Veni, vidi, vici
Veni, vidi, vici ( German "I came, I saw, I won") is a well-known Latin quote from the Roman statesman and general Gaius Julius Caesar about the battle of Zela .
Lore
In his parallel biographies Βίοι Παράλληλοι the Greek writer Plutarch reports that Caesar used this self-confident lacony in a letter to his friend Gaius Matius after the battle of Zela : His veterans had died on May 21, 47 BC. According to the Julian calendar, victory over the troops of Pharnakes II of Pontus was achieved in just four hours . After Suetonius , a sign with these three words was carried on his triumphal procession over Pontus. With the elegantly formulated alliterative climax of three asyndetic two-syllables (a tricolon ), plus a homoioteleuton , he impressively underlines how easily, quickly and devastatingly he defeated Pharnakes. It should be noted that the quote is ultimately a Latin translation of the Greek original ἦλθον, εἶδον, ἐνίκησα (oldest, ejdon, enikäsa) .
Use in advertising and culture
On the box of the Marlboro cigarette brand, Veni Vidi Vici can also be read in the coat of arms of Philip Morris . Apple gave visitors to the 2006 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) a t-shirt that said “Veni. Vidi. Codi. ”-“ I came. I saw. I coded. ”The verb codi does not exist in Latin. In 2006 the German-language website of the Nintendo company advertised its new home game console Wii with the words "Veni - Vidi - Wiici" . Microsoft used the slogan "Veni - Vidi - Vista" to launch its new Windows Vista operating system .
The French singer Alizée released a song entitled Veni vedi vici on her first album Gourmandises at the end of 2000 . The pop band Highland also had a Latin hit called "Veni Vidi Vici". The German Oi band KrawallBrüder released a DVD with the same name in 2007. "Veni Vidi Vicious" is an album by The Hives . In addition, the saying is the slogan of The Settlers II . The first album by the rapper Ja Rule is called Venni Vetti Vecci . Eric Maschwitz already used the quote in 1936 in his text for the song These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You) .
The quote appears several times in the Asterix comics. In the French cartoon Asterix - Victory over Caesar (1985) a centurion stated after the demolition of his camp by the Gauls: “I came, I saw, I did not win.” (“Veni, vidi, non vici.”) In that The following film Asterix with the British (1986), Caesar commented on the rather bumpy landing of his troops on the British Isles with the words: "I, Caesar, came, saw and could not believe my eyes."
Also the words of the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton : "We came, we saw, he died" ("We came, we saw, he died"), with which she commented on the death of the Libyan head of state Muammar al-Gaddafi in 2011 , are based on the Caesar quote.
In March 2012, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the Turkish city of Zile holds the rights to the sentence “Veni, vidi, vici” under the patent number “2011-00640-Ticaret” in Turkish patent law .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ So the conjecture of Conrad Cichorius : Römische Studien. Historical, epigraphic, literary history from four centuries of Rome , Leipzig and Berlin 1922, p. 248.
- ↑ Plutarch: Caesar. 50, 3.
- ^ Suetonius: Divus Iulius. 37, 2.
- ^ "We came, we saw, he died" on YouTube
- ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung of April 17, 2012, p. 10 (Panorama)