# A man's worth is not determined by his wealth, but by



## frenchtranslater

Hey everyone,

I was wondering how you would translate the sentence : "A man's worth is not determined by his wealth, but by the love he gives to, and recieves from, the ones he cherishes". 

I just think that this sentence would sound fancy in latin, so i was wondering how you could translate it .

Thank you


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## Lamb67

_Bonus amore dante et acciperente et figente (fingo,ere) dignus est neque vero divitiis._

If I could I would have used a relative clause instead of a string of participles.


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## Starfrown

Lamb67 said:


> _Bonus amore dante et acciperente et figente (fingo,ere) dignus est neque vero divitiis._
> 
> If I could I would have used a relative clause instead of a string of participles.


Those are present participles. "Amore dante et acciperente" is "By [the] love giving and receiving [something]." In other words, it doesn't make much sense. You should have used the perfect passive participle instead.
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Here's my attempt:

_Viri dignitas non divitiis aestimatur, sed amore dato iis quos ille diligit, acceptoque a iisdem._

I chose to play it safe with_ ille_, but I'm not sure whether it's truly required here.

This is one of those times when you almost wish for relative case attraction in Latin.  If it were like Classical Greek, you could simply use _quibus_ in place of _iis quos_.


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## Lamb67

_Viri dignitas non divitiis aestimatur, sed amore dato iis quos ille diligit, acceptoque a iisdem._

A man's worth is estimated not by his wealth, but the love given to those whom he cherishes and received from the same (lot).

Would you like to explain dato and accepto here please?


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## Starfrown

Lamb67 said:


> _Viri dignitas non divitiis aestimatur, sed amore dato iis quos ille diligit, acceptoque a iisdem._
> 
> A man's worth is valued/assessed/determined not by his wealth, but the love given to those whom he cherishes and received from the same (lot).
> 
> Would you like to explain dato and accepto here please?


Resist the temptation to translate _aestimo _always as "estimate," as sometimes it is not appropriate to do so.
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I chose to use the participles instead of a relative clause, though I suppose I could also have written:

_...sed amore quem ille dat iis quos diligit..._

In general, I prefer to avoid a relative clause within a relative clause, especially when the sentence with past participles instead has essentially the same meaning.
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Please keep in mind that this is just a suggestion. The others may be able to make improvements.

I especially wonder whether the following conforms to classical idiom:

_amore dato iis...acceptoque a iisdem_

I'll have to do some further research, I suppose.


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## frenchtranslater

Would the sentence "A man's worth is not his wealth, it isthe love he gives to, and recieves from, those he cherishes" be easier/more obvious to translate?

Thanks


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## Lamb67

_Amante et amando dignius quam divitiis est.( I've taken a lot of license here.Hopefully it means it is worthier to love and to be loved than one's riches)._


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## frenchtranslater

Just wondering, what do you think about :"vir dignitatem non de pecunia, sed de amore amantis data acceptaque, trahit"


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## Sandhinet

Hi all.
Just a couple of suggestions to work on [more checking in the dictionary is certainly needed]:

"Hominem dignum non divitiae faciunt, sed amor datus invicemque receptus ab suis."

"Virtutem non divitiae faciunt, sed datus invicemque receptus amor."

Both aim at expressing the concept with increasing "brevitas".
To start, I wouldn't use "vir", but "homo" instead. If you prefer using "vir", then I suggest embedding it inside the concept of "virtus"=the complex of values of a (male) man.
Please let me know what you all think about this.


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## Lamb67

Sandhinet's suggestions look simple. I'd  ONLY suggest we use ne...quidem with the emphatic word between the ne and the quidem.

...ne DIVITAE quidem...


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## frenchtranslater

So "Virtutem ne divitiae quidem faciunt, sed datus invicemque receptus amor" ?


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## Sandhinet

Sorry, I can't see the point in using "ne...quidem" in this context.

I am not sure about those 3 verbs: probably "efficio" is a better choice over "facio". Not sure as well about "dare/recipere".
That would be < --- > the most promising field to explorate. Unfortunately I cannot stay more.
See you later.


