So, follow along with me here.
This is an oft-quoted saying from Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher. To be precise, it is from Book 12, Section 17 of his Meditations, a collected summary of philosophical principles that he wrote more as a diary or self-study guide than for publication.
I resonate with these words, so much so that they will be my next tattoo project - the first phrase on my left bicep (between the "Beau Geste" rose and "Justice") and the second phrase on the right bicep (between the "Mot Juste" heart and "Truth"). (My tattoo planning leans toward the symmetrical, perhaps too much.)
But of course, Marcus did not write these words in English; as was the custom of educated Romans of the time, he wrote in Koine Greek. I wasn't sure whether I wanted the saying in Greek or in Latin, which Marcus would have spoken and which is a little closer to my heart, since I took that very lively "dead language" in in high school.
There's a ton of modern Greek translations of this saying all over the intarwebs; it seems every third Greek Twitterer uses it for a bio. The modern Greek looks like this:
αν δεν είναι σωστό μην το κάνεις
αν δεν είναι αλήθεια μην το λες
But modern Greek isn't any part of this, so I did a little digging and found an academic site that had the original Koine:
εἰ μὴ καθήκει μὴ πράξῃς
εἰ μὴ ἀληθές ἐστι μὴ εἴπῃς
That was great - but I was still leaning toward the Latin. I dug around some more, but could not find a Latin translation of the Meditations online. The best I could do was this, from a Redditor:
Si fas non est ne feceris,
si verum non est non dicunt
Even though this checked out okay, I was mindful of all the horror stories of bad-translation-tattoos, and I needed a better source. So I contacted that even-better-than-the-Internet source: the library. Through the totally magical system of Inter-Library Loan, they got me this:
Yep, all the way from Rochester, New York, an 1840 edition of a French volume collecting classical works in Latin. The Meditations were in there as what we used to call a trot - Koine down one side of the page and Latin down the other. Perfect.
Here's the Latin version of 12.17 in that book:
Si non covenit, noli id facere,
si non est verum, noli id dicere.
A bit different in both vocabulary and syntax, but the important distinction is the verb in the first phrase: convenio, which in this context means fit or suited for. Quite a shade of difference with the straightforward right, although there is a connotative connection, innit?
The Redditor's Latin translation uses fas, which translates as right - it seems to me this might have been an English-to-Latin translation.
The modern Greek that's all over the place uses σωστό, which also translates simply as right.
Ah, but the Koine uses καθήκει - that took some digging but it translates as fitting!
So, the modern English (and Greek) simply say right - but the sense is more like the archaic meet, which carries the nuances of fitting, proper, right, and just.
So, 19th century Institut de France trot for the win! As a final check, here's the actual trot from the book, showing the Koine and the Latin:
All that said, although I will get the tattoos in Latin (especially after this adventure!), I will use the common English translation, since I think it works best.
There - due diligence that my tattoos won't become a listicle item. All those years of teaching research writing with my librarian pal Jackie have made it so I can't do much without verifying my sources.
And that is meet.
