Andrew Dalby

And Frankish rulers were ready enough to admire and adopt Latin culture. Still, it was perhaps a near thing. French as it survives is in many ways far more different from Latin than any of the other Romance languages. In the same way, maybe it was a near thing whether Norman French wiped out English in the 11th to 13th centuries. And English as it survives is far more different from early Germanic than, say, German or Dutch or Swedish are.

Funny, i always thought it derived from the Latin termAVERE and Avere meant safe journey and turned into a salute later on. can you tell me the phoenician word it derives from? I wish I could, but the authors don't say. There isn't really a verb avere, although Latin speakers tended to turn ave into a verb because its final e makes it sound like an imperative (so they added a plural avete meaning 'hi guys'). The Phoenician derivation is maybe speculative (but someone may correct me here). The Oxford Latin Dictionary says 'possibly a Punic word' (ie Phoenician as spoken in Carthage) but its only evidence is the kind-of-Punic passage in a Plautus play, which isn't strong evidence.

How do we know that they were drinking the beer? Couldn't they have been using it to bake bread instead? Fair question -- always question assumptions -- but no, that doesn't work as an explanation, I don't think, because Romans in the north could have made bread in the same way that it was made all over the Roman world. So why go to the fag of making beer, as part of that process, in the outlying provinces only? No, they must have wanted beer because it was hard work or expensive getting supplies of bulk wine far to the north and east of where wine was currently being made. It was less effort, and still produced the requisite level of happiness in the troops, if (except on special days) you gave them the kind of alcohol that could be made locally. I have only heard of it as an additive -- in wine, punch, etc. Plutarch, somewhere, says that bugloss (similar to borage) is added to wine 'to increase the gaiety of the participants'. Not sure if that helps ...

It's a good one. I make it Sub Umbra Saturni

But here's a related question: why did written and 'standard' Latin continue to be used in its (more or less) classical form, while the spoken dialects of the western Empire gradually got more and more different from it, eventually -- by early medieval times -- being recognised as completely different languages? Why didn't people's written language keep pace with their spoken language?

A bottle of whisky. Excellent for making friends. And if you end the first day without any friends, good for cleaning wounds and very good for restoring a sense of proportion.

I think that is the biggest problem, finding them. Troy is a very ancient city, the chance of getting genetic material from it slim to none. Rome and her empire has left so much more to dig up. I agree thatit is unlikely that any DNA evidence of the Trojans will be found. But, you never can be certain about these things. And even if you did find one skeleton, who's to say it is a Trojan at all or representitive of the whole population? Other possible clues would be cultural (like, e.g., Trojan pottery resembling early Italian) or linguistic (e.g. Italic languages or Etruscan showing apparent links with Anatolian/Hittite). I don't know about the cultural, but I've never heard of any such links. About the linguistic I do know a bit. In spite of what Virgil wrote above, I don't believe there are real similarities between Lydian (which belongs to Anatolian, an Indo-European language group, like Hittite) and Etruscan (which is nearly always said to be non-Indo-European). There is an Etruscan inscription on the Aegean island of Lemnos, but that doesn't say anything about the origins of the Etruscans or of Rome, more about the long distance contacts of the Etruscans. So, if the Trojans founded Rome, why did the Romans speak an Italic language (Latin) with no obvious influence from early Anatolia? On the other hand, the story of a Trojan migration to italy does go a long way back -- to Greek historians of the 4th century BC.

Buy perfume in the Vicus Tuscus. Smell cheese being smoked in the Velabrum. But the classiest shopping centre is the Saeptum as rebuilt by Agrippa. That's where you go to buy jewellery, antique Greek vases and really expensive slaves, according to Martial (but in his case it's just window-shopping, it seems).

Fair enough--but I'm assuming you place Tacitus in the top ten list of all historians *in spite* of his occasional unreliability whereas you place Suetonius nowhere near the top 10 *because* of his fairly consistent unreliability, no? Another point here: I'm surprised at the knocking of Suetonius (not just by you, Cato, but others too of course!) In the early biographies (of people who died before he was born, down to about Claudius) he cites more sources by far than any surviving ancient historian, any other biographer ... He quotes verbatim, too, and practically no other ancient historian does that (Polybius, yes, occasionally). I'm surprised by a claim of 'fairly consistent unreliability'.

I'm glad you noticed, Pertinax. I really enjoyed writing the Suburra section of Empire of Pleasures. Incidentally, where English speakers are inclined to call it a 'red light district', French writers (at least one) liken it to a 'quartier de la gare', i.e. railway station district. Both, obviously, anachronistic! The poem in which Propertius reminisces about wandering through the Suburra with his girl after helping her climb out of her window was the first Latin text that I made a serious attempt to translate -- forty years ago. Can that be forty years ago?

Fair enough--but I'm assuming you place Tacitus in the top ten list of all historians *in spite* of his occasional unreliability whereas you place Suetonius nowhere near the top 10 *because* of his fairly consistent unreliability, no? No. For me, being a great historian has to do with lots of qualities, and reliability is not item 1 in the list, though it has to be near the top. There are several separate issues braided in this thread: here are two. 1. What do we call a historian? Consider with regard to Suetonius, Anne Frank, Gildas (often called a historian even in otherwise reliable reference books) and lots of other writers from whom we might want to derive our understanding of historical events, but whose purpose in writing was quite different from our eventual wishes. 2. If your vocation is to be a historian, what do you try to do? I would say, to narrate and explain human history in some way that helps others to understand it. Consider with regard to Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Tacitus, Gibbon, etc. All these people make errors of fact, sometimes because it would have been impossible for them to do better, sometimes because other issues mattered to them more. They are still greater historians by far (I say) than most academic historians who get all the footnote references right, never make an unsupported statement, are unchallengeably reliable and get their Ph. D.s. Not that I'm against academics, I just use this as a convenient example.

