Tempora mutantur is a Latin adage meaning "times change", or more precisely "the times are changed" (passive). It is also stated as the longer hexametric Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis, meaning "Times change, and we change with them", or more precisely "The times are changed and we are changed in them (or during them)".
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As many adages and proverbial or wisdom maxims handed on till nowadays from the Latin cultural tradition, this line is a hexameter: the rhythmical verse, typical of the great epic poetry, both in Greek and Latin literature.
The fact that "et" (and) is following "nos" and being accented in the hexameter's rhythm, attributes an emphasis to it. So the precise translation is "and we too", instead of the simple "and we".
The verb mūtō means both "to move" and "to change", so an alternate reading is "The times move [on], and we move [along] in them." This recalls the image of time as a river, moving along, as in Heraclitus' Πάντα ῥεῖ (panta rhei) "everything is in a state of flux".
The notion of change, of everything changing, dates in Western philosophy at least to Heraclitus. This formulation appears to be traditional; the variant omnia mutantur ("everything changes", "τἀ πἀντα ρει" in Greek) occurs for instance in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
In English vernacular literature it is quoted as "proverbial" in William Harrison's Description of England, 1577, p. 170, part of Holinshed's Chronicles, in the form:
It also appears as
in John Lyly Euphues I 276, 1578, as cited in Dictionary of Proverbs, by George Latimer Apperson, Martin Manser, p. 582
A couplet, in which form it gained popularity, is:
by John Owen, in his popular Epigrammata, 1613 Lib. I. ad Edoardum Noel, epigram 58 O Tempora![1]
Translated by Harvey, 1677, as:[2]
References in German vernacular literature date back to the Protestant Reformation and arise in that context:
Before 1554 Caspar Huberinus completes Ovid's verse:
The German translation is added in 1565 by Johannes Nas:
Finally a couplet dedicated by Matthew Borbonius in 1595 to emperor Lothair I.[5]
Also selected for the anthology Delitiae Poetarum Germanorum, 1612, vol. 1, p. 685 (GIF).
| Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis Illa vices quasdam res habet, illa vices.[6][7] |
"All things are changed, and we are changed with them that matter has some changements, it (does have) changements". |
In Pierson v. Post, dissenting judge and future Supreme Court Justice Henry Brockholst Livingston argued "If any thing, therefore, in the digests or pandects shall appear to militate against the defendant in error, who, on this occasion, was foxhunter, we have only to say tempora mutantur, and if men themselves change with the times, why should not laws also undergo an alteration?"[8]
It is incorrectly attributed to Cicero,[9] presumably a confusion with his O tempora o mores!
Georg Büchmann, Geflügelte Worte: Der Citatenschatz des deutschen Volkes, ed. K. Weidling, 1898 edition, p. 506, confuses historical and poetical reality naming emperor Lothair I as the source and the couplet by Matthias Borbonius printed in 1612 as the quote.
Brewer's Dictionary 1898 edition confuses Borbonius' first name (Matthew) with another poet (Nicholas), the entry reading:
It is used as the nickname for Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 64.
In the popular UK sitcom Yes Prime Minister, Prime Minister Jim Hacker suggests to civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby that "hardly anyone uses Latin nowadays". Sir Humphrey responds with "Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis".
omnia mutantur is inscribed on the Convention Center at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.
James Joyce's Stephen Dedalus goes back with his father to County Cork in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and one of his dad's old cronies cross-questions him: "One of them, in order to put his Latin to the proof, had made him translate short passages from Dilectus and asked him whether it was correct to say: Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis or Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis."
