https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq9JYHLdXrs
Just because I made a video about this and where it comes from, and so on, for my Latin channel, though the video is in English this time.
Documentation:
https://internetkindness.com/Latin/MementoMori.pdf
Tu fui ego eris
“You will be me, I was you,” (=”I was once like you, you will one day be like me.”)
Used as a sort of spell in the game Silent Hill 3. Heather speaks the words and a monster which had been
blocking a door disappears.
This and the following Latin phrases were used on tombs, headstones, etc. and also in memento mori
art. You can imagine these alongside an engraving of a skull or similar.
A longer version of the same:
Quod tu es, ego fui; quod nunc sum, et tu eris
“What you are, I was; what I am now, you, too, will be.”
Other versions add things like viātor (“traveller”):
Viātor, viātor, quod tu es, ego fui. Quod nunc sum, et tu eris
Eram quod es, eris quod sum
Again, “I was [once] what you are, you will be what I am.”
Eram (1st person imperfect of “sum,” thus “I used to be”) quod es (“what you are”), eris (2nd person
future, “you will be”) quod sum (“what I am”)
Fui quod sis
“I have been what you are”
Fui (1st person perfect, “I was”) quod sis (2nd person present subjunctive, “you are”)
Sum quod eris
“I am what you will be”
Hodie Mihi. Cras Tibi.
“Today, me. Tomorrow, you.”
Ovid phrased this as follows:
Id quod fuimus aut sumus, nōn crās erimus.”
Id quod fuimus (“that which we were”) aut sumus (“or are [now]”), nōn crās erimus (“we will not be
tomorrow”
...