Andrew Dalby

I'm sure your point about the vagueness of the evidence, at every stage, is well taken. As for the language question (if there's another thread more suitable, I'm sure the powers that be will move my reply) I don't agree with you on that, because (1) you can have dialect dictionaries, there are lots of them, and (2) anyway it is difficult, not to say impossible, to decide what is a language and what is a dialect. In my previous posting I may have grouped Sicilian as a dialect but I really think that Sicilian ticks nearly all the boxes for being a language.

This is surely true as far as it goes. The question is, can we trace it further back still? There seem to be three Greek words involved here -- makaria, itria, lagana All three of these words turn up in modern Italian (or in southern dialects e.g. Sicilian) as names of kinds of pasta. The first of those words probably became maccherone / macaroni. And what Pantagathus says is right, I believe: these three words represented some kind of pasta at the moment when the southern Italians borrowed them from the Arabs. But did they already represent some kind of pasta at the time the Arabs borrowed those words from the Greeks, in late Roman/early Byzantine times? Clearly, words can change their meanings, and no one in classical sources describes clearly the making of pasta. What exactly did those words mean originally? So far as I know, no one has answered this conclusively. There's a dissertation (or a Nobel prize) in this for someone.

I'd like to hear about that too. A friend who has written about Alexander didn't like these books, but that's just one opinion. As for the /Last legion/, I have read the book myself. It's well worth reading, although I felt the translation was a bit rocky. It's done by an Italian (a relative of the author I think) and that's not a good recipe: to translate into English you need someone with English mother tongue. But others may feel differently about the translation. Anyway that doesn't affect the fact that it's a fine story, and with lots of convincing period detail, and I can imagine that it would make a really exciting film. Just one thing. The Goths in /The last legion/ are really, really barbaric. I mean, savage. Not even one-per-cent lovable. You wouldn't marry your daughter to one of these guys.

I'll do it.

This will be all across the web tomorrow, thanks to Viggen's astonishing ability to scale the Google ladder. I'm doomed. My reputation in shreds. :bag:

I guess you have in mind Gore Vidal's novel Julian, which, if I remember rightly, is narrated by Oribasius. Am I right, or have I confused something in my memory? In any case, he definitely was Julian's personal physician. Mark Grant has published a partial translation of Oribasius, focusing on the dietary part of his work. Since it's published in Holland (but in English), it might not show up in Amazon etc. but you would find it in some libraries. Grant probably includes a biography in his introduction. Let me see if I have it in my bibliography, surely I have ... Mark Grant, \Dieting for an emperor: a translation of books 1 and 4 of Oribasius' Medical Compilations with an introduction and commentary\. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Also an article he wrote on the subject -- Mark Grant, 'Oribasius and medical dietetics or the three Ps' in \Food in antiquity\ ed. J. Wilkins and others (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1995) pp. 371-9. Any use?

A great deal of ADs "Dangerous Tastes", is about the mystique and superstitions surrounding the various trades, I hope he might deliver a pithy comment to us.By the way has anyone on forum been to Oman and seen the trees? http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0714127...ce&n=266239 No, I've never been to the Arabian peninsula. I wish I had. As for the cassia, it HAS to be an old wives' tale or spice-merchant's urban myth, because cassia never came from Arabia anyway. It's quite the wrong climate. Cassia came (and still does come) from Southeast Asia (where I have been) and southern China. It's the inner bark of several species of tree. Locusts, probably not (as Caldrail said, Greeks and Romans knew all about locusts). They sound very much like baby pterodactyls to me ... But better not quote me on that. Herodotus goes on to describe the harvesting of cinnamon: The process of collecting the cinnamon is even more remarkable. In what country it grows is quite unknown ... The Arabians say that the dry sticks, which we call kinamomon, are brought to Arabia by large birds, which carry them to their nests, made of mud, on mountain precipices, which no man can climb. The method invented to get the cinnamon sticks is this. People cut up the bodies of dead oxen into very large joints, and leave them on the ground near the nests. They then scatter, and the birds fly down and carry off the meat to their nests, which are too weak to bear the weight and fall to the ground. The men come and pick up the cinnamon: in this way it is acquired and exported to other countries. Pliny has an interesting description of how cinnamon crosses the Indian Ocean, and there may even be some truth in it. Does anyone have that handy? I must search it out.

