Festina Lente

Monday 5 January was the beginning of the first full working week of 2015. Although we are retired, regular activities resume:

gym;
meditation group;
an Andy Warhol exhibition at the Tate Gallery, Albert Docks, Liverpool;
Latin class next week.

(We have completed the Christmas season but meanwhile our neighbors are lighting their houses to celebrate the birth of the Prophet.)

The class reminds me that I found an unexpected and unexplained Latin phrase in the van Rijn story, "Hiding Place." An engineer examining a captured alien spaceship advises one of his men:

"'...remember, festina lente.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (New York, 2009), p. 588.

The captain asks, "'For fear of wrecking the ship?'" (ibid.)

- which may be booby-trapped.

But we are not told precisely what the phrase means, which is "make haste slowly." In other words, work as quickly and efficiently as possible but without rushing, cutting corners or taking risks. I happened to understand that one but might not have. English dialogue is occasionally peppered with such Latin phrases. Are they simply adopted unchanged by Anglic-speakers and for how long will they be preserved? By the end of the Technic History, Anglic itself is referred to as an ancient language. Poul Anderson's complete works display a vast panorama of the Roman Empire and several successor civilizations.