Hi! Welcome to “Dusty Phrases.” You will find below an ancient phrase in one language or another, along with its English translation. You may also find the power to inspire your friends or provoke dread among your enemies.
As Latin phrases go, this one has one of the most interesting, long, and sometimes dark histories. It is used by some places as a motto today and is best remembered as the phrase allegedly uttered by John Wilkes Booth after his assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. It is associated also with the founding of the Roman Republic and with the assassination of Julius Caesar. It is perhaps ironic that the two men most well-remembered for dying in association with the phrase are remembered fondly. (via wiki)
Sic semper tyrannis is a Latin phrase meaning “thus always to tyrants“. In contemporary parlance, it means tyrannical leaders will inevitably be overthrown. The phrase also suggests that bad but justified outcomes should, or eventually will, befall tyrants. It is the state motto of Virginia.
Before 509 BC, Rome was ruled by kings. The last was Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. The king’s son, Sextus Tarquinius, raped a noblewoman, Lucretia, who revealed the offense to various Roman noblemen and then died by suicide. The noblemen obtained the support of the aristocracy and the people to expel the king and his family and to institute the Roman Republic. The leader of the noblemen was Lucius Junius Brutus, who became one of the first consuls of the Republic. It has been suggested that the phrase was used at this event, but the suggestion is not based on any Latin surviving literature of the time.
Caesar thus done to death, the senators, although Brutus came forward as if to say something about what had been done, would not wait to hear him, but burst out of doors and fled, thus filling the people with confusion and helpless fear.
Mike Fontaine, professor of Classics at Cornell University, proposes that the expression is likely a Latin translation by the U.S. founding father George Wythe of what Tiberius Gracchus’ brother-in-law, the general and statesman Scipio Aemilianus, said when he heard of the assassination of Gracchus. This is also reported by Plutarch in his Life of Gracchus (21.4), where he reacted by quoting Homer’s Odyssey (1.47): ὡς ἀπόλοιτο καὶ ἄλλος, ὅτις τοιαῦτά γε ῥέζοι. Gracchus was assassinated due to the land reforms he had made a major priority, to which Aemilianus was opposed.
The phrase has been invoked as an epithet about one allegedly abusing power, or as a rallying cry against abuse of power.
“Happy While United” was the slogan on a medal coined by the State of Virginia in 1780. First envisioned by Thomas Jefferson, the medal was minted and designed to be given to Indian signatories to the treaties Jefferson planned with the Indians of Virginia. The medal portrays a Virginia colonial, sitting, enjoying a peace pipe with a Native American. The obverse portrays a variation of the Virginia state seal of the state symbol standing triumphant over a slain enemy with the legend: “Rebellion to Tyrants Is Obedience to God”.
The phrase is the motto of the United States Navy attack submarine named for the state, the USS Virginia. Before that, it was the motto of the nuclear-powered cruiser USS Virginia.
The phrase was also in the pro-Confederate Civil War song “Maryland, My Maryland“, which was popular at the time with Southern sympathizers in Maryland, such as Booth. The song, containing the phrase, was the official state song of Maryland from 1939 until its removal in 2021.
Timothy McVeigh was wearing a T-shirt with this phrase and a picture of Lincoln on it when he was arrested on April 19, 1995, the day he carried out the Oklahoma City bombing.
