tonitruum

Latin noun

Last edited: 2025-01-20
Primary meaning thunder
Literal translation thunder
Variants
tonitruum
Edited by
thunder meteorological phenomenon

Nonne perspicuum est ex prima admiratione hominum, quod tonitrua iactusque fulminum extimuissent, credidisse ea efficere rerum omnium praepotentem Iovem?

‘It is perfectly evident that, out of the wonder and fear excited in primitive man by lightning and thunderbolts, sprang his belief that those phenomena were caused by omnipotent Jove.’

— Cicero, De Divinatione 2.18

Genre: philosophy
Provenance: Rome
Date: 44 BC

Cicero. On Old Age. On Friendship. On Divination. Translated by W. A. Falconer. Loeb Classical Library 154. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923. 416-417

Cite this entry
APA (7th)
Meinhardt, K. (2025). tonitruum (Lemma #2740). The ZODIAC Glossary: A Cross-Cultural Glossary of Ancient Astral Science. https://zodiacglossary.github.io/lemma/2740/
Chicago (Author-Date)
Meinhardt, K. (2025). tonitruum (Lemma #2740). The ZODIAC Glossary: A Cross-Cultural Glossary of Ancient Astral Science. https://zodiacglossary.github.io/lemma/2740/
MLA (9th)
Meinhardt, K. (2025). tonitruum (Lemma #2740). The ZODIAC Glossary: A Cross-Cultural Glossary of Ancient Astral Science. https://zodiacglossary.github.io/lemma/2740/
Harvard
Meinhardt, K. (2025) tonitruum (Lemma #2740), The ZODIAC Glossary: A Cross-Cultural Glossary of Ancient Astral Science. Available at: https://zodiacglossary.github.io/lemma/2740/ (Accessed: December 1, 2025).
BibTeX 
@misc{zodiac2740,
	note = {[Online; accessed 2025-12-01]},
	author = {Meinhardt, Kierán},
	year = {2025},
	title = {tonitruum ({Lemma} #2740)},
	url = {https://zodiacglossary.github.io/lemma/2740/},
	howpublished = {https://zodiacglossary.github.io/lemma/2740/},
}