Tab. IVerbum Fusti Responsum, sive Rostra Clamore Obruta. Tabula Actis Mundi more veterum picta (a machina).The Word Answered with a Club, or The Rostra Drowned in Shouting. Painted for Acta Mundi in the classical manner (AI-generated).
Nota Censoria · De discipulis qui fustem pro verbo habentThe Censor's Mark · On students who take a club for a word
Verbum verbo refellitur, non fuste
A word is answered with a word, not a club
Ut acta Fox News nuntiant, Institutum Buckleianum invenit quadraginta quinque ex centenis discipulorum Americanorum vim corporis iustam putare ad sermonem 'odiosum' comprimendum. Testem unum habeo, et eum suspectum. Notam tamen scribo, quia vitium in scholis sedet, non in una factione.
As Fox News reports, the Buckley Institute has found that forty-five in a hundred American students think bodily violence justified to silence 'hateful' speech. I have one witness, and a suspect one. I write the mark all the same, because the vice sits in the schools, not in one faction.
Cur hoc legimusWhy we read this Quia iuventus moribus maiorum orbata vim pro iure ac virtute sequitur.Because youth, stripped of ancestral customs, pursues violence instead of law and virtue.
Nota Censoria, die Mercurii, ante diem XII Kalendas Novembres, anno urbis conditae MMDCCLXXIX. Res trans Oceanum. Ut acta Fox News nuntiant, Institutum Buckleianum discipulos academiarum percontatum est. Quadraginta quinque ex centenis vim corporis iustam esse dixerunt, si sermo quem ipsi odiosum iudicent comprimendus sit: ex iis qui se liberales vocant quinquaginta quattuor, ex mediis triginta sex, ex conservatoribus triginta. Quadraginta sex oratorem clamore obrui probant; quadraginta verba quae offendunt iudicio publico puniri volunt. Quadraginta duo socialisticam rei publicae formam malunt, viginti octo capitalisticam. Viginti duo patriam suam cladem die undecimo mensis Septembris anni MMI acceptam meruisse dicunt. Gerson Moreno-Riaño, praeses Universitatis Cornerstone, scholae privatae et Christianae Grandibus Rapidis in Michigania, negat rem de libertate loquendi esse. De moribus formandis esse dicit; discipulos iram et querelas doceri. Ministerium rerum discendi rogari tradunt acta, uti discipulos a vi tueatur. A quibus rogetur, non dicunt.
The Censor's Mark, Wednesday, the twelfth day before the Kalends of November, in the year of the City 2779. Across the Ocean. As Fox News reports, the Buckley Institute has polled college students. Forty-five in a hundred said bodily violence is justified if speech they themselves judge hateful must be stopped: fifty-four of those who call themselves liberals, thirty-six of the moderates, thirty of the conservatives. Forty-six approve of drowning a speaker in shouting; forty want offensive words punished in the public courts. Forty-two would rather have a socialist form of state, twenty-eight a capitalist one. Twenty-two say their country deserved the blow it took on the eleventh of September 2001. Gerson Moreno-Riaño, president of Cornerstone University, a private Christian school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, denies that this is about free speech. It is about forming character, he says; the students are taught anger and grievance. The report says the Department of Education is being urged to protect students from violence. By whom, it does not say.
Prius quam notam scribo, testes interrogo. Quot rogati sint, quibus verbis, quid 'odium' et quid 'vis' significaverit, acta tacent. Unus fons est. Haruspicem semper miratus sum qui haruspicem videns non rideret; idem de iis miror qui percontationes faciunt et vendunt. Praeses quoque suas merces laudat, uti mercator in foro. Concedo haec omnia. Sed si dimidia pars vera est, satis est ad notam.
Before I write the mark, I question the witnesses. How many were asked, in what words, what 'hate' and 'violence' were taken to mean: the report is silent. There is one source. I have always wondered how one soothsayer could look at another without laughing; I wonder the same of the men who make polls and sell them. The president, too, praises his own wares, like a trader in the market. I grant all this. But if half of it is true, it is enough for a mark.
Primum crimen: vis pro verbo. Verbo verbum respondetur, non fuste. Maiores nostri vim privatam iudicio persequebantur; virgas et secures lictoribus dederunt, adulescentibus numquam. Qui civem pulsat quia dixerit quod sibi displiceat, latro est. «Orator est, Marce fili, vir bonus dicendi peritus». Hi neque boni sunt neque dicendi periti. Itaque fustem quaerunt.
