Re: Non scol... sed vita... discimus

On Thursday, September 16, 2004, at 02:38 , Carsten Becker wrote:

> Hey!
>
> My father, cramming together his knowledge of Latin wanted to know if
> the sentence "Non scholae sed vita discimus" is correct and which cases
> there are --
I guess _scholae_ could be locative, though that is not at usual with
common nouns; _vita_ is certainly ablative.
"We learn not in school but from life."

But it would be more in keeping with Roman practice to have both nouns in
the same case. Therefore:
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On Thursday, September 16, 2004, at 02:59 , Peter Bleackley wrote:
[snip]
> If the intended meaning is "We learn not from school, but from life", I
> think it's
>
> non schola sed vita discimus
>
> using the ablative in each case
Quite correct use of the ablative & more 'normal' Latin than
_scholae......vita_. But if we do not learn in school or from school, then
what is the purpose of school?
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On Thursday, September 16, 2004, at 03:26 , J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
[snip]
> When I google for "Non scholae sed vita discimus", then google asks me:
>
> Did you mean: "non scholae sed vitae discimus"
>
> This is also how I remembered this saying, 'we don't learn for school, but
> for life'. Both nouns are in dative.
Indeed they are - and IMO this gives much better sense.

> The internet doesn't make quite clear whether this is a litteral quote or
> not,
IME "quotes" on the Internet are too often not literal.

>  but it seems to be based on Seneca, Epistulae 106, 12.
It is many  long year since I read Seneca. I cannot place the "quote".

Ray
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UMBERTO ECO				September, 2004