Lacrimae rerum
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Lacrimae rerum is the Latin phrase for "tears of things." It derives from Book I, line 462 of the Aeneid (ca. 29-19 BCE) written by Roman poet Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) (70-19 BC). Some recent quotations have included rerum lacrimae sunt or sunt lacrimae rerum meaning "there are tears of (or for) things."
In this passage, Aeneas gazes at a mural found in a Carthaginian temple (dedicated to Juno), which depicts battles of the Trojan War and deaths of his friends and countrymen. He is moved to tears, and says "sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt" (trans. "There are tears for [or "of"] things and mortal things touch the mind.")
Because the genitive "rerum" can be construed as "objective" or "subjective," interpretation has varied. Some, who take the genitive as subjective, maintain that the phrase means that things feel sorrow for the sufferings of humanity: the universe feels our pain. For some interpreters, the meaning of the passage is that the burden human beings have to bear, ever present frailty and suffering, is what defines the essence of human experience. Yet in the next line, Aeneas says: "Release (your) fear; this fame will bring you some deliverance." Those who take the genitive as objective understand the phrase as meaning that there are tears for things (in particular, the things Aeneas has endured) evinced in the mural: i.e., the paintings show Aeneas that he finds himself in a place where he can expect compassion.
The context of the passage is as follows: Aeneas sees in the temple mural depictions of key figures in the Trojan War – the war from which he had been driven to the alien shores of Carthage as a refugee: the sons of Atreus (Agamemnon and Menelaus), Priam and Achilles, savage to both sides in the war. He then cries out:
<poem> Sunt hic etiam praemia laudi; sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. Solve metus; feret haec aliquam tibi fama salutem. Here, too, the praiseworthy has its rewards; there are tears for things and mortal things touch the mind. Release your fear; this fame will bring you some deliverance. Virgil, Aeneid, 1.461 ff.</poem>
A translation by Robert Fagles renders the quote as: "The world is a world of tears, and the burdens of mortality touch the heart."
Robert Fitzgerald, meanwhile, translates it as: "They weep here / For how the world goes, and our life that passes \ Touches their hearts."
In his television series Civilization, episode 1, Kenneth Clark translated this line as "These men know the pathos of life, and mortal things touch their hearts"
The character Robert Frobisher ends his final letter in Cloud Atlas (novel) by David Mitchell (author) with the quotation "sunt lacrimae rerum."
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