DIFFUGERE Nives.

"Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis

arboribusque comae;"


It's late Autumn. The trees yet hold green, the leaves too stuborn to turn brown, redden and fall. Still the hours of daylight wane and the ground chills in early morning. And today Horace's ode, Diffugere makes its debut for the fifth year Latin class at St. Peters: diffugere- a poem that speaks of the beginnings of springtime. Some ten lines are carefully written on the blackboard in front of the all male class of 42 students. The Jesuit Master, a 26 year old instructor, wearing a black cassock reads the first line aloud:


"Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis..."


We are at a Jesuit College in Dublin, circa 1926. Earlier the class began with Veni Creator Spiritus, a prayer, a brief plea for guidance from the Holy Spirit that ended with the three-fold petition.


Ingressum instruas!

Progressum custodias!

Egressum impleas!



Teach us in our beginning.

Guide us as we progress.

Let us leave us fulfilled at the end of our session.

The word Jesuit, as used here, refers to the organization founded by Ignatius of Loyola, the Society of Jesus, once a major force in European Universities and even now something remains of an aura associated with the phrase " a Jesuit education." While the remnants of the Society are still active in education, the current institutions bear little resemblance to those of the past.

Early on, the Society took on education with great reluctantance. Yet the task was compatible with the Jesuit mission. The motto of the Jesuits, abbreviated as AMDG, is something every orthodox Jewish boy would recognize from the learning of the shema: " Thou shalt love thy God with thy whole- everything: mind, body, soul...all for the greater glory of God." Spiritual fathers reminded Jesuits in training that their future students should never think that they have devoted their lives, "given up the pleasures of the world simply to teach them the belles-artes. "Pere de Rochemonteix insists: "This then is the supreme purpose which the Jesuits have in their educational work; namely, to aid their neighbor to know and serve God. Placing the Faith and holiness of life in the foremost place, they must naturally pay attention above everything else to the religion and the virtue of their students."

The Jesuits, advocates of oral learning that they were, realized that care must be taken in reading Latin poetry to beginning students. Latin poetry was like English in that it was made up of lines. These lines, or verses, are in turn divided into feet, certain rhythmic patterns of syllables.

Consider the word "Diffugere." It contains four syllables. As Chris Jones notes, we have something like the sound of an engine turning over, the reader seems to struggle through the first three syllables, di-fu-ger, then hits the fourth, -re, and darts off into the next word, "nives" as the phrase then comes to completion, a natural rest.

Diffugere nives translates as "Snows scattered" or "Snows are dissolved."

The master may point out a few things about the verb, diffugere, sometimes encountered in the more clumsy form diffugerunt. The verb is intransitive (does not take an object; i.e. there is nothing receiving the action of the verb; i.e. the snow doesn't scatter anything.)

The Master notices the tense of the verb-perfect indicative active. Its form conveys the sense of an action completed, finished. Later, in drill sessions, the Master would use all forms of diffugere in the perfect tense. Perhaps he might show the more dramatic use of the perfect as an exhausted, totally over action using as an example Cicero's famed expression in announcing the execution of conspirators: vixerunt! "They have lived."

The Master now turns his attention to the balance of the first line and the short line that follows.

...redeunt iam gramina campis

arboribusque comae;

The verb here is redeunt from redere (to return).

To assist with learning vocabularly, the Master might transpose the text of the ode into comparable English-Latin structures.

gramina redeunt campis-grass returns to the fields

comae (redeunt) arboribus.-leaves (return) to the trees.

Putting it back in its original form, the student can appreciate how the verb works both phrases. The effect of the verb in the first phrase, gramina redeund campis, drives the second comae arboribus, but does so in a way that accomplishes both economy and grace. Hughes calls attention the the importance of the location and arrangement of words by the Latin authors noting that: " this is of such consequence that sometimes, if a single word is put out of its place, the whole thought seems to lose its force and fall flat."

These first two lines, though brief, have sufficed to introduce us to some essentials of the prelection, the traditional method of jesuit education. A definition of the prelection could be "the explanation beforehand of the lesson which the student has to study." The prelection has been called the most essential feature of the ratio studiorum, the traditional Jesuit guide for instruction.

In prelection, the master would of course instruct on the background of the poem and its author. In his 1892 publication, Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits, Hughes referring to the Jesuit Master, offers this description, believed to reflect common practice at the time:

"First, he will sketch, in the briefest way, the meaning of the author, and the connection between what has gone before and what is now to be explained. Then he will give a version of the period literally.

Diffugere, a work that nineteenth century poet A. E. Houseman called the most beautiful poem in ancient literature, inspires many comments on its meaning. The ode seems to say that if one is truly appreciative of nature, truly aware of the change of season, then one ends up with a poignant sense of what follows; one knows that what comes will not last. To fully greet Spring requires courage, not just hope.

These are of course mature thoughts. When a child begins a Summer vacation it seems like it will last forever. As we mature the sense of time grows on us. Summer is a measure of months; we feel the passing of years. Life is something limited, terminable. Diffugere is certainly a later work of Horace. It was in Book Four of the Odes, written sometime after the Centennial Hymn perhaps in 13 or 14 BC. To the minds of many, the Golden age of Latin literature ends with Horace. He survived long enough to note some diminishment of the promise of the great Augustan restoration. A hint of bitterness leaks through of the poem, an almost unmistakable suggestion that nothing better lies in store with the accumulation of seasons:

“Quis scit an adacient hodiernae crastina summae
tempora di superi?

Cuncta manus avidas fugient heredis, amico
quae dederis animo.”


“ Who knows whether the high Gods will add more tomorrows
to the sum of todays?”

Devote the whole sheaf to your own sweet will and thwart
the avid hands of your heir.”


The Jesuit master would not likely let this legitimate expression of the human condition go unexploited. The precepts of Pere Chossat in his book on the Jesuits of Avignon would bid the master: “Speak of God, in class, every chance you get; there will be no lack of opportunities if only you seize hold of them.” And here, in this poem, in the setting of the power and gracefulness of Horace, the opportunity arises to examine this legitimate human condition: the mortality of man, its irrevocability, its meaninglessness. This emptiness can be contrasted with the Divine destiny of the Christian soul. The attention invested here will prepare the student for greater appreciation of the emptiness found in the Confessions of St Augustine, in the writings of Thomas a Kempis and even in the work of Satre and contemporary authors.

When he returns home at the end of the school-day, what does the student find remaining after attending the prelection? Taking just the briefest look at his notes and readings, he will find some familiarity if not attraction with the poem discussed. He knew, at some deep interior way he knew that he had some intimacy with a great work. Much more effort was yet to come. Still, he made a good beginning at it all; and so have you for having read this far.

Chris Jones' article can be found at:
http://www.latinlanguage.us/blog/index.php?blog=2&title=ligdiffugere_nives_l_ig&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1