Andrew Dalby

I think this is really a very difficult question. There are (at least!) two points where assumptions we usually make may or may not be right. 1. What language was spoken in southern and eastern Britain at the moment when the Saxons and Angles invaded? We usually assume it was Celtic, but it might have been Latin. In other words, there might have been a potential Romance language there, spoken by Arthur (??!!) and his Round Table (???!!!), just waiting to be obliterated by Anglo-Saxon. Since Anglo-Saxon borrowed few Latin and few Celtic words, and there are no relevant inscriptions, there is little evidence to answer the question. 2. Does Romanian survive in situ from the Roman settlements in Dacia, or, given that they were perhaps partly evacuated, did it spread northwards again, much later, from Romance speakers in the southern Balkans? There is plenty of evidence of a Romance language there, and indeed it's still spoken in some mountain areas (Aromunian or Vlach). The trouble with asking this question is that it excites redemptionist Hungarians to say 'See! We were in Transylvania before you!' and the whole political argument starts again.

I had read in one place that the Spanish started switching over from ceria to cerveza about the time (mid 15th century) the French were dropping cervoise for biere; which incidentally was to align with the word bier that the Germans used (which was from Latin: biber) I'd love to know where you read that. Yes it is true (according to Corominas's etym. dict. of Spanish) that cervesa > cerveza is recorded from the 15th century, though he still thinks it is directly descended from local Latin, not borrowed from early French. But in which Spanish texts is ceria to be found? I could have added Portuguese cerveja and (now that I look) Friulian (NE Italy) serveza to the modern descendants of cerevisia, although that Friulian word doesn't mean beer or ale, it means hops.

Anthimus (northern Gaul, 500 AD, dietician to a Frankish king, apparently a former Byzantine physician accused of treason and on the run) is worth a read if you get tired of sex, Suetonius, etc ... Anthimus's recipe for hare is today's Latin quotation on the FOOD WORD site. Anthimus claims it's good for dysentery (or rather, against dysentery), which sounds doubtful, but, who knows, it may be useful to somebody! Go here http://perso.wanadoo.fr/dalby/ephemeris/blog.html#6 for the original, and you'll find a link to a translation. But first, catch your hare.

Traditional law in many Mediterranean countries allows a husband to kill his wife's lover if he catches them having sex. But he can be accused of murder if the lover's family can make the case that the killing was premeditated. This is the point behind a well known ancient Greek law case in which the surviving speech is by the husband. It's pretty clear that he allowed the lover to be led on, so as to have the chance to kill him, but of course he can't admit this. Perhaps someone can fill in the reference for me. I guess similar customary law prevailed in Rome too. Whether you consider this a 'death penalty for adultery' depends on your definitions ... it isn't imposed by a court, but it is legally sanctioned.

Incidentally 'cervoise' as a French word is still well known though it is no longer the current word for beer. If you read Asterix in French you'll find that cervoise is what they drink when they can't get magic potion. The word survives in Gaul and Spain (cerveza), an indication that it was current in the local Latin of those provinces of the Empire. Besides cerevisia, Latin braces 'malted barley' is known to be a Celtic borrowing: the word is found also in modern Celtic languages, I think.

I looked in on this topic to see whether Attila was a transvestite. Apparently not. I want to know in what language was the oral poetry at Attila's court: Gothic or Hun or both? Any opinions?

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I've had to skim this thread very hastily -- forgive me if I've missed something and am repeating it. Here (I hope) is a link to the article on 'Beer' that I included in /Food in the ancient world from A to Z/ (2003) (ideal New Year present for any classicist) http://perso.wanadoo.fr/dalby/texts/BeerAZ.html The article lists the several names for beer found in Latin and anc. Greek. The local origin of these names is clear because they went on being linked with their own regions. Cervisia isn't Latin (if it's connected with Ceres, what does the -visia bit mean?) or Iberian: it's Celtic -- which might theoretically include Celtiberian but I don't think there's positive evidence for that. All the ancient words (except zythos) are borrowed from various languages of what became the Roman Empire. And, certainly, Roman soldiers -- when they were far away from Italy and Greece -- drank the stuff in gallons. Three kinds of beer are priced in Diocletian's Price Edict, which is intended as a fixing of prices for army purchasing. I don't think there's evidence for a single sip of beer being taken in classical Italy or Greece ...

