Meaning & Analysis
Over the long course of a century, a family's social standing can dramatically change, rising from the humble status of a laborer (symbolized by the plow or wheelbarrow) to the noble status of a warrior or aristocrat (symbolized by the spear or banner). The 1598 quotation suggests this is a cyclical process.
Insights
Social Mobility and Impermanence
The proverb illustrates the impermanence of social status and the potential for dramatic shifts in fortune over several generations. It suggests that no class position is permanent, as families can rise from poverty to power, and implicitly, fall back again.
The Cyclical Nature of History
It reflects the cyclical nature of history and society, where periods of peace and agricultural labor ('plow') can give way to eras of conflict and military power ('spear'), transforming a family's role and status in the process.
Transformation Over Time
The proverb serves as a commentary on the slow, generational pace of significant social change. True transformation in status is not an overnight event but a long-term process that unfolds over a vast expanse of time.
Historical Social Structure
The proverb reflects the feudal and early modern European social structure, which was fundamentally divided between the 'laboratores' (those who work, symbolized by the plow) and the 'bellatores' (those who fight, symbolized by the spear and banner). The proverb encapsulates the potential, however slow, for movement between these estates.
The Wheel of Fortune
This proverb embodies the concept of 'fortuna gubernans mundum' (fortune governs the world), a common theme in medieval and Renaissance thought. It suggests that social hierarchies are not divinely fixed forever but are subject to the turning wheel of fortune over generations, offering both hope to the lowly and a warning to the powerful.
Psychology of Dynasty
The proverb speaks to a long-term psychological perspective on status and ambition. It tempers both despair and arrogance by framing individual lives within a much larger dynastic cycle, suggesting that a family's ultimate fate is realized over centuries, not in a single lifetime.
Intergenerational Mobility
The proverb's sentiment resonates with the modern sociological concept of intergenerational mobility, where a family's socioeconomic status changes across generations. It serves as a pre-modern articulation of the idea that class is not entirely static.
Rhetorical Devices
Antithesis
The proverb's power comes from the stark juxtaposition of the 'plow' (humble, agrarian labor) and the 'spear' (noble, military power), creating a vivid and memorable image of social transformation.
Symbolism
The 'plow' and the 'spear' are not just objects but powerful symbols representing entire social classes, ways of life, and sources of power (agriculture vs. warfare).
Temporal Framing
The phrase 'a hundred years' functions as a form of temporal hyperbole, representing a long, multi-generational span of time rather than a literal century, emphasizing the epic scale of the change.
Transcription
Quotations
Once in an hundred yeares from the plough to the speare, and from the speare to the plough again.
En cent ans civiere, en cent ans banniere. Sometimes a wheelebarrow, sometimes a banner; those that are poore now, may be potent hereafter; no family holds very long at one stay.
In a hundred years a wheelbarrow may be a banner.
Cross References
- See Sm., p. 243.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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