Coartatio Erroris Principium SapientiaeThe words have a proverbial ring, but I can't find a source. In English:
The restriction of error is the beginning of wisdom.Coartatio literally = tightening, narrowing.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Friday, November 21, 2025
A Latin Sentence
The last words of E.J. Kenney (1924-2019), The Classical Text: Aspects of Editing in the Age of the Printed Book (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), p. 174, are: