Seen in passing in a Salt Lake Tribune piece on the upcoming Nobel Prizes:

The prize for medicine or physiology bears a Latin inscription quoting Virgil's Aeneid, "Inventas vitam juvat excoluisse per artes," which translates literally to: "Inventions enhance life which is beautified through art."

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John McMahon scripsit:

The "quote" is from Aen. 663:

"inuentas aut qui uitam excoluere per artis"

" ... or who have ennobled life through arts discovered."

describing those in the Elysian Fields.

Lombardo has:

" ... those who enriched life with inventions."

But there's no Latinist at the SLT apparently:

"The prize for medicine or physiology bears a Latin inscription quoting Virgil's Aeneid, 'Inventas vitam juvat excoluisse per artes,' which translates literally to: 'Inventions enhance life which is beautified through art.'"

"Translates literally," my ass.

Inventas goes with artes ... and is not the subject, of course.

Iuvat has to be impersonal: "it delights, helps"; excoluisse depends on it and has vitam as its object.

I'd suggest something like (literally / clunkily):

"It is of benefit to have ennobled life through skills having been found."

Bad ... but at least close to the original.

Dexter Hoyos scripsit:

So the Salt Lake Tribune thinks that

<< The prize for medicine or physiology bears a Latin inscription quoting Virgil's Aeneid, “Inventas vitam juvat excoluisse per artes,” which translates literally to: “Inventions enhance life which is beautified through art.” >>


Gloom. Is this how things go in Utah? I thought the aphorism should mean

It is a joy to enhance life through developed [or, in my environment, ‘researched’] skills.

I suppose one could render ‘artes’ as “art(s)”, but the first rule in Hoyos’ senior Language Translation catechism is: Never use the English derivative of a Latin word unless (i) it’s a technical term like consul or prefect, or else (ii) your back is to the wall and civilisation trembles on the edge and you have only five minutes left. [And (iii) you do realise that 70 per cent of the time it’s going to be wrong anyway.]

The Tribune obviously prefers the long-sanctioned process of (a) grab each word in turn as it comes, (b) give it the closest-sounding English match, (c) then try to fiddle around with the result until you get something that at least is grammatical.