Title says it all. Saw it on an old poster and haven’t been able to google my worries away. Anyone know what it means?
It means: [He/she/it] was and [he/she/it] will be.
You can’t tell the gender of the subject with just the verbs.
Thanks for your speedy reply. I believe in the context it is “it”.
I was all set to leap in, but fuit Ilium.
In Latin, “fuit” is the past (perfect) tense and “erit” the future tense of the verb “to be”, in the third person. So, “he/she/it”.
Using “fuit” instead of “erat” (the imperfect past tense) suggests either a one-time thing (like “he said”…), or more lyrically the finality of being in the past, as in Malacandra’s quote of “fuit Ilium” (Troy has been - i.e., is no more, a quote from Virgil’s Aeneid). If it was meant to mean something like “Marcus was a farmer” it would be in the imperfect tense, Marcus agricola erat.
So I’d say “fuit et erit” most accurately means “what has been, and shall be again”.
Iä Cthulhu fhtagn!