<P> Homo homini lupus, or in its unabridged form Homo homini lupus est, is a Latin proverb meaning "A man is a wolf to another man," or more tersely "Man is wolf to man ." It has meaning in reference to situations where people are known to have behaved in a way comparably in nature to a wolf . The wolf as a creature is thought, in this example, to have qualities of being predatory, cruel, inhuman i.e. more like an animal than civilized . </P> <P> A variation of the proverb appeared as line 495 in the play Asinaria by Plautus: "Lupus est homo homini, non homo, quom qualis sit non novit", which has been translated as "Man is no man, but a wolf, to a stranger," or more precisely "A man is a wolf, not a man, to another man which he hasn't met yet ." </P> <P> As a counterpoint, Seneca the Younger wrote, in his Epistulae morales ad Lucilium (specifically, Epistula XCV, paragraph 33), "homo, sacra res homini", which has been translated as "man, an object of reverence in the eyes of man". </P>

Man is to man either a god or a wolf