# Heart of Darkness



## blueknowz

Hi, I'm new here, I was hoping somebody could translate this to Latin for me.
The phrase is:

Heart of Darkness

Thanks anyway!

p.s I mean heart of darkness as in the root of all evil, that kind of thing.


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## blueknowz

Hey, sorry, I am not bumping my own thread.
Just to say I've had a translation of:
 cor tenebrarum

any thoughts on that?


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## modus.irrealis

That's the first translation I would have come up with (it's the literal translation), but the strange thing is that the dictionary entry for _cor_ doesn't seem to mention any metaphorical use meaning "root." It seems like an "obvious" metaphor but now I'm not sure it would be Classical Latin (it might be Medieval).

If you do want to use something other than _cor_, I can think of principium.


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## Flaminius

How about umbilicus (navel) as a metaphor?  As my first language does not have "heart" meaning anything other than the organ, I always wanted to know how the Classic World expressed this sense.  It may be that the heart's function as a blood pump (thus all blood "originating" thence) was not known by the Romans and Greeks.

This makes me wonder if the other metaphor is okay.  I might be a tad bit too stringent but _swoon_, _death-shades_, _prison_, _dungeon_, _infernal regions_, or _baseness_ (all from here) do not strike me exactly an "evil".


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## modus.irrealis

Flaminius said:


> How about umbilicus (navel) as a metaphor?  As my first language does not have "heart" meaning anything other than the organ, I always wanted to know how the Classic World expressed this sense.  It may be that the heart's function as a blood pump (thus all blood "originating" thence) was not known by the Romans and Greeks.


I like navel, which has a very Classical ring to it. That also made me somehow think of another metaphor (but non-organ based), which is _mater_ (mother).



> This makes me wonder if the other metaphor is okay.  I might be a tad bit too stringent but _swoon_, _death-shades_, _prison_, _dungeon_, _infernal regions_, or _baseness_ (all from here) do not strike me exactly an "evil".


It could very well be a later development as well -- I tried looking through some google results where _tenebrae_ meant evil and the earliest I could find was from the period of Augustine. There goes an other "obvious" metaphor.


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## J.F. de TROYES

I think of " gremium" ( lap, bosom ) also used as a metaphor in phrases such as "Graeciae gremium "or "medio Graeciae gremio" ; as for "tenebrae" (C-5 ) it refers to the Hell , " the infernal regions ) in the Aeneid or Ovid's Metamorphosises.
What about "Gremium tenebrarum" ?


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