Matthias Borbonius

Matthias Borbonius (1566–1629) was a Neo-Latin writer of Bohemian origin.

Quotes

• Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
• All things change, and we change amongst them.
  • Deliciæ Poetarum Germanorum, Collectore A. F. G. G. (Francofurti, 1612), Pars I. p. 685.
    One of a series of mottoes for various Emperors, this being designed for Lothair I (795–855).
    Among the epigrams of John Owen, the British Martial, we find (8, 58) a couplet, evidently inspired by the line of Borbonius:
    Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis:
    Quomodo? fit semper tempore pejor homo.
    Times change, and we change with them too. How so?
    With time men only the more vicious grow.
    See also Tempora mutantur, and Alexander Pope, Moral Essays, Epistle I, line 172:
    Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes,
    Tenets with books, and principles with times.
    • Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 1912
    • Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), no. 3449, note

• Excole virtutem; virtus post funera vivit,
  Solaque post mortem nos superesse facit.
• Cultivate virtue; after death she lives,
  And by his virtues only man survives.
  • In Notes and Queries (vol. vi. 79 and 245, and vol. x. 362), R. Pierpoint refers us to Mathias Borbonius, Dictum Tiberii—one of a series of mottoes for various emperors—in connexion with the motto of the Earls of Shannon (Boyle), where the words are given in reverse order: Vivit post funera virtus.—"Virtue survives death."
    Cf. Euripides, Fragment 722:
    Αρετή δὲ, κἄν θάνη τις, ουκ απόλλυται,
    ζῇ δ᾿ οὐκέτ ὄντος σώματος κακοῖσι δὲ
    ἅπαντα φροῦδα συνθανὀνθ᾽ ὑπὸ χθονός.
    Virtue’s not killed at death. The body dies
    But virtue lives; while all that bad men had
    Dies with them, and is clean gone underground.
    • Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 3115