Gilmore Hilton, “The Sage of Simplex Pond,” likes to skim through books by ancient Roman authors. The verbatim translations almost never present hurdles; the moral messages sometimes offer barriers. Such was the case when the country store owner read, “Ubi leges valent, ibi populous potest valere.”

To decode the sentence was easy: “Where the laws are strong; there the people are able to be strong.” His interpretation of “valent” was “strong,” and for valere he wrote “to be strong.” Not pleased with his own rendering, he researched the word “valere” and found the following: “to be healthy, to be vigorous, to take effect, to have influence, to be powerful, to be worthy, and to say good-bye.” Which should he select?

Hilton knows that some Latin words have no definitive translation into English. For example, “vir” may mean husband, hero, man, lover or soldier. “Amare” means to love or to like – a big difference in English. In order to translate “valent” and “valere,” he researched the governments of antiquity. He concluded that laws were written to provide protection, to allow people to move freely without fear, to permit those to realize their potential and pursue their dreams; finally, not to fear the government.

Gilmore decided to be effective, a law must be all of these. Still puzzled, he took his riddle to Professor Nathan Dane, a popular classical scholar at the University of Maine. With a bottle of bold dark wine between them, the two litterateurs agreed on the following: “Where the laws are effective, there the people are able to be effective.”

The bottle of wine was empty, but the translators were satisfied. “In vino, veritas” (In wine, truth).

Morton Soule teaches Latin at Cape Elizabeth High School. He can be reached at mortsoule@gmail.com.