Apodion.net

Another Language Log quickie.

On the way back from the LSA meeting, having finished the light reading that I had brought with me, I bought Steve Berry’s The Alexandria Link. At pp. 418-419 we read:

These words were chiseled into the granite below.

CVSTOS RERVM PRVDENTIA

“Prudence is the guardian of things,” he said, translating, but his Greek was good enough to know that the first word could also be read as “wisdom”. Either way, the message seemed clear.

Now, I don’t expect very many people actually to understand Greek, or even Latin, but is it asking too much for at least one of the people involved in the production of a book, if not the author perhaps an editor or proofreader, to know the difference?

I also appreciate, though, that this author’s notion being particularly adept at Greek translation is being able to swap ‘wisdom’ for ‘prudence’—without even having to look it up!