Andrew Dalby

So he'd already written the swear-words book at the age of eleven, had he? I'm not in the least surprised! Quite typical! Yes, really very convincing, Flavia ...

Hadn't seen that one. I like the title, Flavia! I'll look out for it. Always wondered what he was like at 11 years old.

Indeed, her work does appeal to me. I'm very sorry to hear of her death.

Coming back to this a bit late, I just wanted to comment on Miguel's question there. Preface: I write as a historian. Your question needs to be rephrased a bit because the Bible is not, in origin, one book. If you want to know how to deal with Biblical texts as historical source, you have took at each text separately. A good Biblical commentary will help you do this, because it'll have a separate introduction to each book, giving views and controversies about when it was written, by whom, how much later editing may have happened, and what the sources for that book may have been. Especially for the Gospels, you'll find lengthy discussion about each one in turn. And it's very useful to look through that material, I'd say.

Sorry I didn't reply to this before. I certainly don't claim to be always right! YOU are right that the form Aeneida can exist in Latin. Here's why. Aeneis is a Latin word (and the title of a Latin poem) but it has a Greek look. In literary Latin you have the choice of declining it more like a Greek word, or more like a Latin one. Therefore, the accusative singular can be Aeneida (Greek form) or Aeneidem (Latin form). However, the base form, the nominative singular, is Aeneis, and that's really what I was talking about. If you are referring to the title -- putting quotes round it, so to speak -- you will usually use the nominative, so you will want to call the book Aeneis.

In Latin, yes, it should probably be [ai]; but at this distance in time we can hardly claim to distinguish whether the Romans said [ai] or [aɪ] -- there's not that much difference anyway -- so the Wikipedia article is not really wrong, I'd say. Much safer, I agree! It's your choice! Just as a personal view, I would say that it may sound fussy to pronounce scientific words the Latin way when you're speaking English. In this case, very much like your biology teacher, I would say VER-tuh-bri if I'm speaking English. For oesophagus I say ee-SO-fa-gus. And, before anyone asks, for Boeotia I say be-OH-sha.

All too common. Sometimes you get vinegar when you didn't want it! Yes, pickling was the usual way -- sometimes in brine (salt water), sometimes in vinegar. "Muria" actually means brine, or a fishy sauce based on brine; so your muriaticum might taste salty rather than vinegary.

Not wrong, but you're giving the pronunciation of the Spanish name, "Eneida". The Latin name was "Aeneis"; the English, which Lost Warrior originally asked us about, is "Aeneid". So if you add an "a" on the end of it, you will sound Spanish!

Yea I could see the problem with dates. Is there any other accounts on Quirinius governing Syria but in the name of military leader in 7 BC? Can I say that Josephus or Luke (or maybe Matthew) was wrong, or was there actually two 'Quirinius', perhaps? Although Wikipedia is, let's say, variable in its reliability, I agree with Nephele that this particular article gives a very good survey of the "census" issue. If you work through it, you find that it does reference some (probably all) of the documents that Niles was talking about. You can say "wrong" if you like. Historians generally would expect sources written long after the event and based on oral tradition among people who weren't ever involved with government (except to their disadvantage) to show some differences from what the documents say, sometimes "misunderstandings", sometimes "mistakes". Take it out of the religious context for a minute. You expect that an official history of the Second World War will have some differences in detail from a memoir written down by a friend of a private soldier, long after the events. That memoir will include misunderstandings about what led to a particular battle, what troops were in which location, how many were killed, etc. But it might include many crucial details about ineffective planning, poor communications, lack of supplies, that the official history will surely omit. It might even include a detail (involving a non-combatant, a child maybe) that will turn out, years later, to have had real significance. That's why we need all kinds of sources, and we needn't be too eager to say that one source or another is "wrong".

I agree with that. The true cod is not a Mediterranean fish, and the Romans were never that interested in fishing in outer oceans. Now then, was the attraction of unlimited codfish (rather than the desire to pillage, rape and conquer) the reason for the Vikings' westward voyages? And when did the Basques discover Canada? I think there's a Ph.D. in this for somebody.

The classicists that I've been around (mostly at U.Texas, but some at U.Ca.Davis, too) all say uh-NEE-id...including when I took a Proto-Indo-European class, when my professor (Mark Southern...a jolly good English lad if ever there was one) would take examples of words from classic literature! As for traditional pronunciations...I still get funny looks when I sing "Adeste fideles" with the 'traditional' pronunciation, especially in church. I guess these Catholics forgot the time when Latin was still said (and sung) in church...that, or they were all taught wrong! I was trying to remember how they said it in Texas. Thanks, Doc, I might have known you'd have the information at hand. But if Mark Southern (whom I haven't heard speak) really began with an uh-, I'd say he has adapted his English accent to his surroundings -- which happens, as we know. ... Ah, but your mistake is checking to see whether you get funny looks. "Look confident", I said! And when singing Adeste fideles, fix your eyes on heaven.

