Andrew Dalby

Sorry we were slow to answer. You can say PATRI MEO. That's pater = father, meus = my, both words in the dative case which gives the meaning "to ..." It is possible to reverse the order of the words, but PATRI MEO would be the most usual. OK?

Can you give some examples? I thought that consonants with bilabial sounds include only b, p, m and f. It is true that different languages have different ways of pronouncing words. Anyway, can you recall what is the very first word you said when you were a baby? [b, p, m] are all bilabial stops; there are also bilabial fricatives--air can pass through the mouth only slightly impeded--both voiced and voiceless. Spanish 'v/b' is an example of the voiced bilabial fricative; I can't recall with confidence, but I believe that the Greek 'phi' is a voiceless bilabial fricative. That's pretty much it for bilabials. So the thought would be that the majority of babies would first say something like 'ma ma', 'ba ba', even before 'pa pa'; voiceless sounds takes control of the vocal chords, and that would develop later. Labiodental sounds use both the lips and teeth; [f, v] are the two examples here, and there is a nasal sound, too. As for myself, I supposedly said 'mama' as my first word; and supposedly the same with my brothers. I have no idea what my second word was...knowing me and my stomach, it was probably 'ba ba' (bottle)! M is maybe an easy sound to pronounce, and maybe also a sound that people are ready to recognise. Hence various different languages claim that a cat says "miao" although you won't ever see the cat pronouncing an "m" (at least, I don't think so!)

You probably can't get closer than that without adding some words. Which words? Before we can answer that, you have to think, what do I mean by saying I'm "the" doctor? The only one in the room? The only one in the town? The one you were all expecting? The one you were told about yesterday? To translate from a language that uses definite and indefinite articles, to one that doesn't, you have to trace the thought back a little way. Ah, thank you. The context would be 'I am the only doctor in town." Great. "Medicus sum" is OK, but to be clearer you might say something like "medicus urbis sum" (I'm the town doctor) or "medicus oppidi sum" (if it's a small town) or "medicus vester sum" (I'm your doctor). The words at the beginning and end of the sentence are the ones that get emphasis, and that's what you want: "I am ... doctor".

You probably can't get closer than that without adding some words. Which words? Before we can answer that, you have to think, what do I mean by saying I'm "the" doctor? The only one in the room? The only one in the town? The one you were all expecting? The one you were told about yesterday? To translate from a language that uses definite and indefinite articles, to one that doesn't, you have to trace the thought back a little way.

Isaac appears to have sparked off the Vlach-Bulgarian rebellion, which led to the Second Bulgarian Empire, by heavy taxation (to pay for his own wedding, it was said) and by dealing insensitively with the protesters. That rebellion, so close to Constantinople, was a disaster for the Empire, which never regained the territory lost. My overall impression is that the Angeloi were camping in the Empire rather than maintaining it; eventually it fell down around them. They never learned practical politics.

What Asclepiades says is true of course. I wonder whether your make-up lady's idea is somehow derived from the correct detail that "cosmetic" activities were definitely considered unlucky when on board ship. You may remember the incident in Petronius's Satyricon when Encolpius is spotted by another passenger while he's being shaved (his aim being to change his appearance hastily) with the result that he risks getting flogged or lynched. I discuss this incident in \Empire of Pleasures\ while exploring the pleasures and discomforts of travel in the Empire. When not on board ship, early and traditional Romans shaved every nine days -- i.e. every market day. Market days with us are every seven days, and even now it's noticeable that people tend to look their best, always clean shaven, smart(er) clothes, on market day.

