I am trying to decide what may have been the original of a sundial motto
of which about half is missing. It is in Italian and as far as I can
read it is
IO NON ebro {about 30-35 letters missing}ans LANgU{about 10 missing}cARE
LA CAMPANO IL FERRO MA RISPLENDE SOLE
where lower case is uncertain (generally the top part of the letters
remains). I have photographs which show enough of a few other letters
to prove or disprove a suggestion, perhaps, but not to add much certain
information to the phrase.
I get a general idea of "I'm not a drunken feeble thing dependent on the
iron clock but on the majestic Sun" but not the detail. It is written
in a circle around a stone base which has weathered badly since 1908, so
the starting point might of course be wrong (and possibly missing)
though there is the suspicion of a dot after SOLE. Inside it are two
easy enough mottoes in Latin and Greek
HORA DIEM DEPASCIT EUNDO, and
(P)ANTA ANAPHEREI CHRONOS (transliterating from Greek)
I guess the Italian may be a well-known phrase somewhere, but not to me!
Can anyone help, please?
Andrew James
BSS member 629.
I found out about the mailing list from "sundials on the Internet"
