The famous inscription over the entrance to Lovrijenac fortress: NON
BENE PRO TOTO LIBERTAS VENDITUR AURO is not invented by the Dubrovnik Republic, it was taken out of the Aesop fable: “Of Dog and the Wolf” from the book of Walther of England.
In the story a starving wolf admires the lifestyle of the dog who is
well fed and has all the commodities he could possibly want until the
end of the fable when the wolf notices collar scar marks on the dog’s
neck. Only then the wolf tells this famous sentence how liberty can not
be sold for all the gold in the world as this beautiful blue sky offers
much more.
This fable was actually taught in school at the time and the inscription is probably more than just a simple statement of how Dubrovnik
loves liberty. It was probably inscribed there, above the doors, to
subconsciously give the persons doing their watch something to think
about and remind them why they were there.
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