Davus sum, not Oedipus: the phrase translated literally means Davo, not Oedipus (Terenzio, Andria, 2, 24).
"Davo" here means a poor naive slave; "Oedipus," the king of Tebe, a sublime and intelligent person.
Attach this sentence when you want to make your own weakness as a pretext for not hiring or performing too high or difficult assignments. Curiositàmodifica wikitesto Dante, in the Divine Comedy, uses a similar construction, when, before facing the difficulty of the prospective business, crossing the three realms of the afterlife, he says: I'm not Aeneas, I'm not Paulo (Hell II, 33)
Aeneas and Paul are, in fact, characters who have traveled to the afterlife and then returned to Earth. Voices correlateemodify wikitesto
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