This is a good point I think. We might even compare (very briefly, O administrators!) with modern Britain and the US. The country mostly continues to operate, whatever the shenanigans that are rightly or wrongly said to be going on among the rulers (and their secretaries).

Thanks everybody. Yes, Octavius, you have seen exactly what I'm getting at. This about the gender-of-the-poet is only one section of the book, incidentally, but it does seem to have caught some people's eyes! Just to get it clear, if I'm allowed (because there have been some journalistic abridgements causing misunderstanding here), what I said about the ancient sources on Homer is that none of them -- until the fruadulent 'Life of Homer' which claims it is by Herodotus -- none of them says either (1) that Homer WROTE his poems or even (2) that someone else WROTE them down from Homer's performance. They all say that he SANG them, and when they go into details at all, they all say that the poems were passed on through Homer's followers and descendants and were written down long afterwards. (And you do have to know Greek and check the Greek texts on this, because sometimes translators gloss over the vital detail.) Now, if you believe what Milman Parry, Albert Lord and others discovered about the transmission of oral epic, you have to accept that the real creator of the Iliad and Odyssey that we have on paper can't be a singer of the distant past who transmitted oral poems to his descendants. The poet we can recognise in these great works has to be the poet who wrote them or dictated them. And ancient sources DON'T claim that it's Homer. Nobody tells us who that poet is, or anything about him or her (of course not: since they hadn't read Parry or Lord, they didn't think it mattered: they thought the real creator was the one in the distant past called Homer). I go on from that to see what can be guessed -- with support from the texts of the poems and from other oral literature -- about that totally anonymous poet. And that's when I begin to wonder (and I finally argue that it's more than 50% probable, with evidence which any reader of my book must judge) that that unknown poet was a woman, a member of a family otf oral poets, one of the last inheritors of the real oral tradition. Several such epic traditions, in more modern times, have been written down from the dictation of skilled women performers, whose skills were often unknown outside their immediate families (because, in societies like the ancient Greek, women wouldn't perform in public). But they just happened to be known to someone who had the resources to write or record the knowledge before it was lost.

It's an astonishing narrative. I think if I had been through that experience, yes, it would take several days, attended by caring relatives, before the power of laughter returned to me.

I'm lucky that the writer on the WSJ took me seriously at all. He had sent me an email, which Mrs D neatly consigned to the waste bin. Some strange sixth sense told me I needed to check through the waste bin that day ...

Forgive me, Phil, but I was really thrown by that typo. I thought you had a new verb there, probably borrowed from Hawaiian. If Suetonius alsohas, why can't I?

Thanks to everyone so far. Not easy, is it? Spurius, can you give me a reference to the Desmond Morris research?

It's true that everything else I ever have to do in England is in the south; therefore a southern location would mean less travelling for me. But really I would be happy with any location with Roman connections. South of Mons Graupius. In Italy, wow. An excuse to visit the Imperial Capital would make me very happy. But there are so many other places too ... What do others think? Viggen hasn't spoken on this, has he? Is he likely to join us on either of these mooted expeditions?

Yes, that's the question. Someone is asking me, so I'm asking everybody. As a Roman at the Colosseum (let's say), when you were voting to save the losing gladiator, did you do precisely this? And did you actually turn the whole thing upside down if you felt he wasn't worth your trouble? I should say that my old Lewis & Short dictionary (under 'pollex' = thumb) describes the gesture differently. It says as follows: "to close down the thumb (premere) was a sign of approbation; to extend it (vertere, convertere) ... a sign of disapprobation". How exactly you close down your thumb I'm not sure, but I don't think it means this: So, what's the answer? Does anyone know?

