Andrew Dalby
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Everything posted by Andrew Dalby
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That's exactly it. On this rare occasion I disagree with Docoflove (above) who said that such words are integral to a language and would be expected not to be borrowed. It can't be true, DOL, because Latin speakers (and ancient Greek speakers for that matter) didn't apparently feel the need for simple yes and no words at all. Or if they did they never wrote them down! They do seem simple words to us standard English speakers ... and yet we often substitute for them. We say Yeah, Mm-hmm (however you spell that), Of course, I don't think so, and lots of other alternatives, when what we mean is Yes or No. And that's true in the Romance languages as well. When I was learning Portuguese 30 years ago, my teacher (who was Portuguese) advised against saying simply Sim (yes) or N
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Defensores Imperii (on the defensive side), Propugnatores Imperii (a bit more aggressive). There is also a word Tutores, but I think of that as someone who protects or guards a person rather than an empire. There wasn't really a distinction in ancient Greek between 'kingdom' and 'empire'. How about Phylakes tes basileias (Φυλακες της βασιλειας), meaning roughly Guardians of the realm?
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A good question! Others will want to comment on this too. My suggestion, for what it's worth, is that if you're really going to get into Byzantine culture you need to do it their own way -- you need some background of classical Greek and Biblical Greek (but Biblical / New Testament Greek is really easy when you've done a bit of classical Greek). But you can't manage without some modern Greek too. Anyway, anyone who studies classical Greek and doesn't want to know modern Greek is silly. In saying this I am criticising myself because I am still no good at modern Greek really. Now that my daughter lives in Greece I have taken a resolution to learn modern Greek properly at last.
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Philhellene's right of course. But it was a complicated language situation. When you studied Greek in Byzantium, you studied ancient and Biblical Greek (which are not the same thing, either); therefore, as an educated person, when you wrote Greek you might write a mixture of these, bringing in medieval words for things the ancients didn't talk about, or, if you were a real swot, re-using ancient words with medieval meanings. For these reasons there are huge differences between the style of one author and that of another, all the way from medieval colloquial (middle Greek) via New Testament to hyper-classical. It's fun to read Byzantine Greek, but it's not always easy ...
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I find this highly insulting and hope the moderators can deal with this attack appropriately. Perhaps next time you can actually enquire into the situation instead of mouthing off insults to people you don't know and know nothing about. For me, Mr. Dalby, I refuse to converse with you any longer. Only just seen this, QVS. No insult was intended, and I'm sorry you took it so.
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They may be around there somewhere ...
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Speaking of the Trans-Atlantic rabble, let us conduct an investigation of the English word 'corn': Corn. Korn, n. [ A. Sax. corn, a word found throughout the Teutonic languages, of same root as L. granum, a seed. Akin to kernal, grain.] Apologies will be gracefully accepted ... Oh, yes, I use the word corn too, but I mean wheat. To continue the word history that you began, Europeans in North America, encountering this extremely useful and unfamiliar crop, naturally called it 'Indian corn'. The modern US 'corn' is an abbreviation of that. And quite right too. No need for anyone to apologise!
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I never realised that! And what a writer of Greek! A surprising number of Latin authors, including some of the most fluent writers, have a multilingual background: Plautus, Terence, Apuleius, Ausonius, Augustine ...
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Incidentally (re-reading what I said, a week later!) I ought not to be too dismissive of 'popular literature'. It's very good for us, if we want to know about ancient societies, to know the kinds of things that interested all those many people who found Thucydides and Aristotle very hard going. (I mean, I find them hard going too.) But Philodemus didn't come into that category at all. You're exactly right about him. Imagine him as a college professor, a good one, a philosophy specialist, who may never write anything brilliant but whose textbooks are well worth reading and who writes poetry for the college magazine. It is fascinating to have (some of) that man's personal, working library, the only such survival from the whole of antiquity: his copies of Epicurus and other related works, his own writings including quotation and discussion of lost works by others. Unfortunately, some of the rolls were lost before anyone realised that they were books; some were destroyed in attempting to unroll them; and the remainder are full of missing words and lines, so they are pretty difficult to read. Some classicists long for the lost books of Livy. And some classicists pray that the lost books of Livy will never be found, there's enough Livy already. I pray (metaphorically) for the lost books of Tacitus. Yes, I'm sure that's right, Rameses. Papyrus was always an Egyptian export.
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If you've been with her three years and only know a few phrases of her language, you're a male chauvinist ...