My apologies for missing this question when you first asked it, Asclepiades! As you may well know, M. L. West and others have written quite recently and in great detail about apparent links between the Iliad and Odyssey (on one side) and Near Eastern mythology including the Gilgamesh story (on the other side). Yes, the question is, what do the similarities mean? I didn't really go into this in 'Rediscovering Homer' because I didn't think I could add any certainties to the debate and there's enough speculation already. But since you ask, I'll start like this: There are many areas in modern and recent times where oral poetic traditions cross language and culture boundaries. One example, Albanian and South Slavic oral epics; another example, Turkish and Armenian and Arabic oral tales. A medieval example: the tales of King Arthur which early French poets say that they learned from Breton storytellers. Pre-modern examples (like this last one) are always difficult for us to interpret because we don't have enough evidence, and that will be the case with a Homer-Gilgamesh link-up as well. In the same way that linguists establish "linguistic areas", there might well be reason to hypothesize "oral poetry areas". We do know with certainty that the Gilgamesh story crossed language boundaries (it is recorded in Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite ...) and went on being told for a very long period. I think it's likely that Greece was part of an oral poetry area that included those other languages at some period when the Gilgamesh story was a part of the tradition. But I think this was well before the time when a poet composed the Iliad and Odyssey that we know; that poet knew something about Egypt but nothing about the Near East. Some time after the fall of the Hittites, those links were broken; the oral poetry area shrank or fell apart. So, if you asked that poet about Mesopotamian traditions, your response would be a blank look. That's my answer; what do you think?

It depends. Another way of looking at it is that he's a prisoner of war. Slavery's been abolished, but the taking of prisoners of war hasn't.

For coriander (cilantro), yes, it seems to have begun in the eastern Mediterranean. My hypothesis is that under the Persian Empire (the Persians were great gardeners) it spread as far as northern India. This would fit with the fact that its first appearance in an Indian text is around 400 BC. It's remarkable how it has become typical of so many different cuisines world wide -- the smell of leaf coriander in cooking always makes me think of Burmese food -- but in fact that's exactly the same story as with chilli (red pepper). Just the starting point is different. With tamarind, I didn't know the point of origin. Thanks for that information! It was unknown in the classical world, I think, but it also is popular in India and southeast Asia as well as in the New World. And the reasons -- well, you know the reasons, Pertinax! It's partly that they taste good, partly that they do you good. It doesn't take long for people to realise this, when a new plant appears via new trade routes.

A couple of us who contribute to Vicipaedia are making sure you can read each day's news of the Tour de France in Latin. Here's the link ... and this main news page links to other pages about the top competitors and about the places they pass through. But no one's written the page on Thor Hushovd yet. We need more Latinists!

If you think it's a good idea for the Vatican to create a Latin version of its website, please sign this petition. Latin needs you!

Seems odd to refer to Mexicans of this period as cavemen. I suppose it depends on the implications of the word ... If I drive two hours north of here, I can find lots of people living in caves -- and an excellent restaurant in one of those caves, specializing in mushrooms and Loire wines -- but I wouldn't call the owner a caveman! EDIT: I don't mean to criticize Klingan's choice of words -- it is the article itself that uses this word. Very interesting article, too.

That's a good observation--the lack of direct overlap rules out the competing poets explanation, but it doesn't quite support an identity between the authors of the two works. I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the Book of Joshua doesn't overlap with its prequel (Deuteronomy), but I'm not convinced they were written by a single author either (that, at least, is the traditional view: Moses as author of the Pentateuch, Joshua as author of the book bearing his name). Moreover, Joshua works as a pretty good sequel to Deuteronomy too. Why not view the Iliad and Odyssey as being similar to Deuteronomy and Joshua? I don't argue that all books that don't overlap are written by a single author! You'll have to convince me that the circumstances of composition of Deuteronomy and Joshua are close enough to those of oral epics to make this comparison worthwhile: I'm not convinced yet.

