Cum Romae, ut Romani faciunt fac

When in Rome, do as the Romans do

The Spanish equivalent of this idiom is Donde fueres, haz lo que vieres “Wherever you go/are, do whatever you see”, which isn’t as expressive, but has a couple of verbs in the future subjunctive (a tense most Spanish-speaking people don’t even know about).

Do you love classics? Are you interested in Latin? Would you like to receive cool emails about that stuff? I’m quite sure you would: join the newsletter! 📧

The English idiom, literally translated into Latin and Spanish here, actually originates in Latin itself, in Saint Ambrose, whose Latin version is classier than ours:

si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more

That is, “if you are in Rome, live in the Roman way”.

It continues like this:

si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi

That is, “if you are elsewhere, live as they do there”.

There’s plenty to comment about, but we’ll restrict ourselves to comment about the future imperative vivito. It’s also interesting the adverb alibi (< alium + ubi) “elsewhere”, which the English language used for “alibi” (≈ “excuse”), that is, “evidence that proves that a person was in another place at the time of a crime and so could not have committed it” (source).

Theory without practice is absolutely useless. With a one-time payment, you’ll have the full course forever, with all the theory explained in video and dozens of hours of practice analyzed and explained step by step by me on the screen.

Join the Latin from Scratch course! ⚡

In our translation, we begin with a time subordinate clause with cum, which would have its verb in the subjunctive —not the indicative, as temporal cum usually does—, since this time clause is very close to a conditional (as Ambrose’s original is, in fact), though we have ommitted it anyway because of the English idiom. We also have a locative, Romae, which is the name of a city of the first declension.

Then we have the comparative subordinate clause with ut and the verb —this time— in the indicative. Finally, an “irregular” present imperative ending in a consonant, fac.