Thanks, Pertinax -- I should have checked, but I'm limited in my browsing at present. This Internet link costs my beloved mother-in-law serious money (a local call, that is)

A very interesting episode. I query the 'grey' (not sure if there's a Latin word for grey) but that bread must have been pretty unpleasant stuff. The plant is usually guessed to be an Arum, of which the root is poisonous unless thoroughly cooked (resembles yam in fact), so if you're going to try making the stuff, tread carefully! The sources are Suetonius, Plutarch and Pliny the Elder. The differences between what they say are interesting, as I tried to explain in my paper 'Dining with the Caesars' at an Oxford Food Symposium about 2 years ago ... I'm about to look back at the paper to see if I still agree with myself, always an interesting exercise. central to this is the essential nature of salt as a presevative of foods in the abscence of refrigeration.Salting pork and fish gives you a staple to carry into lean winter moths.Apart from this the issue of flavouring is obvious-if as weve conjectured elsewhere the Romans invented haggis as a ration "ball" salt would of necessity be added. If Mr Dalby is about I suspect he will have the information to hand.I presume that perhaps the "payment" was more of a "housekeeping neccesity" ? Don't want to hog the forum (pun?) and in my wanderings I haven't much info to hand. Salarium definitely means 'salt-payment' literally, and I think it's Pliny who says that soldiers were once paid this way. They weren't in real historic times, surely? Legionaries were paid in money, making them maybe the first professional army in the world (? discuss, or maybe it already has been). But the importance of salt, especially in early times, is massive, as Pertinax says -- hence also the name of the Via Salaria approaching Rome from the north, the route by which salt was brought to Rome. It is also a dietary essential: we are being told to cut down (because of the excess of salt in certain processed foods) but the worm will turn and we will soon be reminded again that we need salt to keep healthy!

I'm rather suprised no one's mentioned cornmeal as the basic staple of the Republican legions. JC certainly hints to this in his works when he describes over and over again the importance of gathering corn for the legions. This cornmeal is basically a type of thick yellow grits called pulmentum and is still found today on the tables of Italian families called polenta. It's very versatile and you can add whatever else is available to eat with it. It's hearty peasant food that's not changed much over twenty-five hundred years and if you've never eaten it pick up some. Along with pasta I grew up on the stuff. Sorry I've been away -- travelling -- and haven't seen this topic till now. I might add something on salt in a while. Meanwhile, I have a problem with Virgil61's cornmeal. To US speakers (I think Virgil may be one) corn means 'Indian corn' or 'maize', and that's what modern Italians make their polenta from and what Americans get their grits from. But Romans didn't, because corn = maize was domesticated in North America. There is a polenta to be found in Latin texts, but it's a solid porridgy stuff made from barley, not corn. Any references in modern writings to corn in the Roman diet mean 'corn' as the British understand it, i.e. wheat or wheat/barley. I recently, to my great pleasure, found a 16th century Italian text (Matthioli's commentary on Dioscorides) which tells me, as a piece of hot news, that the people in the Veneto have started making their polenta out of granturco, i.e. 'Turkish grain', i.e. Indian corn = maize. This is in roughly 1570.

Yes, i cant tell about other Euro school systems, but in germany, yes. But its strictly textbook learning, and mostly of the non german view. Its a very strange issue, were a teacher has to be carefull. Thats how it is in germnay. And how i remember it. Yes, plenty of teaching and plenty of publishing about WW II -- in Britain too. Also in France, where I live now, though in France it is at least as painful to study the period as it is in Britain or Germany -- perhaps even more painful -- because France had deep internal splits: the 'Vichy Government' which cooperated with the German occupiers, local administrators and businesses that worked with them, people who joined the resistance, people who joined the 'Free French' troops represented by De Gaulle, people who were at risk of being taken off to labour camps, concentration camps, etc., (and many actually were, of course) and also people who appeared to belong to one group while helping another. The wounds caused by these splits still exist, but books, TV, etc. are searching into the problems (and /maybe/ exorcising them) more and more in recent years. I haven't studied the period in any depth myself, so if I've made errors in this I'm sure someone will correct them.

