Fortes Fortuna Adiuvat: Good Quotes Never Die 

Fortes Fortuna Adiuvat 

Fortes Fortuna adiuvat, “Fortune helps the brave!” A more common, if somewhat less literal translation is “Fortune favors the bold!” Well, it still captures the sense of the statement, and preserves the alliteration of the original. It also captures the swashbuckling spirit with which this sentiment was intoned in at least one critical historical moment. And in fact, it reflects an alternate, but still venerable, classical original. More on that below. In any case, today’s quote is a stirring call to action that has echoed through the centuries. I have to confess, as a Latin teacher, I also appreciate that this little three-word sentence contains a whole lot of teachable moments.

More on those below as well. But to begin: I first ran across this quote many years ago.  I was reading Pliny the Younger’s description of the 79 A.D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius with one of my upper-level Latin classes. This eruption, of course, was the conflagration that buried the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The main character in the account is Pliny’s uncle (Pliny the Elder, naturally). He was the commander of the fleet at Micenum, across the Bay of Naples from the volcano.

 “Fortune Helps the Brave!” 

The younger Pliny recounts how his uncle sails across the bay in an attempt to rescue people trapped by the eruption. As he draws nearer to the mountain he encounters a rain of hot ash. Next, pumice stones start falling on the ship. Eventually,  

. . .etiam nigrique et ambusti et fracti igne lapides; iam vadum subitum ruinaque montis litora obstantia.

“. . . also stones black and burned and broken by fire; now a sudden shallows and the ruin of the mountain, blocking the shore.”

This requires a decision. Uncle Pliny can no longer reach his intended destination. He must either aim for a different point on the shore near the mountain, or give up the rescue attempt altogether. The increasingly hazardous conditions point to the latter course. The elder Pliny, however, is not a slave to prudence:

Cunctatus paulum an retro flecteret, mox gubernatori ut ita faceret monenti ‘Fortes’ inquit ‘fortuna iuvat: Pomponianum pete!’

“After hesitating briefly whether to turn back, he soon said to the helmsman, who was urging that he do this, ‘Fortune helps the brave: seek Pompanianus!”

Stirring stuff indeed, and a memorable moment.

A Teachable Moment 

And not just a memorable moment. It is, as promised, a teachable one. Here’s the first lesson. The quote Fortes Fortuna adiuvat connects us to a whole series of ancient authors, not just Pliny. Its first recorded appearance is in Terence’s Phormio, a comedy first staged in 161 BC. Terence is the second-oldest author from whom we have any complete works in Latin. The only more ancient author is his fellow comic playwright Plautus, who precedes him by a few decades.

In the centuries between Terence in the 2nd century BC and Pliny in the 1st century AD numerous other authors take up the quote in various forms. Cicero cites it in his Tusculan Disputations. Characteristically, he puts his own spin on it:

“fortes,” enim non modo “Fortuna adiuvat,” ut est in vetere proverbio, sed multo magis ratio . . .

“For not only does ‘Fortune help the brave,’ as it is in the old proverb, but reason (helps) much more . . .” (Tusculan Disputations, 2.4.11)

We see a slightly different version in Vergil and Ovid.  In Vergil’s Aeneid, Aeneas’s rival Turnus thunders Audentes Fortuna iuvat (Aeneid 10.284). Audentes is the present participle of the verb audeo, which means “to be bold,” or “to dare.” “Audacious” and “audacity” are English derivatives. While roughly synonymous with fortes, the connotations are a little different.

A Lesson in Participles 

The present participle denotes action ongoing at the same time as the main verb. So, while fortes can simply mean the brave as opposed to those who are not, audentes can suggest something like “Fortune helps us when we are being bold.”  Fortis suggests an innate characteristic (the brave as opposed to cowards). Audens can describe a course of action we can choose for ourselves.

In his Ars Amatoria Ovid also uses the present participle. As does Cicero, he turns it to his own use: Audentem Forsque Venusque iuvat, “Both Chance and Venus help the bold” (Ars Amatoria, Book I line 608). He also gives us a nice example of-que . . . -que used as a correlative conjunction. Rest assured that Ovid was much more interested in Venus than he was in Fors.

Fortune and Fortitude 

While the Vergilian/Ovidian version provides the material for a lesson on the form and meaning of Latin present participles, there are other lessons we can glean from the version that starts with Fortes. It’s a nifty example of simultaneous alliteration and assonance, of course.  The first two words do not only start with the same consonant, but with the same first syllable, fort-. Which leads us to a further lesson. We can use this as a vehicle to help students distinguish between two easily confused roots.

