Si vis pacem, para bellum

It’s a very famous phrase, of course: ‘if you desire peace, prepare for war’. It comes with its own dedicated Wikipedia page, that tells us its earliest form is from Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus’s tract De Re Militari (late 4th or early 5th century AD), in which the actual phrasing is Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. From that same Wikipedia page I learn that the phrase is the title of a 2020 album by Seether, that German arms-maker Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken (DWM) used Parabellum as a motto, whence various guns acquired the name (eg the 7.65mm Parabellum and 9mm ‘Parabellum cartridges’). The page also includes the above image, a relief over the entrance of the Cultural Center of the Armies in Madrid. We could add that John Wick: Chapter 3, the 2019 sequel moviefilm, was called Parabellum. Like I say: a very famous phrase. But it’s wrong. I don’t mean wrong in its sentiment (although arguably it is); I mean — wrong in its Latin.

The ‘original’ Vegetian version at least makes sense: praeparet is the 3rd person subjunctive, such that the phrase means ‘so, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war’. But the more common iteration, wherever it comes from, goes wrong. The ‘para’ part of para bellum is the second person singular imperative of paro (‘I arrange, order, contrive, design; I provide, furnish, prepare’) — so: [you must] prepare! — just as vis is the second person singular indicative of volo (‘I wish, I want’).

There are two things wrong with this. One is that the statement is not — surely! — addressed to a single individual: if you, as one person, wish for peace, then you, entirely on your own, must prepare for war. At least the second part of this ought, surely, to be in the plural form: we prepare for war, collectively, after all; we don’t leave it up to a single individual to defend the realm — even if that individual is John Wick. And I’d say the first part should be a plural form too: si vultis pacem, parate bellum.

But there’s another issue. Latin conditional clauses, such as this, come in three varieties: open conditionals, when the truth of the condition is unknown (eg ‘if it is true that…’); ideal conditionals, in which the speaker imagines a situation or event which might occur in the future (‘if this were to happen…’); and unreal conditionals, that refer to events or situations that are positively known to be contrary to fact (‘if Brexit had never happened…’) Now, it is true that open conditionals usually (but not always) take the indicative, but ideal conditionals take the subjunctive. Look again at the sentiment here: isn’t it clearly one such?

So the phrase ought to be: si velitis pacem, paretis bellum. This seems to me not just more correct in its Latinity, but more euphonious and pleasing too.

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[Postscript. 2nd April] I was curious where the Si vis pacem, para bellum form of the phrase came from, and why it had replaced the better-phrased Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum version. As to the latter question, I suppose it has the advantage of brevity. And a Google Books search on it reveals that it has been very widely quoted, by everyone from Jeremy Bentham to Helveticus. The earliest usage I found was 1575, in this book ‘On Fiefs’ (or ‘Of Fees’) by Jacobinus de Sancto Georgio:

It doubtless goes back earlier than this.

Incidentally, the date of publication on this title page is given not as MDLXXV but ‘MDLXXIIIII’:

Why not go the whole hog and date it ‘MDLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII’?