para bellum Phrase
Meaning:
prepare for war
Comment
From "Si vis pacem para bellum": if you want peace, prepare for war—if a country is ready for war, its enemies are less likely to attack. Usually used to support a policy of peace through strength (deterrence). In antiquity, however, the Romans viewed peace as the aftermath of successful conquest through war, so in this sense the proverb identifies war as the means through which peace will be achieved.
Word-for-word analysis:
A much more detailed analysis with detection of relationships or clauses can be found in our Sentence Analysis! Try it out!
More Information
Embed this entry on your siteVocabulary Groups:
Find more Latin words with our Advanced Search functionality.
"-" is the shortcut for "this form does not exist"
For Students
Most phrases were taken from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons License.