Another fascinating observation. What's interesting about your Single Author explanation, however, is how it assumes (and provides an additional explanation for) the Single Author having two states of mind when composing the two different works. Again, the evidence seems equally consistent with the Two Authors explanation. Wow! That really makes a difference! I was relying on the old Butler translation, but your version implies no contradiction between the two books. While we're on the topic, I did have another reason to suspect Two Authors, and that's the factor of time. It seems like the events of the Iliad could take place without implying weird ages for the participants. But if we take them together (I've heard), the events of the two books suggest that Helen returned to Greece at age 70 or something. Maybe I'm mangling this, but if we assume that the author of the Odyssey were attempting to AVOID contradiction with the Iliad (for whatever reason), mightn't the author be more likely to catch overt contradictions than implied contradictions? Moreover, it seems like a second author would be more likely to commit implicit contradictions than would a single author. If this is right, then couldn't we use the prevalence of implicit contradictions as a way of inferring whether there were one or two authors? Tempting as it is, I'm not going to repeat the full argument of Rediscovering Homer: you're going to have to read it! (A paperback is due out this month, I'm told: I have just received advance copies, and they look very pretty.) Your last point, about implied contradictions etc., sounds to me as though you might be getting too complicated. If you want to assume that author 2 attempts to avoid contradiction with author 1, it won't quite do to say "for whatever reason". You need to propose a reason, I think. And bear in mind that oral poets are, in many cultures, in fierce competition. Why should they avoid contradicting one another? Very briefly, my proposal about the different atmospheres and themes of the two poems is this. (As preface, many would agree with me that the Odyssey was composed about 20/30 years after the Iliad.) OK. The Iliad was a commission to record, for writing, the essence of the best-known event of all those that were familiar themes of Greek oral poetry. So we have the essence of the Trojan War, in traditional style (but far longer than a real oral poem) distilled by a poet who belonged to a family or lineage who were thought to deal with this material better than any others. And, yes, she (or he) fulfilled the commission beautifully. Twenty years later, the commission was simpler: we want another poem as good as that one. Twenty years older and wiser, she (or he) was able to be much more original. The story of Odysseus, which already existed, was transformed. And, in the process, the poet was able to show (even better than in the Iliad) how women, children and slaves contribute to decisions and may make the difference between triumph and disaster -- because the author wanted to make that point, and was now mature enough and decisive enough to do it, though still within the context of the traditional epic.

Hi. Mr. Dalby. If the lack of true contradictions between the Iliad and the Odyssey is an argument for a common authorship, I would expect that the presence of internal contradictions would be an argument for multiple authorships of both books. What do you think about it? Yes, certainly, if we are talking about authors whose training and experience leads them to go over and re-edit their own work -- authors who work in a context where writing is inseparable from literary composition. My argument (and I think others would agree with this) is that that's not the case here. The author of the Iliad was familiar with oral composition; the commission to compose something big to be written down was a strange new development. It was a good commission, and the author accepted it, but still composed in the oral way -- which implies that you don't edit. You can't. Editing is impossible. What's said is said. So, in long poems recorded in an oral context, there are always little contradictions. It's normal. It has nothing to do with multiple authorship.

