“Quo usque tandem”: Cicero against Catiline
In 63 BC Cicero stood up in the Roman Senate to accuse Catiline of plotting against the state, with Catiline sitting there listening. He skipped the usual polite opening and started with this attack. Latin students have been reading it for two thousand years.
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The text and translation
Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?
How long, Catiline, will you go on abusing our patience?
Word by word
- Quo
- to what point
- usque
- all the way
- tandem
- then, after all
- abutere
- will you abuse
- Catilina
- Catiline
- patientia
- the patience
- nostra
- our
Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet?
How long will that madness of yours go on mocking us?
Word by word
- Quam
- how
- diu
- long
- etiam
- still
- furor
- madness
- iste
- that of yours
- tuus
- your
- nos
- us
- eludet
- will mock
Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia?
To what end will your unbridled boldness fling itself?
Word by word
- Quem
- what
- ad
- to
- finem
- end
- sese
- itself
- effrenata
- unbridled
- iactabit
- will fling
- audacia
- boldness
What to notice
- Quo usque tandem means “how far, at last”. Tandem adds the exasperation, a little like “just how long”.
- abutere is “you will abuse”. It is another way of writing abūtēris, and English abuse comes from the same verb.
- patientia nostra is “our patience”. This verb takes the ablative case, which is why the object ends in -a rather than the usual -am.
- Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? means “how long will that madness of yours go on mocking us?” Iste often has a sneer in it, and in a speech like this one it certainly does.
Read it yourself
Urling teaches the words in this text first, so that when you reach it you can read it in Latin. It uses short lessons, and nothing has to be memorised from a list.
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Sources
Cicero, In Catilinam I.1, Latin Wikisource; English: literal translation by Claude (AI)
Text licence: Public domain.
Language pack licence: Texts public domain; annotation and translations CC BY-SA 4.0.
Texts: Latin Wikisource (public domain; Catullus ed. Merrill, with long-vowel marks; the Vulgate passages in the Clementine text). English: Douay-Rheims (public domain) for the Vulgate passages; other sentence translations and all tagging by Claude (AI), checked against Wiktionary; not yet reviewed by a person.
The introduction and notes on this page were written by Claude (AI). Word glosses are AI-assisted, and so is the English unless the source above names another translator.