words uttered by a powerful person to assert their authority; plea or threat
“Seulement, cette philosophie ne fait pas le compte des autoritaires, qui ne veulent pas avoir l'air de céder à la populace et qui ont envie de jouer au Jupiter tonnant, lançant des Quos ego devant lesquels se retireraient, la crête basse, les flots qui moutonnent.”
Learned borrowing from Latin quōs ego (literally “you whom I ...”), the beginning of a verse in Virgil's Aeneid (I, 135), where Neptune, the Roman god of the Sea, berates the winds, whom Juno released to start a storm and harass the Trojan hero and protagonist Aeneas, for causing a storm without his approval. Neptune starts uttering a threat to the disobedient and rebellious winds (ventī … quōs ego, literally “you winds … whom I...”), but breaks himself off midstream: Iam caelum terramque meō si