An excellent account and I think the only book soley devoted to the subject is "The Varangians of Byzantium" by Sigfus Blondal and translated by Benedikt S. Benedikz. It draws a lot of information on the unit from various sources, however I think the only drawback is that where evidence is lacking on some regrads they tend to become a bit speculative instead of just saying, we have no info on this... moving on. But all in all a great book. To add to your factual history, there's a nice romantic story in /King Harald's Saga/ (translation published under that title in Penguin Classics, 1966) chapters 13-14. King Harald Hardradi served in the Varangians in his youth. Princess Zoe wanted to marry him: he refused and was imprisoned. 'A lady', no doubt one of his other admirers, organised his escape. Once he was freed, in revenge for his imprisonment the Varangians blinded the emperor.

Except Socrates of course. He was a nice guy. And we know what happened to him.

Andrew, What about during the Cordax one might encounter in Gades? Or if one where around the Empire to witness the d

Really, what sort of people would that be? Greek people. It was the normal colloquial term, and can still be heard.

Ah, but the Greeks cut their wine with water and the Celts when given wine would drink it straight. It was more the lack of ceremony coupled with their expediency with becoming drunk that offended their sensabilities. This is a culture clash that would repay close study. I think it was the same as between Greeks and Macedonians: Greek custom was to drink all night, Macedonian custom to drink wine straight/neat. When Macedonians took to drinking all night

And the Pope has his Swiss Guard doesn't he? And the British have their Gurkhas, from Nepal, a country that was never part of the British Empire. And the French their Foreign Legion. If people fight for foreign countries we call them 'mercenaries' but I haven't heard that word used of the Gurkhas. The Indian army also has a Gurkha regiment.

I could add that Roman names seem confusing partly because the one used by modern writers, out of the 2/3/4 names that a male Roman had, seems almost to be chosen at random. And sometimes it varies from country to country too. We call the historian of the Republic Livy, while in French he is Tite-Live (his real name was T. Livius, i.e. Titus Livius). And Romans changed their names during their lifetimes, e.g. if they were adopted: thus Octavius became Ocatavianus when he was adopted by Caesar, and then later still Augustus.

Yep, I think that puts a finger on it and why it's easy to find racial prejudice in all groups. Indeed, personaly I beleive that all people are born Racist becuase thats how humans work, we are naturaly scared of something different from what we have. 1: We have an inbuilt tendency to classify. It helps us learn what to eat and what not to eat, among many other things. 2: we have a tendency to learn to be afraid of certain people/animals/things that we have classified. Let's admit it, if we didn't have those tendencies, we'd be dead. These tendencies are very easy for others to play on. Rather easily (unfortunately) we learn from others to hate, to despise, to make fun of, whole classes of people and things. In France, where I live now, there is an assumption that red-haired people smell. When I was growing up in England, teachers forced left-handed children to write with their right hands. When we have overcome such prejudices, we think they are silly and medieval. Sadly, similar prejudices seem to come into existence all too easily.

And putting Stoicism aside, we know that Greeks (e.g. Plato's /Symposium/) liked to drink through the night and that Romans enjoyed watching fights to the death and bloody executions in the amphitheatre. Can the Celts really have been more drunken and more bloodthirsty than that?

Thank you, FVC. I hadn't ever noticed that intulus. The Greek is diaz

Alice Arndt, Helen Saberi and I tried to bring out the connection between silphium and asafoetida in our papers to the Oxford Food Symposium in 1992. I've put my paper on the Web now at http://perso.wanadoo.fr/dalby/texts/SilphiumTexts.html My bit of the task (back in 1992) was to provide the direct ancient evidence about silphium (and asafoetida), and that's what this page now does: I hope all significant ancient sources are there in translation. If anyone finds any others, please tell me! But we certainly don't claim to be the first in post-classical times to spot the link between silphium and asafoetida! I give the credit for that to the Portuguese physician and spice expert, Garcia de Orta, who wrote /Colloquies on the spices and drugs of India/ in 1563. I wrote on this topic in my /Dangerous Tastes/ (2000) and in /Food in the Ancient World from A to Z/ (2003). So far as I know, asafoetida is more often identified as (botanical) Ferula assa-foetida and Ferula foetida. But you may well be right with Ferula rubicaulis, Pertinax, I'm no botanist. However, classicists who identify silphium with Ferula tingitana (as some do) are certainly wrong. You would need a plant which shares flavours and medicinal qualities with modern asafoetida (otherwise asafoetida would not have worked as a substitute), and there is no such plant in north Africa. Sadly, the silphium of Cyrene is really lost to us.