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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal, variously translated as "Who will guard the guards?", "Who watches the watchmen?", "Who shall watch the watchers themselves?", or similar.

The essential problem was first posed by Plato in the Republic, his work on government and morality. The perfect society as described by Socrates, the main character of the work (see Socratic dialogue), relies on laborers, slaves and tradesmen. The guardian class is to protect the city. The question is put to Socrates, "Who will guard the guardians?" or, "Who will protect us against the protectors?". Plato's answer to this is that "They will guard themselves against themselves. We must tell the guardians a noble lie. The noble lie will inform them that they are better than those they serve and it is therefore their responsibility to guard and protect those lesser than themselves. We will instill in them a distaste for power or privilege, they will rule because they believe it right, not because they desire it."

The saying has since been used by many people to ponder the insoluble question of where ultimate power should reside. The way in which modern democracies attempt to solve this problem is in the separation of powers. Never give ultimate power to any one group; the executive, legislative, or judicial; have the interests of each compete and conflict. Each group will then find it in its best interest to impede the functioning of the rest and this will keep ultimate power under constant struggle and, thereby, out of any one group's hands.

Contents 1 Origin 2 Uses in pop culture 3 See also 4 External links 5 References

[edit] Origin

The phrase as it is normally quoted in Latin comes from the Satires of Juvenal, the 1st/2nd century Roman satirist. Although in its modern usage the phrase has universal, timeless applications to concepts such as tyrannical governments and uncontrollably oppressive dictatorships, in context within Juvenal's poem it refers to the impossibility of enforcing moral behavior on women when the enforcers (custodes) are corruptible (Satire 6.346–348):

However, modern editors regard these three lines as an interpolation inserted into the text. In 1899 an undergraduate student at Oxford, E.O. Winstedt, discovered a manuscript (now known as O, for Oxoniensis) containing 34 lines which some believe to have been omitted from other texts of Juvenal's poem.^[1] The debate on this manuscript is ongoing, but even if the poem is not by Juvenal, it is likely that it preserves the original context of the phrase.^[2] If so, the original context is as follows (O 29–33):

[edit] Uses in pop culture

• "Who's gonna investigate the man who investigates the man who investigates me" was the refrain of "The Investigator's Song", words and music by Harold Rome, written for performance by Zero Mostel at a 1947 Progressive Citizens of America meeting in Madison Square Garden, New York City, and kept alive through the anti-Communist investigations of the 1950s in a song collection popular with the progressive-liberal folksong culture in the U.S.A. The song's final line: "One more problem puzzles me; Pardon my strange whim. But who's gonna investigate the man who investigates the man who investigates... him?" (ref: The People's Song Book, Waldemar Hille, ed., Boni & Gaer, 1948; reprinted annually by Oak Publications, 1959–1964.)

• "Who will spy on the spies?" was a line from the second episode of the TV adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
• "Who watches the watchers?", the popular translation of "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?", was used by Alan Moore as the inspiration for the title of his acclaimed comic book series Watchmen, in which the phrase is translated "Who watches the watchmen?"
• In the episode of the television series Seinfeld, an enthused Kramer remarked of his new emergency band scanner 'I'm watching the watchers, Jerry!'
• "Who Watches the Watchers?" was the title of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which the Enterprise crew must undo the damage done to a primitive culture by a Federation anthropological observation team.
• Dan Brown uses this quote in his novel Digital Fortress, where the overwhelming theme remains "Who Will Guard the Guardians", taking a modern approach to the ethical questions surrounding domestic wiretapping and the National Security Agency.
• Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of novels, especially those that revolve around Samuel Vimes and the Watch, have characters who will ask the question, translated as "But who watches the Watchmen?" Vimes himself will usually answer this with "I do" or "We all watch each other". Once when asked the question, he answers "Easy; I do" and is then asked "But who watches you?" His reply sums up his character; "Easy, that would be me too."
• At the end of the episode Divided We Fall of the animated television series Justice League Unlimited, Batman teasingly questions Green Arrow, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?", to which he replies "Who guards the guardians? We've got it covered."
• "Pistol Poem No. 2" by William S Burroughs is a permutation poem in which Burroughs writes out all possible combinations of the words in the phrase "Who Controls The Control Men".
• Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is the motto of the Space Patrol in Robert A. Heinlein's Space Cadet.
• "Who Watches the Watchmen" is a song from the 2006 album My Brother's Blood Machine by The Prize Fighter Inferno (A Side-project of Claudio Sanchez from Coheed and Cambria.)
• In the episode "Mind War" of the television series Babylon 5, Susan Ivanova remarks of the Psi Cops "Yes, but who watches the watchmen?"
• In the 1998 film Enemy of the State the following exchange takes place:

[Congressman Sam Albert]: (On TV) We knew that we had to monitor our enemies. We've also come to realise that we need to monitor the people who are monitoring them...."

[Carla Dean]: Well who's gonna monitor the monitors of the monitors.

[Robert Clayton Dean]: I wouldn't mind doing a little monitoring myself.

• In the April 9, 2007, installment of Dinosaur Comics, T-Rex shows viewers his business card, which contains the phrase "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes!?!" under his name.
• In an episode of The Simpsons when Homer creates a vigilante group to track down a cat burglar, Lisa, concerned over their abuse of power asks: "If you're the police, who will police the police?" to which Homer replies: "I dunno, Coast Guard?"

[edit] See also

• Watchmen, a highly influential comic that derives its title and some motifs from this phrase.
• Digital Fortress, a book by Dan Brown
• The Code of the Woosters,a comic novel by P.G. Wodehouse. Bertie Wooster uses the phrase in response to learning that a policeman has had his helmet stolen, implying that police officers are incapable of protecting their own interests while charged with guarding society: "'[A] chap who's supposed to stop chaps pinching things from chaps having a chap come along and pinch something from him.'"

[edit] External links

• Satire VI in Latin, at The Latin Library
• Satire VI in English (translation by G.G. Ramsay) at the Internet Ancient History Sourcebook

[edit] References