The first of those roots is fort- as it appears in the adjective fortis, fortis, “brave, strong.”  The second is fort- in the noun fors, fortis, “chance, luck.” The latter gives us “fortune” (fortuna) and “fortuitous.” The former, “fortitude” (fortitudo), “fortress,” and “fortify.” This explains why the adverb fortiter means “bravely, strongly,” but forte means “by chance.”

Which Came First? 

By juxtaposing two roots that look alike but have different meanings the Fortes version of the saying gives us a play on words that’s not present in the other form. Both, however, illustrate an important difference between the way word order works in Latin and in English. In English, we use word order to establish syntax in a sentence. We typically put our subject first, then the verb, and then the object. The word order tells us the the subject is acting on the direct object, Fortune is helping the bold.

In Latin case endings determine syntax, so an author is free to use word order to do other things. Here we see the direct object first in the sentence. The primary position gives special emphasis to the importance of boldness. There’s also a suggestion of personification here, as if fortes or audaces has assertively pushed its way to the front of the sentence. Classical Latin authors were quite aware of the possibilities of using word order to “illustrate” the action in their narrative.

Fortuna Dea 

This quote is also a good vehicle for illustrating the way ancient Romans tended to deify concepts they considered important. That’s why we usually capitalize the word Fortuna. Pliny the Elder himself discusses the importance of the goddess Fortuna in his Natural History. Here he speaks dismissively of the gods, and suggests that even those who invoke them don’t take them seriously. Nevertheless, he ruefully concedes:

toto quippe mundo et omnibus locis omnibusque horis omnium vocibus Fortuna sola invocatur ac nominatur, una accusatur, rea una agitur, una cogitatur, sola laudatur, sola arguitur et cum conviciis colitur: volubilis, a plerisque vero et caeca existimata, vaga, inconstans . . .

“Everywhere in the whole world at every hour by all men’s voices Fortune alone is invoked and named, alone accused, alone impeached, alone pondered, alone applauded, alone rebuked and visited with reproaches; deemed volatile and indeed by most men blind as well, wayward, inconstant, uncertain, fickle in her favors . . .” (Natural History, Book II, chapter 22)

Julius Caesar in his writings also often depicted himself as particularly favored by the goddess Fortuna. Although, to be sure, be was careful not to rank her favor as being as important as his own skill.

Who Said What? 

One last lesson. This one is near and dear to my heart. There’s the issue of attribution. Let’s look at a different quote. Speaking of Julius Caesar, everyone knows he said Veni, vidi, vici, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” The problem is, it doesn’t appear in anything that Caesar himself wrote. We have it second-hand from other authors (Plutarch and Suetonius). Nonetheless, we credit it to Caesar because Plutarch and Suetonius record it as his words. More specifically the entirety of his report to the Senate after his swift and decisive defeat of the Pontic leader Pharnaces in the battle of Zela. In any case, nobody attributes it to Plutarch or Suetonius.

Not everyone observes the distinction between author and speaker when attributing other quotes.  For example, have you ever seen the following words attributed to Shakespeare? “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Yes, Shakespeare wrote it. It appears in his playHenry VI, Part 2. But Shakespeare didn’t say it. One of his characters, an unpleasant fellow by the name of Dick the Butcher, spoke the line. Rest assured that Dick the Butcher is not speaking for Shakespeare.

Likewise, you will find Fortes Fortuna adiuvat attributed to Terence. And indeed he wrote it. But he didn’t say it. The speaker is a character named Geta in Terence’s play Phormio. Also, while Terence is the earliest written instance of the saying, he didn’t necessarily invent it. The same is probably true of many of the clever quips attributed to Shakespeare, by the way. It’s very likely that Terence was simply putting into the mouth of his character an already common expression, as Cicero suggests above.

Good Quotes Never Die 

Did I say that was the last lesson? Okay, this is really the last thing. Good quotes never die. You can find HERE a long list of modern military units around the world that use one or the other Latin versions of the quote as their motto. Many other groups and organizations do the same. It still shows up in popular entertainment, as well. John Wick, the protagonist of martial arts movies starring Keanu Reeves, has the saying tatooed across his entire back. There is also a humorous allusion to the quote in the film The Incredibles.

So, yes, Good Quotes Never Die. Oh, and everything sounds better in Latin.

Featured image top of page: Vesuvius in Eruption by J.M.W. Turner, 1817-1820.

 Luck Favors the Prepared (from The Incredibles) 

*Image of the Bay of Naples via Wikimedia Commons; licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.