Tobias, I hate to spoil your illusions, but your picture is of the Third Incarnation (we think) -- anyway it's of Jon Pertwee, definitely not Colin Baker. I think Jon Pertwee was one of the good doctors, incidentally

I assume you don't mean to imply that Tacitus and Suetonius were equally unreliable do you? That seems fantastically unjust. Well, hmm ... If you compare them as great historians, Tacitus is one of the 10 greatest in the world (at a quick guess) and Suetonius is nowhere. But if you compare them for reliability, as you say, then it all depends! Tacitus as author on Germany is unreliable; on what Agricola's opponent said at the battle of Mons Graupius he is utterly lacking in reliability. Suetonius on what Augustus wrote to Livia about Claudius, or on what the troops sang on Caesar's triumphs, is near 100% reliable.

All right, Pertinax, here are my two notes on the subject: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/dalby/texts/ArganOil.html As you read, notice the special use traditionally made of goats to extract the nuts from this inaccessible fruit! Since writing these notes I have found that you can buy argan oil 'en vrac' (from the barrel) at some Paris markets. Who knows, maybe at Borough Market in London? That's the kind of place.

I always eat local honey. I buy it from a sad-looking man who sells it in the market on Tuesdays, next to the old ladies with crates containing kids (baby goats that is), rabbits and farmy-looking eggs. If I fail to live long on this diet, Pertinax, I'll sue you.

Who on earth has done a Latin Encyclopaedia Britannica? A true labour of Hercules! Asterix in Latin is said to be not bad.

You'll kick yourself (or me) when you consider my answer. Languages are always changing, and so was/is Latin. All the people who learn Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, Romanian (etc.) at their mothers'/carers' knees, are native speakers of Latin in its current modern dialects. It just happens that we still call modern Greek Greek; it just happens that we don't call any of the modern Latin dialects Latin.

I agree with all you say, Phil, and not just the bit I quote here! I want to add that when we read an ancient historian who is really writing on something like 'current affairs' or 'recent history', we may forget that they are writing for people who would remember some of it themselves and would have read a great deal more about it. The fact that these surviving authors are partial, opinionated, leave things out that bore them or that don't help to make their points ... etc. etc. would have been acceptable to a contemporary who knew other sources and opinions and, what's more, could join in the argument and write a response. I think I'm coming round to the fact that we should read Suetonius and Tacitus as blogs, not as texts engraved in stone. And if I found a blog to which Tacitus was contributing, I'd keep on coming back to it ... Andrew

So that's where it came from, I've heard this before in reference to an embassy from M Aurelius, but had trouble finding evidence. Where did you find this reference ? From a long distance memory of the Cary and Warmington book I cited earlier, /the ancient explorers/ (first publ 1929). They mention relations with China on page 106 (of the Pelican reprint). The 'embassies' are mentioned in Chinese sources only, they say: there were three somewhat official trips, the first reaching the Chinese court in AD 166 and claiming to represent An-dun, i.e. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus? The other two were in 226 and 284 AD. They cite an older book by Hirth, /China and the Roman Orient/ (their bibliographical references are sketchy but I've heard of this Hirth). They don't cite the original Chinese annals, but I expect Hirth does ...

From Pliny the Elder's Natural History writing in Chapter 1 on "The Two Mauritanias": While Scipio

It surprises some to know that although many French people (like many others) won't eat horse (and it is sold in a boucherie chevaline or in a separate supermarket aisle to avoid offending these customers), the French people who *will* eat it pay more for it than beef. I have in common with Pertinax a liking for rillettes d'oie and Monbazillac. If any Romans turn up in this neighbourhood, I might even lead them on a tasting trip to Bergerac, around which Monbazillac and other appellations cluster like the seven rings of heaven.

Dog for breakfast in northern Thailand (I only knew afterwards. My hosts told me it was brown dog; apparently you should avoid black dog). Fried baby swallows at Mandalay in Burma. But no insects yet: I still want to know what locusts taste like. In our nearest country town, here in France (small unpretentious inland town), market stalls sell oysters every Tuesday and Saturday and most people eat them raw. I can't decide whether I prefer them like this or, grilled, in a po-boys, which is how I enjoyed them at a tiny place on the coast of SW Louisiana -- it might have been Holly beach or Constance Beach -- and goodness knows if that place is still there after the hurricane.

Two Roman recipes have just appeared as daily quotation on the Food Word site. The Apicius recipe for 'spiced wine mix for travellers' appears here http://perso.wanadoo.fr/dalby/ephemeris/ar..._culinaria.html in Latin and English (I have borrowed the English from the draft of Sally Grainger and Chris Grocock's forthcoming translation, just to whet everybody's appetite for this long-awaited culinary bible, but if Sally objects it will disappear instanter!) The Latin version of Cato's instructions for salting hams appears on the same page, and the English translation is here http://perso.wanadoo.fr/dalby/texts/CatoTranslation.html and this time it's borrowed from my own edition and translation of Cato (published by Prospect Books, which has an amazing list in food history) Bon appetit! Andrew