Well, all I said was the real Homer might be a woman. So Viv Nutton suggests Homer might have been "deputy chief of medical staff at the siege of Troy"! I can't wait to read on. Thanks very much for that fascinating review, Pertinax.

You're right, JR. But unless your friends are all ancient Romans, you might not want to use an ancient Roman pronunciation when dropping the Aeneid into general conversation ... The traditional pronunciation in English (at least in Britain), the one you'll still hear most when Latinists get together for meetings or in pubs and talk shop, is ee-NEE-id. Traditional pronunciations are not what they were, but if you pronounce it firmly like that and look confident, no one will argue.

I haven't looked at the map, because it wanted a plugin and I haven't time right now! But essentially the claim isn't true. Romans weren't very interested in dried fish; which, as far as Europe is concerned, is an Atlantic seaboard thing, as Doc rightly says. Long distance Atlantic fishing had not really got under way in Roman times. It's true, though, that more recent Italians have been very, very interested in stoccafisso. Romans were interested in certain kinds of salt/pickled fish (and maybe smoked, but the sources don't describe smoked fish clearly): especially tuna/bonito, mackerel, pilchard/sardine, and grey mullet. The reason for conserving tuna -- and canning it, as we tend to do now -- is that it's available in very large quantities at certain times of year, and is such good food value that you don't want to let it all go. Conserved tuna and other oily fish came to Rome from Sardinia (hence the modern name of sardines), from southern Spain (a trade begun by the Phoenicians/Carthaginians) and no doubt from other shores too. And, as we know so well, they made fish sauce from salted, fermented fish. THAT was brought to Rome from all parts of the Mediterranean and it seems nearly everybody used it. It was almost an essential. Possibly that, or salted/pickled tuna and other oily fish, is what the map is getting at.

Ah, well, yes, that was the most difficult part of the research, Pertinax! But I just steeled myself to the unfamiliar task and got on with it ...

You're absolutely right, Caldrail, and yet -- as you suggest -- there's another side to it. It was a love-hate relationship! Romans really admired Greek literature and oratory, and under the Roman Empire a full education included studying Greek in depth. Many went to study at 'university' level at Athens or other Greek centres. A large number of educated Romans must have been truly bilingual in Greek

I'm really happy if I've given Caldrail and the Augusta some consciousness-expanding pleasure with Empire of Pleasures. When I decide to write a book, it's always partly in order to teach myself some things I didn't know, and the reading that I had to do for this book was really enjoyable. Roman and Greek sources mainly, but also, beyond that, I found myself hunting down early Welsh and Anglo-Saxon and Arabic and Armenian writings (in translation, I admit!) to see how the Roman Empire appeared to some of those who came along soon after.

Ah, thank you for that recommendation, A.D. -- I'll be checking later to see if I have that in my public library's collection. We have many of the Loeb Classical Library volumes, but there's been some contention regarding the problem of the original translators for this otherwise outstanding series having tended to "clean up" certain passages deemed rude. I understand that they are now working on putting the salty language back into the text, and that they're getting around to revising a few volumes each year. I see that The Satyricon has been included among the recent Loeb revisions, although I'm sure I wouldn't know which bits might have been missing from the old, or put back in the new. Do you have any comments on the current Loeb edition of The Satyricon? Does the revised LCL edition do Petronius justice? In the meantime, I've an intriguing copy of "The Satyrica Concluded" set aside for my reading on the train tomorrow morning! Many thanks for that, A.D.! -- Nephele Ah, I'm glad it reached you safely, Nephele! Unfortunately I haven't seen the Loeb revision of the Satyricon yet. Maybe we need a review of it ... Jeffrey Henderson (who wrote an admirable book about rude words in Greek, and is now general editor of the Loebs) is the right man to make sure they pull no punches. The (fairly) new Loeb edition of Martial, by Shackleton Bailey, is very good, in my view (but it's 3 volumes, so pretty expensive). EDIT: That's the same Shackleton Bailey who has just been mentioned in another thread by MPCato. And the same Shackleton Bailey who was not only a fine classicist but also Lecturer in Tibetan at Cambridge.

Would be interesting to know what language lies behind them. Even now, Chinese characters can be used for more than one language. Was the language spoken at that location, 8,000 years ago, a direct ancestor of Chinese, more distantly related, or even not related at all?

I am definitely too late, but better late than never. I agree with the last speaker, anyway. Happy Birthday! (and Maureen says the same)

Good advice, Nephele. But that list looked OK to me. What often happened was this. The Romans retained the original tribes as administrative divisions (which they called civitates, "states"). They built a Roman-style city to be the new state capital. The full name of this capital would include the tribal name: e.g. "Lutetia Parisiorum" meaning "... of the Parisii". But soon these names were shortened, and people just said "Parisii": hence the original tribal name turned into a place name.

I may not be the only one ... but I would certainly like to review this book if it's available.

Yes, that's right, Auguste, but 'don't drop me off the mailing list' as they say. I'll be at the next one! And envious best wishes to all those who will be there, defending the Empire against the Pictish hordes.