I don't think this is a good idea. …
Why not just use English? …
Since your suggestion is the best and most sensible of them all, I'm not surprised that it's being roundly ignored, even dismissed.
It is not how a Latin speaker would refer to a fellow soldier.
I've never been a Roman soldier but I suppose they would understand what you were getting at with the 'brothers in arms' transliteration, but they would use a noun for their comrade/fellow soldier.
If they had some idiom for the concept, this isn't it.
Right as rain! I haven't been a
Roman soldier either, but I
have been both a combat soldier and a five-year student of classical Latin, and so I hope that that combination of experience counts for something in the present context.
Cicero used the word
commilitones (sing.,
commilito) to refer to "fellow soldiers," and in the post-classical period, Tacitus used
commilitium to mean "comradeship in war or military service."
Most germane of all, however, may be the vocabulary of Caesar—though being an officer, he had the low opinion of enlisted men that remains one of the great constants of human nature and human history. Caesar, concerned as he was with the comradeship of arms only insofar as it produced results on the battlefield, generally uses only
miles or
pedes to refer to a foot soldier and
eques to refer to a mounted soldier. On the other hand, whether writing about the Gallic Wars or the cινιℓ ωαrs, he makes frequent and quite broad use of the word
fratres, to signify friends, associates, and allies in combat.
All in all, unless Marsha's aim is to be silly, confusing, pretentious, or some combination of the foregoing (not that I suppose it is!), taking the advice of Iuvenalis is far and away the wisest course of action. One can say all he likes that "it is a tradition in English speaking nations to use Latin phrases and mottoes," but since the English of the Old World, the New World, and the Antipodes is littered with mottoes, slogans, and just plain dumb remarks in at least twenty different languages that I can count without even putting my mind to it, this is hardly a germane contribution to the discussion at hand. Indeed, it might best be described by something an old friend of mine wrote in his first published book some forty years ago: "It was the
ne plus ultra of
plus ça change."
Topic: A question for someone who knows latin (Read 3589 times)