First charge: force in place of a word. A word is answered with a word, not a club. Our ancestors pursued private violence in the courts; they gave the rods and axes to the lictors, never to boys. A man who strikes a citizen for saying what displeases him is a bandit. "An orator, Marcus my son, is a good man skilled in speaking." These are neither good nor skilled in speaking. So they reach for the club.
Verbo verbum respondetur, non fuste.
A word is answered with a word, not a club.
Secundum crimen: clamor et accusatio. Oratorem clamore obruunt; verba in ius vocant. Ego quater et quadragiens accusatus sum, numquam damnatus. Verbis me petiverunt, verbis respondi, vici. Hi audire nolunt, respondere nesciunt, accusare volunt. Talem accusatorem Romae iudex rideret.
Second charge: shouting and prosecution. They drown the speaker in noise; they haul words into court. I was prosecuted forty-four times and never convicted. They came at me with words, I answered with words, I won. These will not listen, cannot answer, and want to prosecute. At Rome a judge would laugh at such an accuser.
Tertium crimen: impietas in patriam. Puer qui patri maledicit verberatur; civis qui patriae, a censore notatur. Neque unius factionis vitium est: triginta ex centenis etiam eorum qui se conservatores vocant vim probant. Ergo vitium in scholis quaerendum est, ubi omnes sedent, omnes discunt, omnes pecuniam solvunt.
Third charge: impiety toward the fatherland. A boy who curses his father is beaten; a citizen who curses his fatherland is marked by the censor. Nor is this one faction's vice: thirty in a hundred even of those who call themselves conservatives approve of violence. So look for the vice in the schools, where they all sit, all learn, all pay.
Causa et remedium. Carneadem olim domum remitti suasi, ne iuventus disputare quam parere mallet. Filium meum litteras ipse docui, ne servo tantum beneficium deberet. Americani filios magistris tradunt, mercedem dant, iram recipiunt. «Patrem familias vendacem, non emacem esse oportet»; hi emunt quod domum corrumpit. Nolite Washingtoniam ad ministerium currere, quod alii nescio qui rogant. Pater ipse filium formet. Iuvenis prius vineam fodiat, sarcinam portet, castra muniat, deinde disputet. Qui fossam duxit, verbum fuste non vindicat. Qui civem ob verbum pulsaverit, de vi reus fiat. Scholae quae iram docent nota censoria notentur et pecunia publica careant. Conductores, si praeses verum dicit, homines a ludo litterario recta ad aratrum et officinam ducant.
Cause and remedy. Long ago I urged that Carneades be sent home, lest our young men prefer arguing to obeying. I taught my son his letters myself, so that he would owe no slave so great a favour. The Americans hand their sons to teachers, pay the fee, and get back anger. "The head of a house should be a seller, not a buyer"; these men buy what ruins the house. Do not run to the ministry in Washington, which some unnamed persons are petitioning. Let the father form his son himself. Let the young man first dig a vineyard, carry a pack, fortify a camp; then let him argue. A man who has dug a ditch does not avenge a word with a club. Whoever strikes a citizen over a word, let him be tried for violence. Schools that teach anger, let them be branded with the censor's mark and cut off from public money. Employers, if the president speaks the truth, should take young men straight from the schoolroom to the plough and the workshop.
Ceterum censeo disciplinam querelarum esse delendam.
Furthermore, I hold that the teaching of grievance must be destroyed.
FONTES ANTIQVIANCIENT SOURCES
- Cato ap. Sen. Contr. 1 praef. 9 (cf. Quint. 12.1.1)Orator est, Marce fili, vir bonus dicendi peritus
- Cato, Agr. 2.7Patrem familias vendacem, non emacem esse oportet
FONTES HODIERNITODAY’S SOURCES
- Fox News PoliticsUniversity president sounds alarm as nearly half of students justify violence to stop 'hate speech'
Res ex fontibus; sententia Romani.Facts from the sources; the opinion is the Roman’s.
Scribe ad Cato: tabellarius epistulam tuam per vias Romanas feret, et responsum post dies aliquot redibit.Write to Cato: the courier carries your letter along the Roman roads, and a reply comes back after a few days.
LEGE ETIAMREAD NEXT
- Furem Dupli, Feneratorem QuadrupliThe Thief Paid Double; the Usurer, FourfoldCato
- Urbs ardet, curia plauditThe City Burns, the Chamber ApplaudsSallust
- De volucribus sine nido: Praedatores in caelo Hispaniae se exercentOn Birds Without a Nest: Predators Exercise in the Skies of HispaniaPliny the Elder
- Prorogatio aerarii: tributum quod nemo rogavitThe Prorogued Treasury: A Tax Nobody ProposedHortensia
