"Inter Faeces..." Quote

[Charles Doyle]

Doug raises excellent questions, most of which I can't respond to directely, not being that "somebody knowledgeable in Latin" whom he requests.  But I'll report what I know (or think I know):

First, somewhat earlier than the saying in Beroalde (c1616) that Doug quotes ("tu es ne entre la merde & le pissat") is this from Laurent Joubert's 2nd part of _Les Erreurs populaires_, the 1587 edition, in a list of Catalan aphorisms: "entre la merdo, & lou pis, se nourris lou bel fils." The modern translation renders that, "Between shit and piss is the handsome son being developed" (Gregory de Rocher, tr., _The Second Part of the Popular Errors_ [U of Alabama P, 1995], 164).

It's certainly quite possible that the saying "Inter faeces et urinam nascimur" arose later, then got retrofathered onto Augustine because it sounds kind of pithy and patristical, and he's everyone's favorite Church Father. I'm pretty sure, though, that Augustine himself did NOT say it in any of his extant works.

As for the Latin noun "f(a)ex": Forms of the word, which at some point must have been a euphemism, appear hundreds of times in the Patrologia, mostly (it seems) in reference to excrement.  "Stercus" and "fimus" abound too (it IS, after all, a favorite subject!). "Excrementa," I believe, is less common, "merda" nonexistent.

In one place we find "in faeces et stercora"--excremental overkill! As there, the old Catholic guys regularly gave "faeces" for the accusative plural.

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2007 18:35:28 -0500
>From: "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
>Subject: Re: "Inter Faeces..." Quote
>
>Has anyone found ANY instance of this expression or equivalent in ANY language which is older than the Verville example which I recently posted?
>
>I find equivalents in French and German and English and Latin, using various words and word orders.
>
>Maybe the Latin one is not the original.
>
>Even if there is a Latin original maybe it's not this one.
>
>Does the 'quotation' in question look like good honest Latin? Or is it one of those "illegitimi carborundum" inventions which is much more recent?
>
>Googling <<inter faeces et>>, I find NO example which is not a variant of the saying in question. There's a lot of Latin on the Web; did nobody ever say "between feces and ..." in any other context? Maybe there's something basically wrong with the expression "inter faeces"?
>
>Is the accusative plural of "faex" really "faeces"? Looks OK in principle but there's no example available at Perseus and my old "Gildersleeve's" says "faex" is a defective noun, with no accusative plural occurring. I guess that refers to Classical Latin; would it pertain to later Latin too? Would it pertain to Augustine's Latin? I don't know.
>
>Would Augustine have used the word "faeces" for excrement, or would he have used "stercus" or "excrementum" or some other word? Classical Latin "faex" = "sediment"/"dregs" generally did not refer to feces, and the examples at Perseus do not include one with this sense.
>
>Somebody knowledgeable in Latin might be able to make a more definitive assessment.
>
>-- Doug Wilson

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