Salve,

Here's the real deal re Ponti's "UGA DELENDA EST" battle cry:

1) (First, from Wikipedia): Carthago delenda est, meaning Carthage must be destroyed, is a famous Latin phrase. The sentence was a clarion call in the Roman Republic in the latter years of the Punic Wars.

Although the Romans were successful in the first two Punic Wars, as they vied for dominance with the seafaring Phoenician city-state of Carthage in North Africa (modern day Tunisia), they did suffer a number of humiliations and damaging reverses. This built into an attitude of seeking vengeance and total victory that was expressed in "Carthago delenda est."

Even though no ancient source gives the phrase exactly as it is usually quoted in modern times (either "Carthago delenda est" or the fuller "Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam"), something like this wording can be inferred from several ancient sources, which state that the Roman statesman Cato the Elder would always end his speeches with some variation of this expression.

The attitude of total warfare toward Carthage resulted in the utter destruction of the city at the end of the Third Punic War. The city was ploughed over and surviving inhabitants sold into slavery. Historians dispute whether the fields were sown with salt, but the very notion is indicative of the vengeance wrought.

The term is sometimes adapted in modern usage in a learned reference to total warfare, and has been used as the title for Alan Wilkins's 2007 play on the Third Punic War.

2) (Now Ponti): The closest approximation to "The University of Georgia at Athens Must Be Destroyed" in Latin would be "Universitas Georgiae Athenis Delenda Est." Because there was no Georgia at the time Cato lived, I have treated Georgia like the Latin noun "Italia" which is feminine (LOL). Georgiae is in the genitive case, and Athenis is in the locative case (interestingly enough, Athens is a plural noun in Latin), and the "must be destroyed" part of the clause is created by combining the gerundive (also called the future passive participle which, of course, agrees in case, number, and gender with the subject) with a form of esse (to be) to create the passive periphrastic construction/conjugation. Universitas is a nominative, singular, feminine word, and the "a" in "delenda" agrees with it. Of final interest is the fact that because Athenis is a plural 1st declension noun, the locative corresponds to the ablative case. Were the Latin word for Athens a singular 1st declension noun, the locative would correspond to the genitive.

Because Latin is an inflected language, the order of words in a Latin sentence really does not matter. Don't let a Poodle who can read and who has rushed to the Foreign Words and Phrases part of her dictionary tell you that one must write Delenda est UGA just because dictionaries frequently state that Cato's clarion call was Delenda est Carthago. Typically in a Latin sentence the verb is placed at the end and, personally, I just relish the way the clause sounds when I scream: UGA DELENDA EST!

Vale,

Pontifigator Maximus aka Scourge of UGA

PS:

Young VSers, you had to have been there in the bad old days (with so much almost always at stake--like THIS WEEKEND), to truly understand why we old fart VSers hate UGA "even more" than Cato the Elder hated the Carthaginians.

Just trust us on this one.