O tempora, o mores! is a Latin phrase that translates literally as Oh the times! Oh the customs! but more accurately as Oh what times! Oh what customs! It is often printed as O tempora! O mores!, with the addition of exclamation marks, which were not used in Classical Latin. The phrase was used by the Roman orator Cicero in four different speeches, of which the earliest is the speech against Verres of 70 BC. But the most famous instance is in the second paragraph of his First Oration against Catiline, a speech made in 63 BC, when Cicero was Consul or head of state, denouncing his political enemy Catiline. In this passage, Cicero uses it as an expression of his disgust, to deplore the sorry condition of the Roman republic, in which a citizen could plot against the state and not be punished for it. The passage in question reads as follows: Cicero is frustrated that, despite all of the evidence that has been compiled against Catiline, who has been conspiring to overthrow the Roman government and assassinate Cicero himself, and in spite of the fact that the Senate has given senatus consultum ultimum, Catiline has not yet been executed. Cicero goes on to describe various times throughout Roman history where consuls have killed conspirators with even less evidence, sometimes – in the case of former consul Lucius Opimius' slaughter of Gaius Gracchus – based only on quasdam seditionum suspiciones, "certain suspicions of insurrection".
Cultural references
In later classical times Cicero's exclamation had already become famous, being quoted for example in Seneca the Elder's Suasoriae: Martial's poem 9.70 also makes reference to the 1st Catilinarian oration: In modern times this exclamation is still used to criticise present-day attitudes and trends, but sometimes is used humorously or wryly. An aquatint print of 1787 by Samuel Alken after Thomas Rowlandson in the British Royal Collection entitled O Tempora, O Mores! shows two old men surprised to find three drunken young men asleep round a table. Edgar Allan Poe used the phrase as the title and subject of his poem, "O, Tempora! O, Mores!", in which he criticized the manners of the men of his time. It is pronounced by a drunken poet in the 1936 movieMr. Deeds Goes to Town. The expression is used in the play and movie Inherit the Wind, a fictional account of the Scopes Trial, when it is uttered by the cynical reporter, Hornbeck, referring to the town's backward attitude towards enlightened thinking. The musical comediansFlanders and Swann used the term when Flanders proclaimed "O tempora, O mores - Oh Times, Oh Daily Mirror!". It is also one of several Latin phrases found in Asterix and Obelix comics published in the 1960s and 1970s. The phrase is also used in the Doctor Who serial, The Romans . In November 2014, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas used the opening of Cicero's 1st Catilinarian on the U.S. Senate floor, with only a few words changed, to criticize President Barack Obama's use of executive orders. In his version of the speech, which follows the translation of C. D. Yonge, Senator Cruz translated the phrase O tempora! O mores! as 'Shame on the age and on its lost principles!'
