yes. Tacitus captures
an entire tragic arc of leadership in just five
words. Galba was highly respected before taking
the throne. He was a successful general, a stern
disciplinarian, and widely considered the ideal
candidate to stabilize Rome. Right. It's the
ancient Roman equivalent of the Peter principle.
They were entirely capable of being the boss
right up until the moment they actually became
the boss and ruined everything. The gravity of
the Latin is what makes the insult hit with such
force. It doesn't waste time detailing Galba's
specific administrative failures or how his rigid
nature alienated the army. It just cuts to the
chase. Exactly. It simply presents the paradox.
The illusion of competence destroyed by the reality
of power. So if the ancients were this cynical,
I mean if they were surrounded by bad art, reply
guys, with the disease of the pen and leaders
failing upward, it makes perfect sense that they
had to build incredibly robust systems to navigate
that society. You don't build a complex legal
and logical framework if you trust everybody
implicitly. You build it because you know human
nature is slippery, self -serving, often deceptive.
Yeah, they needed mechanics to find the truth
in a totally chaotic world. Here's where it gets
really interesting, because that brings us to
the famous investigative phrase, qui bono. Who
benefits. Or literally, good for whom. Right.
And it remains the cornerstone of criminal investigation
today. When a crime or a political scandal occurs,
the immediate first step is to trace the advantage.
Follow the money, basically. Exactly. The philosopher
Seneca used a very similar variation, qui protest,
meaning for whom it advances. If an event advances
someone's social or financial position, you have
your primary suspect. And the flip side of that
concept is qui malo, bad for whom. By establishing
whose life gets noticeably worse because of an
event, you can quickly eliminate suspects. It
is a brilliant way to cut through the noise of
an investigation. It really is. It's pure deductive
logic. But I have to push back on another famous
legal phrase from this list, caveat emptor. Let
the buyer beware. Ah, yes. A foundational concept
of commerce, dictating that the purchaser is
responsible for checking whether the goods suit
their needs. Right. But without a modern regulatory
agency, doesn't let the buyer beware basically
mean it's a scammers market? Like, it sounds
like an ancient get out of jail free card. How
do you mean? Well, if I buy a broken chariot
from a merchant and they just shrug and say,
caveat emptor, what mechanism forces them to
actually care about the quality of their goods.
It just seems incredibly one sided. It's very
easy to look at it that way from a modern perspective,
assuming it was just the Wild West where the
loudest, most deceptive merchant won. But the
sources provide the crucial counterbalance. Caveat
Vendager. Let the seller beware. Exactly. But
how did they actually enforce that? Without a
better business bureau, isn't caveat vended or
just a polite suggestion? Not at all. The legal
framework itself forced the seller to take responsibility.
Caveat Vendator discouraged the sale of items
of unreasonable quality by establishing liability.
Oh, so they could actually be held liable. Yes.
If a merchant deliberately hid a latent flaw,
say a disease in livestock or a structural crack
in a piece of equipment, the legal system allowed
the buyer to hold them accountable for the deception.
Oh, wow. They recognize market balance. The buyer
cannot be willfully blind, but the seller is
legally prohibited from being actively deceitful.
Both parties had skin in the game. That makes
a lot more sense. It wasn't just anarchy. It
was a system of mutual liability. And this obsession
with building protective frameworks extended
beyond the marketplace into the realm of logic
itself. Right. They were constantly trying to
defend against flawed human reasoning. A perfect
example from the list is Kuhnhoch -Ergo -Propterhoch.
With this, therefore, on account of this. The
classic logical fallacy of confusing correlation
with causation. Yep. Just because the rooster
crows before sunrise doesn't mean the rooster
caused the sun to rise. Exactly. By explicitly
naming this fallacy, the Romans were building
a defense mechanism against bad logic. They understood
that just because two things happen simultaneously,
it does not mean one caused the other. It's a
protection against manipulation. Absolutely.
