A Latin duel in the Old West Tombstone 1993

A Latin `duel' in the Old West Tombstone 1993

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUfELV05_Kk

Although by the 18th century Latin had ceased in to be widely used for spoken communication, the language's important position in the education system meant that anyone who was well educated could pepper his speech with Latin `tags' - short phrases,  sometimes taken directly from ancient Roman authors they had read at school.  In the 1993  western Tombstone,  set in Arizona in 1879, Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo, who meet later in a much more deadly confrontation,  show off their Latin in the saloon.  Holliday is a friend of Wyatt Earp, the retired law officer running the card game,  and Ringo and his friends are members of the Red Sash criminal gang . 

Ringo:          You must be Doc Holliday.
Holliday:    That's the rumor.
Ringo:          You retired too?
Holliday:    Not me. I'm in my prime.
Ringo:          Yeah, you look it.
Holliday:    Uh, you must be Ringo.   Look, darlin',  Johnny Ringo, the deadliest pistoleer since Wild Bill, they say.
                         What do you think, darlin',  should I hate him?
Kate:             You don't even know him. 
Holliday:     No. That's true, but... I don't know, there's just somethin' about him.  Somethin' 'round the eyes. I don't know.
                         Reminds me of...  me.   No. I'm sure of it,  I hate him.
Earp:             He's drunk.
Holliday:     In vino veritas.  [`In wine, truth'  i.e. people speak the truth when they're drunk]
Ringo:          Age quod agis.  [`Do what you do [best]' i.e. (in this context) Keep on getting drunk!]
Holliday:    Credat Iudaeus Apella, non ego   [`Let Apella the Jew believe that, I won't!']
Ringo:         [Putting his hand on his gun] Eventus stultorum magister.  [`Experience is the teacher of fools']
Holliday:    In pace requiescat. [`May he rest in peace!'   i.e `He'll be the one to die!']
Marshal:     Come on, boys, we don't want any trouble in here, not in any language.
Holliday:    That's Latin, darlin'.  Evidently,  Mr. Ringo's an educated man.  Now I really hate him.

The first, second and fifth tags are very common sayings and even today many educated native-speakers of English would still recognise  in vino veritas and in pace requiescat, but the third and fourth, taken from two authors of the `Golden Age ' of Latin literature, which lasted from the middle of the 1st century B.C. to the beginning of the 1st. century A.D. , are less well known.

Credat Apella Iudaeus, non ego is a quotation from a poem by Horace (65  - 8 B.C.)  It comes at the end of the fifth poem in Bool 1 of his Satires, where he ridicules the claim of the people of an Italian town he visited that incense melted in their temple without need of any fire. We do not know whether `Apella' is just a foreign sounding name or referred to a particular well-known individual.  The use of the vowel `a' in credat shows that the verb is a subjunctive form meaning `let (someone) believe'; the straightforward statement `(someone) believes' would be credit.

Eventus  stultorum magister is taken from from book 22, chapter 39 in  the history of Rome by Livy (c. 59 B.C. -  c. 14 A.D.)   In the account of Rome's life and death struggle against Hannibal's invading army in the 3rd. century B.C. ,  the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus argues that his own method of avoiding battle against the enemy  is better than confronting him head on: Nec eventus modo hoc docet – stutltorum iste magister est – sed eadem ratio, quae fuit futuraque donec res eaedem manebunt immutabilis est (`Not only experience teaches this - – that is the teacher of fools – but the same rationale which applied before and will not alter in the future, so long as our circumstances remains the same.’ ).