Can Anybody tell me what “Tu fui, ego eris” means.?
Can anyone tell me what the phrase “Tu fui, ego eris” means? I am also curious about which language it originates from.
6 Answers
Now to clear all that vagueness: it is LATIN LANGUAGE, and it means “I was you, you will be me”, which is a short version for a grave stone of “quod tu es, ego fui; quod nunc sum, et tu eris”, which means “what you are, I was; what I am now, you were”. It is obvious that we are talking about life and death here. The whole verse would be:
“Stranger as you pass me by,
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so you will be:
Prepare for Death and follow me.”
Now days we have this verse written in latin, but it is originally greek.
Actually, it’s not that bad. All it means is “I was you, you will be me”. I don’t see that a relative clause is in any way implied by the context. In both clauses, I and you are in apposition, and are therefore both in the nominative (whereas in English we tend to put the first person singular pronoun in the objective case when it’s in apposition to another subject).
Anyhow, inserting quod in there makes a mess of the sense – ego fui quod tu eris doesn’t mean what it’s supposed to – it means “I was what you will be,” and the whole point of the sentence is that the corpse is (right now) what you will be. You would have to fiddle with the tenses to get it to make sense. The only way you can go (and the way that is, in fact, perfectly clear) is “I was you, you will be me”.
Feb 13, 2025
looks like Latin but isn’t should be like that:
ego fui (quod) tu eris: I was (I have been) what you will be
More common is:
Sum quod eris; fui quod es (written on grave stones)
I am what you will be (dead) I was what you are (alive) – said by the one who is in the grave
Feb 22, 2025
It’s latin.
Verb “to be” conjugated.
I’m sure someone will translate that, i don’t enough remember my latin classes…
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