In William Makepeace Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair, the quote appears on George Osborne's tombstone after he dies at Waterloo.The last words attributed to the Israeli national hero Yosef Trumpeldor – "It is good to die for our country" (טוב למות בעד ארצנו) – are considered to be derived from Horace's, and were a frequently used Zionist slogan in the early 20th century.In Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, the Tarleton brothers are buried under a tombstone which bears the phrase.Tim O'Brien quotes the line in the book If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home.In his book And No Birds Sang, chronicling his service in Italy with the Canadian army during World War II, Farley Mowat quotes Wilfred Owen's poem on the opening pages and addresses "the Old Lie" in the final section of the book.In the film All Quiet on the Western Front, a teacher quotes this early on while talking to his class.The film Johnny Got His Gun ends with this saying, along with casualty statistics since World War I.
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The title of Damon Knight's 1955 short story " Dulcie and Decorum" is an ironic play on the first three words of the phrase the story is about computers that induce humans to kill themselves.In a 1915 school essay, German playwright Bertolt Brecht referred to the phrase as Zweckpropaganda (cheap propaganda for a specific cause) and pointed out that "It is sweet er and more fitting to live for one's country", an essay for which he was nearly expelled." from part IV of Ezra Pound's " Hugh Selwyn Mauberley", a damning indictment of World War I "Daring as never before, wastage as never before." "Died some, pro patria, non 'dulce' non 'et decor'.It is believed, and illustrated by the original copy of the poem, that Owen intended to dedicate the poem ironically to Jessie Pope, a popular writer who glorified the war and recruited "laddies" who "longed to charge and shoot" in simplistically patriotic poems like "The Call". In the final lines of the poem, the Horatian phrase is described as "the old lie". Owen's poem describes a gas attack during World War I and is one of his many anti-war poems that were not published until after the war ended. Perhaps the most famous modern use of the phrase is as the title of a poem, " Dulce et Decorum est", by British poet Wilfred Owen during World War I.To children ardent for some desperate glory, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,– If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodĬome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, So, let us drink to the health of the homeland." Ergo, bibamus pro salute patriae." A reasonable English translation would be: "It is sweet and fitting to die for the homeland, but sweeter still to live for the homeland, and sweetest yet to drink for the homeland. Ī humorous elaboration of the original line was used as a toast in the 19th century: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, sed dulcius pro patria vivere, et dulcissimum pro patria bibere. Our youth should learn let steed and spearĪ back that cowers, or loins that quake. Before 1920, the phrase had tended to appear in memorials and monuments to the fallen after 1921, it tended to decry propaganda and war.
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Owen's poem, which calls Horace's line "the old Lie", essentially ended the line's straightforward uncritical use. Horace's line was quoted in the title of a poem by Wilfred Owen, " Dulce et Decorum est", published in 1921, describing soldiers' horrific experiences in World War I.
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The line translates: "It is sweet and proper to die for one's country." The Latin word patria (homeland), literally meaning the country of one's fathers (in Latin, patres) or ancestors, is the source of the French word for a country, patrie, and of the English word "patriot" (one who loves their country). The inscription reads: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori".ĭulce et decorum est pro patria mori is a line from the Odes (III.2.13) by the Roman lyric poet Horace. Detail of the inscription over the rear entrance to Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.