Latin Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, teachers, and students wanting to discuss the finer points of the Latin language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I am not familiar with Latin, but I found an engraving on a bench at the graveyard, that made me curious. It says,
vivos voco pedibus ioco.
Google Translate is not really helpful, as it translates this to "I call living feet joke". Does it mean that the bench "calls living feet a joke / finds living feet funny"?
For anyone interested, here's an image
The motto is extremely succinct. It also contains alternative meanings (such as the translation by cnread in comments ) which may form subtexts, riffs or puns. I have taken the primary meaning as the 'voice' of the person to whom the bench is dedicated.
"Vivos voco" means 'I call out to the living;' 'I say "Hi," to the living.' Or perhaps it's the bench, which is calling an invitation, 'I call people.' And it probably reflects the personality of the friendly person who is remembered by the gift of the bench.
"Pedibus ioco" means "on foot, with a joke." The words form part of a description of an important person who knows everyone by name, is ready to stop and share a joke, doesn't stand on ceremony. This person doesn't need transport to the senate; "on foot" is better.
Paragraph 53, Libro 2 (Divus Augustus), De Vita Caesarum Suetonius.
In consulatu pedibus fere ...tanta comitate adeuntium desideria
excipiens, ut quendam ioco corripuerit, quod sibi libellum porrigere dubitaret.
" In his consulship he commonly went on foot. ...meeting the requests of those who approached him with so great friendliness that he reproved one man with a joke because he was hesitant in presenting a petition to him."
That seems to be the dominant meaning.
But for surrealists, the joke could be a pun on 'vivos pedibus' 'the living on foot, pedestrians,' and 'vivos pedibus' (abl. pl. of pedes ) 'the living with their lice,' who may also be invited to share the cemetery bench, and a joke.
Or even, since ioco (active) can replace the ususal iocor (deponent) it could translate as "I invite the living; I joke with the lice;" though I've never heard anyone suggest lice had a sense of humour.
And if a bench, or a cemetery, can issue an invitation (naturalistic fallacy), the sense could be, "For a joke (ioco) I invite (voco) those who are alive (vivos), while they are still on their feet (pedibus). " (gratias cnread )
I summon the living, I cry for the dead, I break lightnings [pl.].
The vivos voco engraving on the the Schiller Bell. Source: Wikimedia Foundation
Wait, the first two feats a church bell does indeed, but breaking ligtnings???
Yes, and the source of the first part of the inscription cited in the question is quite unambiguous. It harks back to the practice of Wetterläuten, or weather ringing, a belief that ringing a consecrated church bell would repeal an approaching storm, associated with the demonic, evil forces. Perhaps the most known and one of the earliest is the 4.5 ton bell of Schaffhausen commissioned in 1486, also called the Schiller Bell since Friedrich Schiller used the full text of the spell as the epigraph to his Das Lied von der Glocke, to which Goethe added an epilogue to be read at the Schiller's funeral. In fact, this inscription is quite common on church bells across Europe, from Germany to Spain.
It is worth noting that the belief not merely existed among the common superstitious folk, but was also condoned, if not espoused, by the clergy. The Schiller Bell was indeed commissioned by the abbey! Whether he did that out of his own belief in Wetterläuten, or to placate the flock, I do not know, but I would not be much surprised if the former was in fact true.
Also semantically and pragmatically notable is the Medieval use of fulgur as the culmination of bad weather, brought up by evil forces. For a Roman, such a disrespect toward the lightning would be perceived as a hubris, a sacrilege; fulgur to them was an act of Zeus personally present, an awe-inspiring and deadly appearance of the Olympian in the mortal's world. For the Roman, a place struck by lighting was a sacred one, fulgur conditum (lit. “here lies the lightning,” as if buried), chosen by lightning, implying Zeus himself. For the Christian, in contrast, it was an act of the forces of Evil.
I jest with (=by using) feet
This paraphrase of the vivos voco spell does not make much sense out of context. The Latin reads clearly: the speaker makes jests by using feet. Since Latin, unlike English, does not express definiteness grammatically, it is not possible to tell whether the jests are performed using one's own feet (“the feet”) or some indefinite feet.
Another meaning of pes is a poetic meter, also expressed in English and many other languages, which is unsurprising since the word for “foot” also served as the unit of length in multiple cultures and therefore languages (Latin not being an exception).
The final syllable rhyme is entirely alien to classical poetry, but common in Medieval European verse.
So any possible reading does not make any sense outside of the cultural context. My best guess is that this is a clumsy translation of some local idiom, close in the meaning to “jesting with [one's?] feet (<extremities)” or “joking with a [poetic] meter.” Note that the latter reading would impart a self-referential meaning to the whole verse; this is not, however, an argument for preferring it, let me repeat myself, not knowing the proximate cultural context.
lúca bos in both online PHI and Perseus. My conjecture would be a scan error, <iocabor>. (To the previous note, and here we are looking at the text supposedly edited by a professional classicist--and still we get that!)
Jul 31, 2018 at 15:00
I'm not an expert of latin, but considering the person doing the engraving may not have been either, I'll propose my alternative translation here.
As it was already said, Vivus voco can mean I call people. Differently from the other answer, though, I think here ioco could mean game (if intended as a noun) or play (if intended as a verb) instead of joke. Pedibus is the plural ablative of pes (foot), so the full sentence could be roughly translated as
I call people to the game with feet
or
I call people, I play with feet
Where the game with feet could be for example a reference to soccer.
The previous answers have provided a lot of creative ways to understand the phrase, but I'll provide another angle: The meaning is, at best, arcane or, more likely, nonsense.
Vivos voco has an unambiguous meaning that has already been expounded, so the question is how we can construe pedibus ioco with it. I see two branches:
It's fun to come up with possible readings of the phrase, but these considerations lead me to conclude that this is either bad Latin or an inside joke.
I woke up this morning and it even seemed quite funny, in a graveyard humour sort of way:
Vivos, 'living;' and pedibus, 'standing on their own two feet,' mean the same thing. Those who are alive, those who are not candidates for the graveyard in the other sense.
Voco, 'I invite,' 'I welcome.'
Joco, 'I joke,' 'I jest,' 'I make witty conversation with.' Usually Jocor (deponent) but here active.
"Alive, I welcome you; still standing, I share a joke."
I think the meaning of the second part "pedibus ioco" could be "I will refresh those on their feet " which would make sense in German and would imply that the speaker tried to express the German word "erquicken" and could not find another latin word rhyming on "voco" and sure the speaker was not a native latin speaker, lol... "erquicken" has nothing to with the word "to jest"or "to make a joke" however jokes will ease you and can be a form of recreating, can be very refreshing... so the speaker used the latin word "ioco" maybe as a sort of synecdoche (pars pro toto!) for "to refresh"* in German "erquicken" is a very common term for "recreation" (refreshing) and used in many sayings and proverbs, in particular in poems & songs and other lyrics. It would fit perfectly for a bench... however in latin... "ioco!" really sounds a bit too unusual...
From the previous (non-)answers it is clear that this is not an easy one. I think, however, that Leo is on the right track, and that it is about football, perhaps commemorating a deceased local player. “To summon someone to something” is normally voco with accusative for the person, and ad + accusative for the thing, but to use the dative instead of ad + accusative is not perhaps excessively bad Latin. In that case, the inscription might mean: “I summon the living to a game with the feet” that is: “a game of football”.