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## Starfrown

After doing a bit more research, I am dissatisfied with both _virtus_ and _dignitas_ here, as those traits were earned through public life and martial exploits in ancient Rome, not through one's relationships with friends and family.  I think the concept we are addressing here is closer to that of _fides_, which could be thought of as one's ability to act in good faith towards others and thereby to establish mutual trust--in other words, "reliability," or "trustworthiness."  The relationship between a man and his friends and family is one governed by _fides_, and wealth would indeed be an unreliable indicator of such a quality.  Still, I don't know whether love has much at all to do with it.

Roman culture was vastly different from our own--they simply didn't think as we do on many issues.  The result is that it is extremely challenging to come up with an appropriate term for "worth" here.  You have to ask yourself two questions:  Firstly, exactly what sort of worth are you talking about?  Secondly, how did the Romans assess such worth?


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## djmc

Although _virtus _is obviously a word connected with _vir_ it is also used more generally to mean virtue. Cicero in his philosophical writings uses the word much as one would use the word _arete_ in Greek. Much of Greek and later Roman ethical thought devolves on what is virtue and what man's aim (finis) should be. In _De finibus_ Cicero discusses this at length contrasting the Stoic idea that ones finis should be virtue and the Epicurean idea that it should be pleasure. One could translate the original by
Hominis finis non divitiae sed amor in suos profectus et ab eis praebitus.


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## Starfrown

frenchtranslater said:


> I was wondering how you would translate the sentence : "A man's worth is not determined by his wealth, but by the love he gives to, and recieves from, the ones he cherishes".


This discussion has wandered quite a bit, what with posters suggesting alternative English sentences for translation.  I will offer my last attempt at close translation of the OP's original English sentence, which incorporates some of the suggestions made by Sandhinet:

_Bonitas hominis non divitiis aestimatur, sed amore quem ille dat iis quos diligit, vicissimque recipit._
"The goodness of a man is not determined by his wealth, but by the love he gives to those whom he cherishes and, in turn, receives."
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In the end, I went for the rather vague _bonitas_ to avoid the culturally loaded terms under discussion above.
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I chose _homo_ over _vir_ because the philosophers prefer it as a neutral term for "a man".
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I placed _bonitas_ first, as I believe it to be the most important element in the sentence.  Furthermore, I believe that placing _hominis_ first might result in undesired stress.  For instance, compare the following two English phrases:

"A human being's worth"
"A _human being's_ worth" (the worth of a human being, as opposed to that of something else)

The former unstressed example is clearly what we're aiming for here.
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In the end, my goal was only to produce a sentence that was entirely grammatically accurate, and that could, I hope, raise no serious objections--in other words, I took the medieval approach.  If the OP wanted a sentence that was 100% palatable to a Roman, well, I'm afraid he got here 2000 years too late.


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## Imber Ranae

I think you guys are barking up the wrong tree, so to say, by searching for a Latin equivalent of the English word "worth". The idea of "worth", which is really a very general term, is already contained in the verb _aestimo_, so there's no need to translate it directly. You've also failed to use the proper grammatical construction with this verb: It does not take an ablative of means, but uses the preposition _ex_ to indicate the standard by which something is valued; the ablative alone indicates the price or value at which it is appraised.

This quotation of Seneca, which was brought to my attention, illustrates the point well:



			
				Seneca said:
			
		

> Quemadmodum stultus est qui equum empturus non ipsum inspicit sed stratum eius ac frenos, sic stultissimus est qui hominem aut ex veste aut ex condicione, quae vestis modo nobis circumdata est, aestimat.
> 
> _Epistularum Moralium Liber V, xlvii_



I did my own translation of the OP's sentence on another board where this same request was made, presumably by the same person:

_Vir non e re familiari aestimatur sed ex pietate erga suos ac suorum amore erga se._

I decided to use _res familiari_ for "wealth", which I think is preferable to _divitiae_ because it is a more neutral term, i.e. "wealth" in the sense of the sum total of one's property, not "wealth" in the positive sense conveyed by the adjective "wealthy", which is what _divitiae_ "riches" more suggests.

