O tempora, o mores!
Genuine
Yes. In Against Catiline (63 BC), First Oration, section 2 (In Catilinam I.1.2).
Found word for word by program in the Latin original and in Charles Duke Yonge’s English translation (1856).
The wording people share comes from a later translation; Yonge’s words are underlined below.
- Work
- Against Catiline (In Catilinam), 63 BC
- Where
- First Oration, section 2 (In Catilinam I.1.2)
- Found at
- Paragraph 2 of the Latin text, 3 of the English
- Translation
- Charles Duke Yonge, 1856
Researched by AI; checked by program against the full text on 31 October 2026. Editorial review: pending. How we check
On the page
[…] What is there that you did last night, what the night before— where is it that you were—who was there that you summoned to meet you—what design was there which was adopted by you, with which you think that any one of us is unacquainted?
Shame on the age and on its principles! The senate is aware of these things; the consul sees them; and yet this man lives. Lives! aye, he comes even into the senate. He takes a part in the public deliberations;1 he is watching and marking down and checking off for slaughter every individual among us. And we, gallant men that we are, think that we are doing our duty to the republic if we keep out of the way of his frenzied attacks. […]
[…] Patere tua consilia non sentis, constrictam iam horum omnium scientia teneri coniurationem tuam non vides? Quid proxima, quid superiore nocte egeris, ubi fueris, quos convocaveris, quid consilii ceperis, quem nostrum ignorare arbitraris? [2] O tempora, o mores! Senatus haec intellegit. Consul videt; hic tamen vivit. Vivit? immo vero etiam in senatum venit, fit publici consilii particeps, notat et designat oculis ad caedem unum quemque nostrum. Nos autem fortes viri satis facere rei publicae videmur, si istius furorem ac tela vitemus. […]
What? […]
[3] An vero vir amplissumus, P. Scipio, pontifex maximus, Ti. […]
The senate once passed a decree that Lucius Opimius, the consul, should take care that the republic suffered no injury. Not one night elapsed. […]
[4] II. Decrevit quondam senatus, ut L. Opimius consul videret, ne quid res publica detrimenti caperet; nox nulla intercessit; interfectus est propter quasdam seditionum suspiciones C. […]
The scene
Cicero, consul in 63 BC, has called the senate on 8 November, two nights after a meeting of the conspirators, and Catiline has had the nerve to attend. The speech opens with ‘Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?’ and a list of what Cicero knows of the conspiracy; then comes the outcry: the senate knows, the consul sees, and yet the man lives and even sits among them, marking each of them out for slaughter. Cicero goes on to say Catiline should long ago have been put to death and urges him to leave Rome, which he did that night.
What it means
An exclamation of outrage at an age that lets a known enemy of the state sit unpunished in the senate: ‘what times, what ways of behaving!’ The scandal Cicero names is impunity, that everyone knows and nothing is done.
Often misread
Now quoted, often with a smile, as a general grumble about declining manners or the young. In the speech it is not a complaint about fashion or morals in general but a consul’s charge that a conspirator plotting murder walks free among his intended victims. ‘Mores’ are the ways and customs of the age rather than private morals; Yonge’s 1856 translation, quoted here, gives the line as ‘Shame on the age and on its principles!’
Also shared as
- The form on posters and social mediaO tempora! O mores! The usual printed form, with two exclamation marks, as Wikiquote gives it under Against Catiline, Speech I, with the translations ‘O, the times! O, the morals!’ and ‘O the times! O, the customs!’. Where it was seen
Topics
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Sources
- thelatinlibrary.com/cicero/cat1.shtml#2 (Latin text, section 2)
- raw.githubusercontent.com/PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit/master/data/phi0474/phi013/phi0474.phi013.perseus-eng2.xml (C. D. Yonge, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, vol. 2, Bohn 1856, as digitised by Perseus; Yonge’s argument gives the date of the meeting as 8 November)
- en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cicero (Against Catiline, Speech I)
Cite it
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Against Catiline (63 BC), First Oration, section 2 (In Catilinam I.1.2), translated by Charles Duke Yonge (1856). Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/o-tempora-o-mores/ (31 October 2026).
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