I really do see where you are coming from. However, this could be more of literary device than a faux pas. Also, you/we are judging it based on a translation not the original Greek. In Greek the line about the Odysseus - Achilles quarrel (which has some un-tranlated word fragments in it...) begins with what in my rudimentary understanding of Greek means something like, "Thus, at some unknown point in time" it goes on to mention the strife. (I would post the Greek word but the forum doesn't seem to want me to do it at the moment) Could be that the original intention of the author of the Odyssey was to refer to when Odysseus went to get Achilles to stop acting like a girl (literally!) which was the real key to setting the events of the Iliad in motion and also what the oracle refered to (the Greeks not being able to win the war without Achilles). More than likely that key point was a casualty of centuries of copying and then millennia later to translation and it seems the author of the Odyssey has made a mistake about the quarrel over Briseis. This seems especially likely since one finds the Greek word in the text which refers to coming into manhood. Andrew, your thoughts? Sorry to have gone quiet today -- I've been out on a local history excursion, looking at obscure French chateaux and not thinking about Achilles or Odysseus at all! One big argument (I think) in favour of one author for both poems goes like this (this is summarized from pp. 112-113 of my book). If the Odyssey were by a poet who saw himself as in any way competing with, emulating or improving on the Iliad, you would expect at least some minor episode in the Iliad to be taken up and retold in a better way -- just as a demonstration. That never happens. Instead, the Odyssey works remarkably well as a sequel to the Iliad because it avoids repeating any stories. In spite of all its flashbacks, not even the smallest episode is narrated in both poems. An example I use is that, as MPC has said, one of the songs of Demodokos about the Trojan War, outlined in the Odyssey, is about the quarrel of Achilles and Odysseus (an episode not mentioned in the Iliad). What's more, the Odyssey actually helps to fill in any gaps left by the Iliad. An example is that the other song of Demodokos on a Trojan War theme is about the Trojan Horse (which can't be told in the Iliad because it happened after the end of the Iliad story). There's more still. The Iliad and Odyssey each contain internal contradictions and loose ends. That's not surprising from an author who must have been close to oral composition methods. It's to be expected, in fact. But, strangely, there are practically no true contradictions between the Iliad on one side and the Odyssey on the other. Practically nowhere where, in reading the Odyssey, you can say: that can't have happened if we believe the Iliad. Now, how can it be that there are no contradictions of that kind? My answer is: because the author of the Iliad had had twenty or thirty years to re-read his/her own work (a very unusual activity at that period) and was totally familiar with it -- and was then commissioned to compose the Odyssey. I have already half given away my answer to MPC's last point -- about the purpose of telling the Quarrel story. I don't think it was ever meant to be a retelling of the Embassy-to-Achilles story, or of the Dispute-over-Briseis, because those stories are already told in the Iliad and the Odyssey doesn't duplicate the stories in the Iliad. No, I think it's meant to be a different story (one that we haven't heard of from any other source, but then, we aren't regular listeners to early Greek epic poets) and the main requirement was that it had to be one that would make Odysseus regret the past, and thus begin to betray his identity. One last point (I aim for short posts, but this topic seems to require long ones!) The translation that MPC quotes is (I think) misleading. In Odyssey 8, lines 79-82, it has "for Apollo had foretold him this at Pytho when he crossed the stone floor to consult the oracle. Here was the beginning of the evil that by the will of Jove fell both Danaans and Trojans." which allows one to understand that the quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles was the beginning of the evil. But that would be a strange misunderstanding of a very well-known story: the apple, and the Judgment of Paris, and Aphrodite's promise were the beginnings of the evil, and surely everyone knew that. The translation ought to be more like "... to consult the oracle; for at that time the beginning of the sorrows that afflicted Trojans and Greeks by great Zeus's will was already approaching." -- i.e. at the time when Agamemnon consulted the oracle.

Don't know if I count as an expert ... Yes, of course, it's one of those (many) big problems about the Iliad and Odyssey. In earliest times (say before 450 BC), Greeks used to attribute many epics to Homer -- not just these two. Later (e.g. after Alexander the Great, by scholars at the library of Alexandria), as the epics began to be studied in a more "scientific" way, it was generally accepted that several singers must have been involved. It was still nearly always assumed that Homer composed the Iliad; the majority continued to believe that Homer was responsible for the Odyssey too, because these two epics are fairly consistent linguistically, even though, as you say, there are plenty of stylistic and thematic differences. In more modern times, especially in the 19th century and especially in Germany, there was a fashion to take the Iliad and Odyssey to pieces and postulate that they were composed by a succession of writers; beby now it was generally assumed that the poet(s) used writing). In the 20th century there were reactions against this approach, for two successive and contradictory reasons. One reason was that the Iliad and Odyssey are so good, so well-constructed overall, that it seemed counter-intuitive to theorise that they are a patchwork composed by many authors and editors. People who took this line tended to go back to the traditional view that Homer wrote both. But meanwhile, in the 1930s, Milman Parry and other scholars working on oral poetry showed that oral composition and transmission is quite different from written composition, and that the Iliad and Odyssey showed every sign of oral composition (... except that, yes, they are in writing!) People who took the Parry line were still left with difficult questions to answer: where and when were the poems written down, and where does Homer come in? There are several different answers to these questions, and it's probably now a large-ish minority, rather than a majority, who really honestly believe that one poet was responsible for both poems. I'm part of that minority, and I have tried in my book to give an explanation of why the Iliad and Odyssey have the differences that you observe ... but maybe that's enough for one post!

