In later classical times Cicero's exclamation had already become famous, being quoted for example in
Seneca the Elder's :
Martial's poem "To Caecilianus" (
Epigrams §9.70) also makes reference to the
First Catilinarian Oration: In modern times this exclamation is still used to criticize present-day attitudes and trends, but sometimes is used humorously or wryly. It was used as the title of an epigram on
Joseph Justus Scaliger by the Welsh epigrammatist
John Owen, in his popular
Epigrammata, 1613 Lib. I. epigram 16
O Tempora! O Mores!: :
Scaliger annosi correxit tempora mundi: :
Quis iam, qui mores corrigat, alter erit? Translated by Harvey, 1677, as: :"Learn’d
Scaliger The Worlds deformed Times :Reformed: Who shall Now reform Mens Crimes?" Even in the eighteenth century it began being used this way: an
aquatint print of 1787 by
Samuel Alken after
Thomas Rowlandson in the British Royal Collection entitled shows two old men surprised to find three young drunk men who had fallen asleep together at a table.
Edgar Allan Poe used the phrase as the title and subject of his poem,
"O, Tempora! O, Mores!" (≈1825), in which he criticized the manners of the men of his time. It is pronounced by a drunken poet in the 1936 movie
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. The expression is used in both the
play (1955) and
movie (1960)
Inherit the Wind, a fictional account of the
Scopes Trial, in which it is uttered by the cynical reporter, Hornbeck, referring to the town's attitude towards
Darwin's theory of evolution. The musical comedians
Flanders and Swann used the term when Flanders proclaimed " – Oh
Times, Oh
Daily Mirror!" (1964). It is also one of several Latin phrases found in
Asterix and Obelix comics published in the 1960s and 1970s. The phrase is also used in the Doctor Who serial,
The Romans (1964). In November 2014, senator
Ted Cruz of Texas used the opening of Cicero's First Catilinarian Oration on the U.S. Senate floor, with only a few words changed, to criticize President
Barack Obama's use of
executive orders. In his version of the speech, which followed the translation of Charles Duke Yonge, senator Cruz rendered the phrase as "Shame on the age and on its lost principles!"; and in place of Catiline, then-President Obama. == See also ==