If you don't have a term for that cognitive trap,
it is incredibly easy for a populace to be manipulated
by politicians or merchants, linking unrelated
events to push an agenda. Here is where the pursuit
of truth gets incredibly tricky, though. You
can have all the logic in the world. You can
understand motives perfectly with Quibono. But
sometimes the vessel of language itself sets
a trap for you. Oh, the phonetic trap. Yes. We
have to break down the phrase, cane neuromagnabella
persica. This is a brilliant example of how elusive
meaning can be. What's fascinating here is how
comprehension is entirely dependent on context,
geography, and the slow drift of time. Because,
as a Latin sentence, Cane Nero Magna Bella Persica
is grammatically flawless. It translates to,
tell O Nero of the great wars of Persia. It is
an epic poetic invocation. You are commanding
an ancient emperor to sing of glorious sweeping
battles. But if you walk up to a modern Italian
person, specifically someone speaking the dialect
of Rome today, and you utter those exact same
syllables, the meaning fractures entirely. It
really does. It's so funny. Let's actually break
down how this works phonetically, because the
mechanism of the trap is hilarious. In the modern
Roman dialect, cain means dog. Right. And nero
means black. Exactly. Magna sounds exactly like
mangia, which means eats. Then bella translates
to beautiful, and persica is a peach. So you
think you are channeling the spirit of the Roman
Empire, but the person listening hears, a black
dog eats a beautiful peach. It perfectly illustrates
why the truth requires constant vigilance. Words
that carry the weight of history to Tacitus or
Seneca mean something absurdly different to a
modern Roman. But a profound reminder to always
question your translation of the world, because
the linguistic ground is constantly shifting
beneath your feet. So we have a society that
is deeply cynical about bad art and obsessive
writers. They are building complex logical systems
to unearth hidden motives and regulate their
markets. And they're doing all of this while
wrestling with a language that is inherently
slippery. Why? What was driving this immense
effort to structure their reality and call out
human flaws? If we connect all these disparate
phrases to the bigger picture, it ultimately
comes down to the ticking clock. Mortal. Yes.
The foundational reason the ancients were so
obsessed with a sta - truth and securing a legacy
is that they were acutely, painfully aware of
their own mortality. Time was their ultimate
constraint. Which leads us to arguably the most
famous phrase on the entire Wikipedia list. Carpe
diem from horse's odes. Seize the day. It is
ubiquitous today, but the common translation
strips away the vital texture of the original
Latin. How so? Well, the verb carpery does not
mean seize in a militaristic, aggressive or conquering
sense. It refers specifically to the plucking
of flowers or fruit. Wow, that distinction completely
changes the philosophy of the phrase. When we
say seize the day now, it feels tied to modern
hustle culture. Right, the grindset. Yeah, it
sounds like you have to go out and conquer your
to -do list or do something reckless like modern
yolo, you only live once. So what does this all
mean for the plucking metaphor, then? Well, think
about picking an apple off a tree. OK, it's less
like conquering a battlefield and more like having
a concert ticket for tonight. You cannot save
the ticket for next week. You either use it the
moment the doors open or it becomes completely
worthless. The same goes for picking a ripe piece
of fruit from a branch. You are forced to consume
it right now because the present moment is highly
perishable. It will spoil. That is a highly accurate
way to interpret Horace's intent. You aren't
dominating time. You are simply enjoying its
fruits before they inevitably decay. The list
reinforces this exact sentiment of another phrase
attributed to a Sonius or Virgil. College Virgo
roses. Kick girl, the roses. A very direct exhortation
to enjoy youth and beauty before they fade. And
we see how people adapted this core philosophy
to highly specific, sometimes absurd situations.
It wasn't just about the day. The list includes
Carpe Vinum. Seize the wine. A sentiment I think
we can all relate to at the end of a long week.
Definitely. We also see Carpe Noctem. Seize the
night. This was historically utilized when Carpe
Diem simply didn't fit the activity at hand.