Navigation has never been my strongpoint, Pertinax. I could not tell you exactly where, as in the coordinates - but it was somewhere between Sorrento and Amalfi! I have taken that coastal drive on at least three hols down there, and I always see the signpost. I notice it precisely because it seems to scream Sejanus at me. You may have tried this too, O Augusta, but I though I would Google "Grotto di Seiano" for you. Interesting but doesn't answer your question. Only five hits, all of which seem to be about a cave not in the place where you describe it, but somewhere close to Naples to the north-west. One mention here is of an archaeological park -- The Seiano Grotto - Pausylipon Archeological Park on Cape Posillipo reached by taking the winding street marked "Discesa Coroglio-Grotto di Seiano" ... Since there is a well-known story about Tiberius and a cave (Suetonius, "Tiberius" 39), a story of which Robert Graves makes Sejanus the hero, I wonder whether both this cave, and the one you have seen signs to, are named after him to attract Gravesian tourists. But the real scene of that incident was near Terracina. I can't now remember whether there are ancient sources involving Sejanus in that cave story. Does anyone know?

Pertinax has already said above that he "can't find any erotic contents" regarding walnuts. I haven't found any ancient claims on walnuts-as-aphrodisiacs either. There wasn't anything about it in the Pliny text. Maybe the Romans didn't use walnuts for this purpose, and the original news report was just wrong? They often are ... As for their omega-3 content, I'm surprised to read (from someone above) that this doesn't get much publicity. I thought it was well known. It's one of those cases where something really wicked-seeming -- like walnut oil as a salad dressing, almost unbeatable in my view -- is arguably good for you! In moderation, of course.

As I understand it -- I'm open to correction! -- one of the many, many names devised by Europeans for this new crop from North America was "Indian corn": Indian because, ever since Columbus's little mistake, the great American continent and associated islands were alternatively known as the "Indies"; corn because it was a crop which could be compared with the corn (wheat or barley) of the Old World. Then, in due course, "Indian corn" became such an everyday item among the settlers of North America that its name got shortened to "corn".

At a conference 12 years ago a French climatologist told me: "If my students ask me about global warming, I tell them it's only a hypothesis. But I also tell them, if their families are looking for a holiday home, not to buy in the deep south."

For sure it's hot! The temperatures in the last 8 months were unusually high. Draught ruined this year crops in many parts of Romania especially the East. If it keeps this way it's very likely that we will have water restrictions at least for irrigation. Our weather in western France has been strange too, but in the opposite direction. A very hot and dry April followed by extremely wet and rather cold May and June. I would happily send you the rain clouds, Kosmo, if I could. We are told to expect more extreme conditions (not necessarily always hotter and drier) as the globe warms. And such conditions bring their own problems. For example, some food crops will sometimes do better, others will fail.

I honestly hadn't heard this, Pantagathus...but will look into this. I, too, have heard that these are connected. And, yes, therefore (unless the other two count as 'dialects of Etruscan') Etruscan doesn't meet the strict definition of a 'linguistic isolate'! It doesn't really change the facts, though. The Etruscan group has not been shown to be connected to any other, and it hasn't yet been fully deciphered.

And in other countries the traditional pronunciations are quite different. On our first family holiday in France we got friendly with our next-door neighbour and his tiny dog whose name was -- it took a moment to catch it -- Titus, pronounced Tee-T

This is often the reason given for many inner-city peoples, and the subsequent health issues are blamed on this in our society. But I'm just guessing that this Roman fast food was just a hair healthier than meal deal #1, supersized. Though this brings to mind cost: many moons ago, I used to think that, because I was always broke, I couldn't afford as many veggies and fruit. Then I did a cost-analysis, learned how to buy in the right proportion and in the season...suddenly I realized that it's way cheaper to buy veggies and fruit--and not buy so much that it goes to waste!--than to buy mac n cheese and the like. And to be honest, when in Spain the 'authentic' fast food was relatively cheap--like 5 euros--for quite a decent sized portion of food. Bottom line is, do we know how much (roughly) this food was? If you live in a place with meager cooking facilities, if anything, you probably don't have much money to start with...so this 'fast food' couldn't have been very expensive. Here's your price, thanks to Martial (I quoted this in /Empire of Pleasures/). He is addressing an imaginary poverty-stricken or miserly friend: From a bowl of ten olives more than five are left for next time; a single serving provides two dinners; you drink the thick dregs of red Veientan; your hot chickpea soup costs an as, your sex costs an as. (Martial 1.103) An as being a copper coin, one-tenth of a denarius. 'Veientan' is low-grade local wine, from Veii. So that's fast food, Roman style. (And probably fast sex, too.)