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A few lines attributed to Marcius, the legendary Roman seer whose prophetic verses, the carmina Marciana, were found and consulted during the Second Punic War. The surviving fragments include a moral precept, ‘speak last, be first to keep silent’, and other short sayings in archaic language, preserved by later grammarians and antiquarians.
According to Livy, the prophecies of Marcius foretold the disaster at Cannae and recommended the founding of the games of Apollo in 212 BC. The fragments are among the oldest pieces of Latin verse, though their date and authenticity are uncertain, and they illustrate the oracular and gnomic poetry of early Rome.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Musisque Deoque, the digital archive of Latin poetry (edition: J. Blänsdorf, FPL, 1995), licensed CC BY-SA. Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.