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I'm certain in my mind (but what is that worth? I still want evidence) that the Mediterranean use of anise digestives (pastis, Ricard, Pernod, ouzo, etc.) is directly descended from the Roman and medieval use of anise-flavoured wine (ANISATUM). It simply is true that anise (and fennel) assist digestion. (What the alcohol does to you is another question.) Next time you fly out of Athens airport, find the Chios Mastic shop in the 'duty-free' area and buy a bottle of Mastiha Ouzo. 10 euros. The anise helps you digest, the mastic is good for teeth and for mouth and stomach mucosa, and the alcohol (in moderation) may make you happy. If you don't want alcohol, buy their mastic toothpaste instead. The same benefits and completely non-addictive ...
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Polenta's worth trying. The word is pure Latin; it's just that Romans made their polenta with barley, not with what you transatlantic people call corn! So if you make polenta with your corn, at least the end result is something a Roman might have felt happy with. When Psyche went down to Hades, on an errand for Venus, she took two (sticky?) handfuls of polenta with her. One to give to Cerberus on the way there, the other to give him on the way back. By that time, Psyche and Cerberus were good friends.
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That's ok Honorius that is a more than regular reaction to assume that the person would be biased to his own country. The Greeks, were a bit more unbiased that is why we get accurate information from them. The Egyptians for example would do anything to make the pharaoh look good, and were one sided. On the other hand the Greeks tried to base it off of historical information. Greeks were biased to their country, like every other person. The thing is they are not overly biased and do a good job of getting the true story across. Let me butt in here. Many ancient Greeks were biased in favour of their own culture. Many other people are too. But we have to look at people as individuals (otherwise, we are no better than those we criticise for bias!) Now, if you look at Herodotus as an individual, and read what he says, you'll see that one of his main aims was to teach a different viewpoint to his Greek readers. He goes out of his way to show that other people's views (Egyptians, Persians, Lydians etc.) were sensible in their own terms, and sometimes more logical than common Greek views. He really fought against ethnic bias. Since he wrote Greek, that meant he fought against Greek-centred bias. Read him and you'll see! And pick up a good translation, like the Penguin for example, and you won't be able to put it down ...
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Now, then. It is curious that two words for 'Britons' occur within a few lines. As pointed out by Adams, the diminutive word is closely parallel to one or two others, 'virguncula' (which means a little girl if I remember rightly, not pejorative) and 'latrunculus' which probably is pejorative (and doesn't necessarily have a real diminutive meaning), 'bandito' or the like. OK. EITHER diminutive OR pejorative. Here, they aren't small (Britons were tall, according to Strabo etc.) so it's pejorative: they are hated or mistrusted. The commentary suggests tentatively that this is information with a view to recruitment. It could be. But I think it's information about the enemy. After all, there must be an enemy, or else no need for a garrison at Vindolanda. If I were the commander at Vindolanda, I would not be expecting to recruit Britons as auxiliaries. My duty is to fight them, and I don't trust them enough yet to recruit them. The recruiting goes on further south, I reckon. So this text says: The Britons fight naked (if text is correctly reconstructed. Again, this doesn't apply so much to men recruited to fight elsewhere in the Empire: in that case I think you issue clothes and make them wear them. It applies to the enemy, and we know that Celts fought naked, so no surprise here). They have masses of horsemen. (We know that.) The bloody Britons don't even stop when they are going to throw their javelins (i.e. they don't take position -- they do it while moving). It's pejorative in the same way that soldiers always have to be about the enemy. You have to hate them, you have to have bad names for them, or you might end up thinking they are reasonable fellows and not want to kill them any more. Don't know if this is any use at the end of the day. But thanks for making me look at the text. Very interesting.
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Thank you Phil for posting that whilst I was off board. AD if you scroll down my blog entries to "Garrison Life at Vindolanda" Birley , in the book of that name mentions the "discovery" of the word in the tablets. He cant make out if its a general diminutive or not but its apparent context may be in relation to training auxilliae/irregulars, as the context is an "official" communique.I have posted links to the tablet site-with your language skills you might be able to make out what is actually being said. Thanks fellows, I wondered if it was some such source. I had never seen it. Well now, I may be stupid -- indeed I know I am -- but I can't make this word appear when I try a search of the tablet database. If you can't paste the text here, tell me what word or reference to type into the tablet search engine and I'll give it another go. But really, you know, I expect Birley has got everything reasonable out of it already ... Cancel all that. I actually have the edition and have found it in the printed index now. And now that I have the reference number, I can type that into the Vindolanda search engine and find the tablet. That's not the point, though, is it? Why doesn't the word search work? Ah well ...
