'Saeva indignatio' - origin

[halcombe]

Having used the expression, I thought (belatedly) I ought to track it
down.

According to my ODQ (rep 1968, 521:27), it comes from Jonathan Swift's
epitaph:

"Ut saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit."
"Where fierce indignation can no longer tear his heart." (OQD
translation)

But I had formed the impression that the phrase was earlier one of
Tacitus's. In particular, that it was part of Book I on the Annales
that I 'did' (a word that covers a multitude of sins) for A Level
(English school exam at 18) many moons ago. According to [1], it is
not. (So much for the Golden Age of English education!)

So, where did it originate? It cries out to be one of Tacitus's, or
Suetonius's - from someone with a decent name to drop, dammit!

I gather (from superficial research) that Swift himself is generally
credited with the text of his epitaph. That the words so closely
resemble words of English goes either way: one way, it suggests a lazy
anglophone cloaking his words in the glory that was Latin with minimum
effort required; the other, any self-respecting anglophone translator
suffers from an aversion to using words in a foreign target language
that resemble English words (even where they constitute a perfectly
idiomatic translation).

So the puzzle remains: even if Swift were the first to use that
precise pair of words, is there a clear genuine Classical allusion? Or
some other verbal trickery beyond my (now exhausted) ken?

[1] http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/tac.ann1.html

[Robert Stonehouse]

halc...@subdimension.com (halcombe) wrote:

"Si natura negat, facit indignatio versum" Juvenal 1.79 could be a
possibility. "If nature forbids, indignation will make a poem." But
I think the addition of "saeva" is Swift's.
ew...@bcs.org.uk

[Gary Vellenzer]

In article <d7fa3848.02040...@posting.google.com>,
halc...@subdimension.com says...

> Having used the expression, I thought (belatedly) I ought to track it
> down.
>
> According to my ODQ (rep 1968, 521:27), it comes from Jonathan Swift's
> epitaph:
>
> "Ut saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit."
> "Where fierce indignation can no longer tear his heart." (OQD
> translation)
>

If you change it to "ubi saeva indig etc." and google on it you'll find
LOTS of info. Apparently it's the first line of Swift's epitaph.

Gary