I've been silent in this thread so far, but that doesn't mean lack of enthusiasm. I'm in favour of a meeting, preferably with beer, and will do my best to be there; which I believe is exactly what Caesar said, shortly before gathering his ships at Boulogne in 55BC. Oddly enough, we Dalbys also generally cross from Boulogne, though we get less of a welcoming party than Caesar did. As for the later possibility, i.e. crossing the Rubicon and making a triumphal progress through some unsuspecting Italian city (that was it, wasn't it?) I'm in favour of that too ...

This is a really great counter-example: it seems as illustrative as it is convincing. OK, I was skeptical before, but I'm becoming fast convinced--at least when cash is in short supply, supplementary currencies will evolve. Just to nail it though--is this the only example of oil serving as a supplementary currency? Were there other entries like this, and did anything other than oil appear in the supplementary_value slot? Also, the delivery part seems weird to list as part of the price. I can understand delivery being part of the bargain, but why is it listed as part of the price? Not to maintain my thesis at all costs, but isn't it possible that the oil (like the delivery) was meant to be supplied by the seller (perhaps because the oil was needed to grade the output of the mill)? Now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty. I enjoy this kind of thing. What Cato (the Elder) is doing, in this section of his book, is evaluating two quotations for the supply of an oil mill. 1. Why? Not because these quotes are useful as such to any potential reader (they were single offers to him or his father (I guess), one of which they selected). Therefore, they are in the book as examples, because they will help the potential reader to judge for himself in his own case. Now your judgment of potential business transactions does have to include hidden costs, and Cato is reminding you of that. He doesn't bother to tell you where he is (but we happen to know their farm was at Venafrum). But he does say that one transaction would have cost more in delivery than the other one, because, when it comes to carting about a stone oil mill, transport is a really significant item. 2. So, if you read the text (preferably with my translation and notes, naturally!!) you will see that the oil occurs only in one case (therefore, not required for testing or grading the mill) and is checked off as part of the purchase cost. 3. Other examples ... Hmm. I will consider this, Cato. I'm sure we'll find them. Actually, all 3 are still used. In business transactions (and even in salaries for corporate employees) additional value items such as company shares may well be included. Company shares, in my view, count as a modern surrogate currency. Gold, crude oil (not olive oil!) and various other commodities are fairly freely traded on certain markets -- they, also, have a recognised value, though it fluctuates. But then, the value of money fluctuates too.

But what is the point of designating these goods (like salt) a "surrogate currency"? Well, if you encourage me to be undiplomatic for a moment (as your namesake often was!) I'd say that you are letting our everyday language and assumptions blind you to economic realities. If you want to use a different word for this concept, that's fine by me, but, sooner or later, you will need a word for it. Speaking theoretically, almost any piece of property has value, but only certain things will be widely acceptable to mark the exchange of value. Cash, where it exists, is usually the most versatile of all. But, especially when cash is in short supply, other things are called on. Not every other thing indiscriminately, but specific items whose value is widely agreed. Do you remember the passage in Cato On Farming where he talks about the cost of an oil mill? Look at how much the oil mill from Suessa cost: Sestertii 400 plus 50 pounds of oil plus delivery. Then, when he adds up the total cost, he counts sestertii 25 for the 50 pounds of oil. So, as I say in my commentary on this passage, this is the record of an actual transaction (otherwise, why mention the oil?). In this transaction, either because the buyer (Cato?) was short of ready cash, or because the seller preferred it this way, oil took the place of some of the cash. Now, are you going to tell me that a cartload of mixed farm produce or secondhand furniture would have done just as well as the oil? Nonsense!