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My neighbours incorporate beet leaves (chard) into a rather heavy (but very good) omelette. Since a really juicy-looking leaf beet has started growing wild in our garden I will soon try the recipe myself (or persuade Mrs Dalby to) and will report on its effects.
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You want logic? From me? Impossible! You must have some other AD in mind. Anyway, here's my pennyworth. All war statistics are highly dubious, from Iraq all the way back to Roman Britain and classical Greece, because, just think about it, who did the counting, what interest did they have in producing a certain result, did they count the bodies or the missing, how were they sure the missing were dead, etc. etc. OK, so Boudicca sacked those cities. If you were an ordinary inhabitant, hearing that Boudicca's rebel troops were on the way, would you stay or go? Would you stay Romanised or turn back into a Briton immediately? Might you even sneak round the back and join the rebels when no one was looking? I am hedging meanwhile, because just doing a search on Brituncul* in the Latin CD-ROM. Not found. Brittuncul*. Not found. Not in Lewis & Short. Not in Oxford Latin Dictionary. Nice word, but who's supposed to have said it, anyway?
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Excellent point, Phil. Now let's imagine that we are writing the Suetonian biography of Charles III. How much space would he give to Charles's family entanglements? I would have said about four/five sentences for Diana, about two sentences for Camilla (so far), about two sentences for William (so far) and about three words for Harry (so far). So let's write those sentences. We have to take the point of view of someone in about 2100 AD, someone who believes that there is value in using popular sources (and the odd personal letter) rather than official documents. What shall we write? Anyone want to give it a try?
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Good people come uninvited to good people's feasts. -- Ancient Greek traditional: but some argued that the first 'good' should really be replaced by 'bad'. Discuss!
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I sense the note of puzzlement about my recent silence. Well, I did finally respond to ncross's message and look at the page (which I think is excellent) and made a couple of comments. True, things are busy here sometimes!
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Be fair. *Claudius* was in favour of the taverns and cookshops. The Senate (says Suetonius snidely) laughed when he went off into reminiscences about going round the bars when he was a young man. I must say that I have never honestly understood the problem that Tiberius and others saw. The usual flashpoints (people find these days) are where people drink, not where they eat; and particularly when they drink without eating anything. So why ban the sale of food in such places? I really don't get it.
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Ethnicity In Byzantine Anatolia
Andrew Dalby replied to Kosmo's topic in Postilla Historia Romanorum
Those various languages (Lydian, Lycian, Carian, Galatian, etc. etc.) were still spoken in the last two centuries BC, but it seems clear that they were rapidly giving way to Greek (because Greek was the language of the elite and of politics and commerce, also no doubt education). In the first centuries AD there is soon no further sign of any of them. Names in families changed in the direction of Greek, too. People were becoming Greek. This did not happen with Armenian. As I tried to show in my /Language in Danger/, local languages under Greek and Roman rule were much less likely to die if they were cross-border languages, and that's the case with Armenian, since some of the Armenian-speaking area was (practically always) independent of Rome. The same must I think be true of Kurdish, which surely must also have been a cross-border language of the Roman Empire, though, so far as I know, there is no record of it at this time. So, in Byzantine times, it was Greek across all of western and central Anatolia, up to the point where Armenian (and presumably Kurdish) would have begun. -
I once heard an English proverb, 'Well begun is half done.' It means the same.
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You can read Roman advice on winemaking in Columella's and Varro's books on farming. The answer to your question, I think, is that various details would influence the result more than the basic process, which had to be the same everywhere till modern chemists got their hands on it: i.e. you put the juice in a vat and keep praying to Bacchus (yes, it happens whether you pray or not, but he may help to influence the quality of the result). The details are partly the storage issues, partly the timetable: when do you transfer to closed containers? When do you decant and sell it? What are your containers made with? What are they sealed with? How does the buyer transport it and store it? The resin or pitch used to waterproof and seal the containers certainly made a difference to the flavour, just as oak barrels make a difference now. The goatskins and ox-skins must have made a difference. Because Greek wines were transported over a long distance to Rome, there is evidence to show that they were stabilised before sale. This is where your sweet wine comes in. Nowadays it's done by adding alcohol (the result being sherry, port, etc.). These are at the end of the long tradition that began with the Greek wines that were specially made for export. They had boiled-down must (grape syrup) added to them, so that there would be residual sugar when fermentation was finished. Result: Greek wines were sweet and strong. You only drank a little of them, at the end of the meal.