I was very lucky with my teachers at school (I won’t say “privileged” and I have an article planned about the use of that word).
One in particular stands out. This man taught me Latin from Third Form through until I left school.
He was a great teacher. A true Renaissance Man. A Classical Scholar with an MA (Oxon) who taught Latin and Greek. But an ornithologist of outstanding reputation as well. And associated with that, a naturalist. So when the weather was fine class would adjourn to the great outdoors and the teaching of Latin was merged with the study of the natural world and Linnean Classification and what the Latin names for the various plants and birds meant. I cannot to this day look at an oak tree without thinking quercus.
And every day would start the same. Carpe Diem he would intone in his deep baritone. Carpe Diem. It took a while before we found the origin of those words but we quickly learned that they meant “seize the day”.
The phrase comes from a poem by Quintus Horatius Flaccus – also known as Horace. It is in the form of advice tendered to one Leuconoe.
It reads as follows – and the key phrase is at the end:
“Tu ne quaesieris (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi
finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
temptaris numeros. Ut melius quicquid erit pati!
Seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare
Tyrrhenum, sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi
spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida
aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.”
The poem translates (more idiomatically than literally) as follows:
Don't ask (it's forbidden to know) what end the gods have given me or you, Leuconoe.
Don't play with Babylonian numerology either.
How much better it is to endure whatever will be!
Whether Jupiter has allotted you many more winters or this one,
which even now wears out the Tyrrhenian sea on the opposing rocks, is the final one be wise,
Be truthful, strain the wine, and scale back your long hopes to a short period.
While we speak, envious time will have already fled:
Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the next day.
This all came back to me in a rush when I read an opinion piece in the Herald for 10 January 2025. The article bemoaned the extended use of the greeting “Happy New Year” but apart from the curmudgeonly approach of a “best wishes” greeting the following paragraph stood out:
“Working in a corporate industry, salutations of “Happy New Year” have proliferated my inbox (and in-person interactions) all week. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the reminder that I am now entering my 28th year of life and growing increasingly closer to an inevitable midlife crisis.”
Clearly this author seems to trust more in the next day than in the present. She should, at the age of 28, be grasping every opportunity rather than worrying about an “inevitable midlife crisis”.
Such a bleak outlook. Clearly this writer at the tender age of 28 would have to qualify for the Eeyore award for 2025 – and only 10 days have passed.
Rather she should take the advice of a BCE poet and the daily exhortation of my Latin teacher.
Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero
It sounds like your Latin teacher was more attuned to the joys of life than mine! The sense of life embodied in carpe deim and the cautionary reminder in tempus fugit are echoed in great literature down through the ages. I wonder to what extent the bleak outlook of the Herald author is attributable to an education system which has moved away from the study of the facts of history and science and the pleasure and wisdom to be found in the writings of yesteryear in favour of the nihilistic focus on the "existential threat" of a climate change and the sins of a colonial past which must be expiated.
I remember as a 3rd former seeing 'tempus fugit' on a clock in a friend's house and being delighted to decipher it. Our Latin teacher had been a POW and was easily side-tracked away from Latin towards anecdotes of his war experiences. Enjoyed it very much.