“Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutant!”
Translation of the title from Latin into English: “Hail Caesar! They who are about to die salute you!” This is the title of a coment in Greek that was posted by Giorgos Eleftheriou on his timeline on Facebook regarding Covid-19 in Cyprus. Reading Giorgos’ text will probably enligthen you as to why he chose this title. We publish Giorgos’ comment with a translation into English which is something that we are planning to do often for the benefit of those of you in our UK Cypriot community who are interested in our ethnic languages. We hope to do the same for the benefit of our Turkish Cypriot readers if and when we have a volunteer translator.
Hail Caesar! Those who are about to die salute you!
The leniency and understanding shown by the MM to the Government’s handling of the coronavirus problem as well as the pride apparently felt by civil servants, government officials, chairmen, ministers are impressive.
It took them three whole weeks to take steps, when the virus had already invaded our home, not before, but they say they had taken steps promptly.
Instead of looking where the virus was coming from, they were looking elsewhere, but now they are proud about it.
The public hospitals, traumatised, disrupted, incapacitated, have been left to struggle alone against the virus but everyone are happy.
The public hospitals threw themselves in the struggle without staff but everything was fine.
The public hospitals threw themselves in a war without equipment, without consumables, but we are told we were well prepared.
Bearers came from England and went freely into the hospitals spreading the virus to patients and doctors, but we had taken all necessary precautions.
The castles of health became incubators of the virus, whole hospital sections and whole hospitals had paralysed, but all was going well.
They appeared on channels and gave us wrong instructions, firstly not to wear masks, then to take communion without fear. Later they appeared and told us otherwise, but nobody complained.
We meant, they said, only where it was crowded. Why, what did we mean?
Therefore, everything was done well. Everything was done promptly, everything was fine. Some little mistakes are forgiven.
The media praise, approve, cheer, applaud.
[Translated from Greek by Ellinika Greek Translators]
Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutant!
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