Whats the Latin for Rats Deserting a Sinking Ship?
What’s the Latin for Rats Deserting a Sinking Ship?Is there a Latin expression like “rats deserting a sinking ship”?Answer: Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, wrote about mice deserting a building when it was in imminent danger of collapse:Ruinis inminentibus musculi praemigrant. When ruin is imminent, the little rodents move away beforehand. Book VIII.103 PROGNOSTICS OF DANGER DERIVED FROM ANIMALS Editor/translator John Bostock says (1) Cicero alludes to this in his letters to Atticus and (2) Aelian writes about this in Anim. Nat. B. vi. c. 41; B. xi. c. 19; and Var. Hist. B. i. c. 11. Deserting a falling house or sinking ship is an expression used to describe people abandoning a lost cause.
