Hic Rhodus, hic salta
Hic Rhodus, hic salta! ( Latin , here is Rhodes , here jump! ) means: Show here, prove what you can do.
The words originally come from the fable “The pentathlon as a boastful” by Aesop and were used as an invitation to a pentathlon who had repeatedly pointed out his outstanding achievements in the long jump in Rhodes. When his interlocutors had enough of his boasting , they asked him to repeat what had been achieved here and now.
Erasmus von Rotterdam translated the original words Aesops from 1500 in his Adagia : Αὐτοῦ γὰρ καὶ Ῥόδος καὶ πήδημα (pronounced: “Autou gar kai Rhodos kai pēdēma” dt .: “Because here is both Rhodes and the jump”) with “hic rhodus, hic saltus ”. In another version of the fable it says ἰδοῦ Ῥόδος, καὶ ἀποπήδησον. (pronounced: "idou Rhodos kai apopēdēson" German: "See Rhodos, so jump!").
Hegel quotes this sentence in the preface to the basic lines of the philosophy of law in Greek and Latin. In the Greek version he mixes the two versions: "Idou Rhodos, idou kai to pêdêma". The quote follows: " What is to be understood is the task of philosophy (...)", that is, philosophy should not say what should be . In his further remarks, he suggests varying this sentence:
"With less change, that saying would be:
Here is the rose, here dance."
"Rose" - as can be seen from the context of the passage - means reason.
Karl Marx takes up this sentence:
“Proletarian revolutions […] always shrink back from the indefinite enormity of their own ends until the situation is created that makes any reversal impossible, and the circumstances themselves call
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
Here is the rose, here dance! "
Occasionally, Marx is quoted with the correct but not historical translation “Hic rosa, hic salta!”, According to Breyten Breytenbach in 1996 in La République des Lettres .
Nietzsche uses the formulation as the title for the 461st aphorism in “ Dawn. Thoughts on Moral Prejudice ”. This is about music “that can and must transform itself into anything”.
References and comments
- ↑ Erasmus: Adagia ( Memento from January 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), III.3.28 (Latin)
- ↑ Hegel: Basics of the Philosophy of Law, Preface
- ↑ Marx: The Eighteenth Brumaire by Louis Bonaparte , Chapter I.
- ^ Breytenbach: La République des Lettres, April 1, 1996 (French)
- ^ Nietzsche in Dawn. Thoughts on moral prejudices , 461. Aphorism “Hic Rhodus, hic salta” ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . ( at zeno.org )
Web links
- Aesop: pentathletes as boasters - Greek / German
- Äsop, Ἀνὴρ κομπαστής / Le Vantard - Greek / French (with two Greek versions)