How's your Latin?

[ewx]

This cartoon contains the Latin phrase “MENDACII IN CLOACA TRUCES SIDERA”. I’m trying to make some sense of it.

MENDACII is the genitive singular of mendacium, which has variety of meanings mostly amounting to “a lie”. Being in the genitive means that there is something “of the lie” or “of a lie”.

IN is a preposition with with a variety of meanings.

CLOACA is the nominative, ablative or vocative singular of cloaca, sewer. I think the IN goes with this, making both “in” and “into” fit.

TRUCES is the nominative, accusative or vocative plural of trux, meaning several things along the lines of “wild” or “grim”.

SIDERA is the nominative, accusative or vocative singular of sidus: constellations, stars, seasons. Being plural, TRUCES obviously modifies SIDERA rather than either of the other nouns in play.

“The sewer of the lie” makes much more sense than “The grim stars of the lie”, so I think MENDACII modifies CLOACA rather than TRUCES SIDERA.

So: “the grim stars in the sewer of the lie”? Perhaps with “the grim stars in the sewer of lies” being a more natural but less literal translation.

(Of course I may be onto a loser by assuming it’s supposed to be anything more than dog Latin in the first place…)

Comments

[gerald_duck]

My best guess is it's supposed to be "Mendacia in cloaca; truces sidera" meaning "lies in the gutter; truth(s) in the stars".

[fanf]

It seems "truces" can also mean staring. So it's Wilde. (ho ho)

[gerald_duck]

Mmm. I spotted the cognate — hence suggesting "gutter" instead of "sewer". But if so, is it not grammatically flawed?

And, if it is grammatically flawed, is getting the wrong sense of "lie" in the Latin another error, or a sophisticated bilingual pun?

[songster.livejournal.com]

"truces" can indeed mean "staring", or perhaps even better "glaring", but only as an adjective - "his glaring visage", or some such.

Google Translate does however suggest the complete phrase when asked to translate "lying in the sewer staring at the stars". So, no clever punning, just some muppet using mechanical translation instead of knowledge. O tempora, o mores.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Ha, well spotted. Oh well, I had fun trying to translate it properly anyway l-)