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- "Forte dei homines delent."
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Nothing actually wrong with the audio for this one, but boy does the speaker sound bored and unconcerned about such a cataclysmic sentence.
I'm more concerned about the collecting of dolls and bones.
Which is the clear sequel hook for the next tree version.
"By chance?" Didn't someone say that the gods don't play dice with the universe? :)
That was Einstein, who I doubt was able to speak Latin. :-p Besides, he could have been wrong. He was wrong about the cosmological constant, too.
He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
I think probably, yes, it could be.
Another way of saying "by chance" is cāsū (abl. of cāsus, -ūs, m.).
Caesar says, in a number of places, that something happened sīve cāsū sīve cōnsiliō deōrum , "either by chance, or by the plan of the gods" (thus cāsus looks to be the opposite of 'the plan' or design ).
That phrase reminded me of this painting:
"Faithful Unto Death" (Edward John Poynter)
For those who don't know what that paint is about,
"That Roman Soldier" in Pompeii during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Only discovered recently due to advances in technology, we have known for decades that during the epic eruption in which two Roman towns were annihilated, some Roman soldiers and Guards were either not relieved, or did not leave their posts for whatever reasons.
Either not being relived by their superiors or not willing to flee, we know of at least 2 skeletons in Pompeii which also had soldierly items. These skeletons were found in strategic places in the city, with spears and swords making it easy for us to assume these men were guards. While during the eruption, particles did fall from the air big enough to knock-out a person, it is unlikely that these men died in that way.
It is far more likely that they either resolved to die at their posts, or they feared that even if they survived the eruption, their superiors would have them killed for desertion. Even likelier is the idea that these men did not want to spend their last minutes scrambling for safety, confident in their assumption that the cataclysm would overtake the entire town. Therefore we find these men at their posts 2000 years later.
It was a really whoopsy doodle. I mean, our faces were red on that day!
Zeus strikes a human dead with a thunderbolt. He turns around and sees Hera watching him. "Uhh... it was an accident! He walked into the field while I was practicing throwing my thunderbolts! I swear!"
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"As private parts to the gods are we, they doth play with us for sport" - Lord Melchitt (aka Stephen Fry), Blackadder II.
But please tell me Stephen Fry didn't say "they doth" !!--the horror!! (since "doth" is a 3rd person singular form).
Various websites quote Lord Melchett as saying "As private parts to the gods are we, they play with us for their sport!", so I think you can safely stop being horrified.
while in the plural homo, hominis is also tanslated as mankinds. Of course, a better translation would be hominem for mankind or humans meaning males and females. The latin vir with its various cases referers to male or masculine and would not include woman or women.. or man.
Well, I'm out of hearts due to silly translations. By far the worst Duolingo course.
Are maybe, perhaps, by chance, not all interchangeable as an answer?
Fortasse can be translated as perhaps, possibly, maybe, but I don't agree that that is the same thing as forte in this sentence, which means by chance , by accident or unintentionally.
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Yes, there is a negativity about forte which, to me, makes it link to expressions like "through bad or ill fortune", "unfortunately", "as luck would have it" or even "disasterously" ("bad stars").
it is all in how you translate the English -- either men and women or humans.
"By chance the gods destroy mankind" seems like a reasonable translation. Perhaps, "By chance the gods destroy people" would be better by being less global sounding. Translating homines as "humans" sounds unidiomatic.
By chance, you know. Maybe they do, maybe they dont if they're in the mood. It's just eradicating the human race.
No. "By chance" implies something is a fact. It happened. Just by chance. "Perhaps" implies that something either could or could not have happened.
That expresses the difference between "by chance" and "perhaps" much better than my reply four months ago to a similar question .
