Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.
Original post date: Friday, September 15, 2006
In English: What is permitted to Jove is not permitted to an ox.
Alas, English can never hope to capture the delightful rhyme which is, in a sense, the point of this Latin proverb. I guess we could try to say in English, "What is Jovine is not bovine." Alas, "Jovine" did not make it into the English vocabulary!
There is a nice English equivalent cited in wikipedia: "Gods may do what cattle may not."
This proverb follows up on yesterday's proverb about the crows getting off the hook, while the doves are punished.
There is something less cynical about today's proverb, however. A god and an ox are not the same, and they have different jobs in life. Jove wields the thunderbolt, while the ox bears the plough. If I had a choice, I guess it would be nice to be wielding the thunderbolt. I definitely find myself more at the ox-end of the spectrum!
Is there a subtext here of Jupiter's own amorous escapades? The lord of the gods disguised himself as a bull to carry off Europa, after all. (See, for example, this painting by Gustave Moreau, inspired by the story of Europa's abduction.) In that case, it seems that what is permitted to Jove is not permitted to the ox... but to Jove is permitted everything, from the world of gods and men and oxen alike!
Here is today's proverb read out loud - enjoy the rhyme!
1503. Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.
The number here is the number for this proverb in
If you are reading this via RSS: The Flash audio content is not syndicated via RSS; please visit the Latin Audio Proverbs blog to listen to the audio. You can also hear this saying read aloud at a Polish website: Wladyslawa Kopalinskiego Slownik wyrazَw obcych i zwrotَw obcojezycznych (weblink). The Polish translation is lucky enough to have a very nice sound play between wol and woł, even if it does not rhyme: co wolno Jowiszowi, tego nie wolno wołowi.
Labels: P1501-1600
posted by Laura Gibbs @ Friday, September 15, 2006
Link to this post: Permalink
2 Comments:
I guess this is one of the most mistranslated latin proverbs: my old teacher in Greek taught us that the proverb originally stems from a Greek proverb. Bovi refers to a greek equivalent meaning 'the cow eyed', one of the names to indicate Hera (Juno), the wife of Zeus (Jupiter)who in Greek mythology was described as being known for her beautiful large eyes. It basically means that the number one in the hierarchy has more prerogatives than the number two (or in the pre-feminist era: a husband than his wife). This obviously makes a lot more sense than the supreme god being superior to an oxen or a cow, although to some that would seem to be an apt description of the relation between the sexes before the emancipation of women.
Hmmm, I am not sure that Juno can be invoked by a "bos" in Latin - admittedly, Juno was "ox-eyed" in Greek, but that's not a usual term of Juno in Latin - at least in this version, the point of the proverb is very much based on the RHYME between the dative Iovi and the dative bovi. Do you happen to know the Greek proverb that your teacher had in mind? It's not one that I'm familiar with although this Latin one works quite well on its own terms - the random coincidence that Iovi rhymes with bovi (linguistic similarity) provides the occasion for a semantic distinction: Iovi may sound like bovi, but they are hardly the same thing!
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