The problem of how to translate "the love he gives to, and recieves from" is trickier. The use of participles to render the phrase seems awkward to me, though probably not ungrammatical. My solution, which may or may not be desirable, was to use two different words to translate "love". It seems to me that the Romans had two very different conceptions of love which are conflated in the same English word. There's the passive love, _amor_, which one feels for others. One could naturally be judged according to the regard in which he is held by family or friends, but this sort of love is not something that's given, per se.

For the active kind of love, i.e. the demonstration of love through actual deeds, services, kindnesses, etc., I went with _pietas_. This term is very general, meaning anything from "dutifulness" to "patriotism" depending on the object, but I feel it's a more definite and tangible criterion by which one could be judged (in comparison to _amor_, which is more about feeling.) One is judged by his actions, not his feelings, though he may be judged by the feelings of others for him. This dichotomy strikes me as a really rather Roman way of looking at things, though I realize it may have too strong of paternalistic implications to be considered appropriate in a modern context.

For "the ones he cherishes" I used the extremely common _sui_ "one's own", another general term. In this context it would encompass both friends and family, and it makes a good contrast with _se_. I used _vir_ instead of _homo_ to fit the Roman view of _pietas_ as primarily a paternal characteristic.


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## Starfrown

Imber Ranae said:


> I think you guys are barking up the wrong tree, so to say, by searching for a Latin equivalent of the English word "worth". The idea of "worth", which is really a very general term, is already contained in the verb _aestimo_, so there's no need to translate it directly. You've also failed to use the proper grammatical construction with this verb: It does not take an ablative of means, but uses the preposition _ex_ to indicate the standard by which something is valued; the ablative alone indicates the price or value at which it is appraised.


_Aestimo_ may indeed be used with a bare ablative to indicate the standard by which something is valued.  For instance:

_qui redit ad fastos et virtutem aestimat annis (Hor. Ep. 2, 1, 48)_

_nec Macedonas veteri fama, sed praesentibus viribus aestimandos (Just. 30, 4)_

_Ex_, of course, is also correct, and may be more common, but I don't have any information on the relative frequency of the two constructions.
----
I agree that it would be fine to simply use _aestimo_, as Cicero does in the following:

_nemo enim illum ex trunco corporis spectabat sed ex artificio comico aestimabat (Rosc. Com. 28)_

Still, I think it would be okay to use _bonitatem_, _virtutem_, etc. as the object of _aestimo_, as Horace does in my first example above.  (I'm not saying that one could use any term to translate "worth" here--indeed I've already detailed why I believe _virtus_ to be a poor choice in this case--but only that _aestimo_ alone or _aestimo_ with the proper term for "worth" would probably be fine here.)


Imber Ranae said:


> I decided to use _res familiaris_ for "wealth" ...


You could also translate it as "estate" or "fortune," so I think that would probably be appropriate.


Imber Ranae said:


> The problem of how to translate "the love he gives to, and recieves from" is trickier. The use of participles to render the phrase seems awkward to me, though probably not ungrammatical. My solution, which may or may not be desirable, was to use two different words to translate "love". It seems to me that the Romans had two very different conceptions of love which are conflated in the same English word. There's the passive love, _amor_, which one feels for others. One could naturally be judged according to the regard in which he is held by family or friends, but this sort of love is not something that's given, per se.
> 
> For the active kind of love, i.e. the demonstration of love through actual deeds, services, kindnesses, etc., I went with _pietas_. This term is very general, meaning anything from "dutifulness" to "patriotism" depending on the object, but I feel it's a more definite and tangible criterion by which one could be judged (in comparison to _amor_, which is more about feeling.) One is judged by his actions, not his feelings, though he may be judged by the feelings of others for him. This dichotomy strikes me as a really rather Roman way of looking at things, though I realize it may have too strong of paternalistic implications to be considered appropriate in a modern context.


I, too, considered _pietas_, in addition to _fides_, which I discussed earlier.

The real problem is how authentically Roman one wishes to make the translation.  As you say, it is very difficult to overcome the cultural and linguistic barriers in our way.


Imber Ranae said:


> I used _vir_ instead of _homo_ to fit the Roman view of _pietas_ as primarily a paternal characteristic.


I was thinking somewhat along the same lines when I chose _vir_ for my first suggestion.


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