Like what kind of activities? Well, for instance,
astronomers use it as a rallying cry to make
the most of a clear sky. There is an astronomical
challenge called a Messier Marathon, where observers
try to spot a massive specific catalog of deep
sky objects in a single night. Oh, that makes
sense. Yeah, you can't seize the day for that.
You had to Carpe Noctem. It is all about making
the immediate moment count, whatever that moment
demands. But reading further down the list, the
tone regarding mortality shifts drastically.
It wasn't entirely focused on picking roses and
drinking wine. No, not at all. There was a deeply
fatalistic undercurrent in their worldview that
we cannot ignore. Consider the phrase derived
from the biblical book of Isaiah and cited by
John Crease Austin. Let us eat and drink, for
tomorrow we die. That hits the air completely
differently than Carpe Diem. Carpe Diem is rooted
in the appreciation of beauty. Eat and drink
for tomorrow we die. Feels like, well, surrender.
It's the attitude of, well, the ship is sinking,
so we might as well raid the buffet on the way
down. It reflects the stark, unforgiving reality
of the ancient world. You could not outmaneuver
death. This helplessness is hammered home by
a phrase originating from medieval medicinal
texts. Contravemortis noncrescent erba in hortus.
No herb grows in the gardens against the power
of death. Imagine the psychological weight of
being an ancient or medieval physician. You possess
all this specialized knowledge, you cultivate
these complex gardens of medicinal herbs, but
ultimately you are powerless. Right. There is
no biological cure for mortality. This fatalistic
reality perfectly balances the joy of carpe diem.
They weren't plucking the roses just because
they enjoyed horticulture. They were plucking
them because they were staring directly into
the void, knowing with absolute certainty that
the garden would not save them in the end. That
context adds such incredible depth to this entire
deep dive. I mean, we started with a simple alphabetical
Wikipedia list of Latin phrases, starting with
C, and it took us on a massive journey. It really
did. We saw snarky art critics roasting masterful
paintings with Cacatum non espictum, and we watched
the ancient version of the Peter Principle play
out with Galba. We explored the mechanics of
human logic. detailing how to isolate motives
with Cuebono, and how the law forced market balance
with caveat venditor, all while navigating the
bizarre phonetic traps of black dogs eating beautiful
peaches. And finally, we arrived at the profound,
highly perishable nature of time. It really proves
that these are not just dusty words from a dead
language. They are a mirror reflecting exactly
who we are. The technological dressing has changed,
but the core human condition—our flaws, our logic,
our mortality—hasn't shifted an inch in 2 ,000
years. So, to you listening right now, whether
you are actively trying to avoid a shady online
transaction and practicing your caveat emptor,
or maybe you are fighting the urge to post a
six -paragraph rant on social media that you
really shouldn't send, battling your own kakaotis
skrebendi— We've all been there. Or maybe you
just plan to go home tonight, karkovinum, and
enjoy a great glass of wine. Just remember that
you are participating in a beautifully messy
human tradition that spans millennia. You are
operating within a very long, very familiar lineage.
But before we wrap up this dip dive, I want to
leave you with one final thought from the source
material. We didn't get to explore it during
the main discussion, but the text outlines a
concept called circulus viciosus, which in logic
is a vicious circle, or in science, a positive
feedback loop. Right. It is closely related to
another phrase on the list. Circulus in probando.
which translates to circular reasoning. Exactly.
It describes an argument or closed -loop process
that just feeds endlessly on itself, going around
and around without ever breaking out to find
an external truth. Now, combine that concept
with Juvenal's Kokobius Gribendi, that incurable,
malignant desire to constantly write, document,
and post every thought we have. Okay, I see where
you're going with this. Given humanity's modern
obsession with churning out endless content,
are we today trapping our in a massive digital
circulus improbando, are we stuck in a vicious
circle where we just consume information that
merely references other information, scrolling
endlessly through feeds without ever actually
looking up from our screens to Carpe Diem and
pluck the fruit that is right in front of us?