I mildly disagree with Favonius here -- because my experience is (and I don't think I'm the only one to find this) the tax people are just the ones who WON'T make bargains. If the tax people want money, they'll take money. No credit cards. No salt. No wheat. It is indeed one of the best reasons for inventing and maintaining a currency, that once it's off the ground you can demand that people pay their taxes in this currency. What you have to do, if you are a taxpayer, is to make your other arrangements before the taxman sends in his final demand. This is why I only 'mildly' disagree! You still need surrogate currencies, but at a slightly earlier stage. And in these cases salt (along with wine, olive oil, and wheat) can be very useful as surrogate currency, because they are reasonably easily stored and moved, at least over short distances, and everyone can agree on their value based on the current market rate. Actually, if people trust one another, you don't even have to move them. You say to your rich neighbour, you pay that cash for me to the taxman and you own this block of olive oil in its amphoras in my cellar. Such arrangements do take place now, and I'm prepared to bet that they took place under the Roman Empire as well. (And before you know where you are, your neighbour owns your whole farm and your daughters are at work in his bar in Rome.)

I haven't seen it. I'll report if I do. You are already being cautious, and you're right. When labelling its dictionaries, OUP is not above making claims such as NEW or NEWLY REVISED that turn out to mean very little. It's a cutthroat market.

I must say I don't see the problem with this. People in many countries are supposed to report finds of antiquities to the authorities, and that applies in Greece as it does in the UK. If the coin was not properly reported, smuggled to Britain, spent a couple of years there, and has now gone back where it belongs, that's good, isn't it? Happy ending. In any case the coin is not unique. 58 specimens are known. I bet you a pint of Young's Special that at least one of those 58 is in the British Museum, which has just about the best collection of Greek and Roman coins in the world. As for the Marbles, that would be another thread. Or maybe it has been already?

Yes, I think I see why ... QVS's translation is accurate, but you could adjust it by changing the meaning just slightly: 'Let stars guide me through the darkness' would be Per obscurum astra duceant; 'Stars will guide me through the darkness' would be Per obscurum astra ducent. In both cases, the alternatives given by QVS still work just the same.

While I admire the display of classic erudition on this thread, I'm not sure that Will S. or Lord Palmerston would understand

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0714127...ce&n=266239 Both were "fabulous" luxury goods, cinnamon in particular being a whiff of luxury incarnate. Nowadays ? cloves are cheap and plentiful , likewise cinnamon which I use in coffee with cardoman pods.Both are strongly antibacterial. Lets see if AD will give us a little of his vast knowledge All right, just a little ...! Both were fearsomely expensive to the average Roman, mainly because of supply and demand: they came from just one direction, thousands of miles away across stormy seas. Read Pliny on the trade in cinnamon (I quote him in the book mentioned above) and even if it isn't all quite true you still get an idea of why it cost so much. So much, in fact, that it wasn't used in food (so far as recipes tell us): it was just too valuable, and had to be left to the physicians, the perfume-makers (because men will pay a lot for women's perfumes, as Pliny also says) and the altars of the gods. Maybe, if cloves were less expensive, it's because they weren't used in perfumes ?? The cheapness of these spices now comes mainly from the rush to transplant them across the globe, in the 18th century mostly, which finally killed the monopolies (and made various local economies collapse). Columbus took a hand in this: he planted sugar cane in the Caribbean. Sugar is so cheap now that we don't think of it as a spice any more. Hence the still-surviving fashion for vermouth (i.e. wine medicated with wormwood). Wormwood is, and always was, a good vermifuge.

I had no idea till now how exciting and full of incident the story of Viriathus was. Pantagathus has made splendid use of the sources: he makes me want to go and look at Appian right away, which no one else has ever persuaded me to do ... I'm going to get a map out now and try to follow those campaigns. It seems to me that this was a critical point for Roman rule in the peninsula; Viriathus was one of the few leaders (like Vercingetorix, Decebalus, Boudicca maybe) who came near to turning the Roman tide.