homo homini lupus
Man is a wolf to man — people are dangerous to each other.
“After a week of watching the news he muttered homo homini lupus and turned it off.”
“The lecture used homo homini lupus as its epigraph and spent an hour arguing against it.”
“Hobbes made homo homini lupus the foundation of an argument for absolute authority, which is a considerable weight to hang on a line spoken by a merchant in a Roman farce who simply did not want to lend money to somebody he had never met.”
The line comes from a comedy. In Plautus's Asinaria a merchant refuses to hand money to a stranger, and explains: a man is a wolf to a man, not a man, when he doesn't know what sort he is.
That last clause matters and is almost always dropped. Plautus is not saying that people are wolves; he is saying that people are wolves to strangers, which is a claim about the absence of information rather than about human nature.
Thomas Hobbes quoted the shortened version in 1651 and made it a slogan for the state of nature, and it has been used that way ever since — usually by someone arguing that only force or law keeps people from each other's throats.
Horace, Virgil and Cicero, still quoted in the original.
- 01
carpe diem (idiom)
Seize the day — make use of today rather than counting on tomorrow.
Horace, Odes 1.11.
- 02
tempus fugit (idiom)
Time flies — said when far more of it has gone than you expected.
Virgil, Georgics.
- 03
memento mori (idiom)
A reminder that you are going to die, and that this should change how you spend the time.
The warning in the chariot.
- 04
in vino veritas (idiom)
People say what they actually think once they have had a drink.
Pliny the Elder.
- 05
festina lente (idiom)
Make haste slowly — move quickly, but never faster than you can do it properly.
Augustus' favourite motto.
- 06
to err is human (idiom)
Making mistakes is part of being a person, so a mistake alone is not a scandal.
Cicero, then Pope.
Last updated August 3, 2026