Andrew Dalby

Also, can anyone here read Greek? A Google search on "hyperetae" turned up a few possiblities, and a likely source of information might be that fourth website given in the list -- the PDF file in Greek. Well, I can read Greek, but I'm on my way to York! I don't have any sources with me (or broadband) so I can't do much for a week or so. Sorry, Nephele. So far as I know, hyperetes means an 'assistant' of one sort or another. I don't remember ever seeing any evidence about assistants in the Library at Alexandria, but no doubt Dr Arab may have found some. However, I do know of a few surviving extracts from the catalogue, which was compiled by (or under the direction of) Callimachus, poet and librarian. These extracts occur in the work of Athenaeus, who quotes lists of authors about cookery (his special interest). There may be a few others too. I think that's all I can tell you right now. Maybe others will add more.

The Angles, I understand, were the ones who settled Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria -- quite a large swathe of England in total. But the Danelaw came along and overlaid much of that. Northumbria was the "kingdom north of the Humber". But that only takes your question one stage back; I don't know the origin of the name "Humber" for the big estuary. According to my map, the Romans had a different name for it (Abus flumen).

OK, got you. Looks pretty mountainous around there. We have an article on 11 Septembris 2001 but very short and in bad Latin. We don't even mention flight 93. Any Latinists who feel like improving this?

Yay! So, does this mean that you'll eventually be adding a Vicipaedia entry for my beloved Insula Longa? -- Nephele Oh, well, OK. Look out for a stipula* this afternoon. (When I really ought to be doing something quite different.) I will have to mention the Railroad, on which I have myself been a passenger. And once I've started the article, why don't you go ahead and improve it?? *A "stub" on the English Wikipedia (a placeholder until someone writes a good long article) corresponds to a "stipula" on Vicipaedia.

Does the modern-day Catholic Church count as a source? I see that their Diocese of Rockville Centre (a town here on Long Island) is called Dioecesis Petropolitana in Insula Longa If the RC Church

Looking through the names listed in the first posting, I think Vicipaedia has probably done the best it could, except that too many alternatives are given for Manchester. The first two are OK (from different historical periods). The third choice is Anglo-Saxon, not Latin. The fourth and fifth are just wrong, I strongly suspect. I have now adjusted the entry ... if anyone knows better, by all means change it back again!

Ah, excellent! Perhaps he can tell me if "Insula Longa" is correct for my home region of "Long Island", as Vicipaedia doesn't seem to include this. -- Nephele Well, here I am. And I do contribute to Vicipaedia, and one of the things I sometimes work on is getting the geographical names correct and properly sourced. But it's a hard task, because people, as we all know, sometimes add unsourced material to Wikipedia (in all languages!) And people have a special habit of inventing Latin names for their home towns and states (and teachers and schools and football teams and favourite musicians). This is a real problem, because Wikipedia gets used as an authority, and made-up Latin names can spread around the Web from what was originally little more than a joke entry on Vicipaedia. I've seen it happen. I myself don't touch US place names, because I don't have any reliable sources for these. But I can tell you that most of the names of US states and big cities are sourced (meaning that the name has been used in print before it got on to Vicipaedia). Often a source is cited on the page. I suspect that many smaller US city names are not sourced and ought to be taken with a pinch of salt. If anyone wants to verify a particular name, make a comment on the talk page and one of the regular US contributors will try to answer it. Long Island? Well, what else could it be, really, but "Insula Longa"! However, I can't confirm that that name has been used. I have asked and we'll see if someone replies. "Manhata" (as the Latin name for a nearly smaller island) goes back to the 17th century, no problem there.

Here am I chipping in -- Caldrail will probably answer better -- the Danelaw was not facing the continent but facing the North Sea. It covered East Anglia, the East Midlands, Yorkshire and North East England. How far north into Scotland I don't know. In fact it took in most of the area originally conquered by the Angles -- which is maybe why, although the Angles had been significant enough to give their name to the whole country, it was the West Saxon kingdom that eventually took the jackpot. The West Saxons, thanks to Alfred mainly, had just managed to survive the Viking onslaught. But then there was Ethelred the Unready and Canute -- that's part two ... Names in -sen don't occur (I think) among traditional English names -- they would belong to people who have migrated from Scandinavia pretty recently. Surnames in -son are very common in England, however. But the thing is, surnames weren't in use at all at the period we're talking about, so it would be complicated to use them to show Viking origin directly. What do others think about that?

We'll have none of that in Britannia, thank you ...

Very interesting collection of materials, Caldrail. I just want to make a quick comment on this last item. Your source comes from the period when the English (including folklorists and etymologists) disliked the Welsh even more than they do now -- see another thread! Hence no mention of the fact that 'combe' occurs most often in places bordering on remaining areas of Celtic speech, and surely is a loanword linked with Welsh cwm 'valley'. This might explain why it "often denotes a valley"! Your source is not alone. The 'Oxford dictionary of English etymology' does not mention this Celtic link at all. Least said, soonest mended. The 'Oxford English dictionary' does mention it, in one of the very long essays that it devotes to apparent Welsh connections in the English vocabulary: as usual, the main trend of the little essay is to minimize the Welsh link and make it look as if the word is more-than-half Germanic.

My brother was engaged to a girl from Wales for a couple of years. He visited her family twice and was taken aback by just how cliquish it was in the small town they lived in. His first visit to a local pub resulted in the whole place turning and staring at him like in some movie. Once it was known he was a guest of the her family he was accepted and made a few visits there as the resident 'expert on America'. He was shocked at how anti-English they were. I guess there are historical (and modern) reasons for that. I'm occasionally taken aback by how anti-Welsh one or other of my English friends turns out to be ... Rural parts of Europe (and surely the United States too) have various ways of responding to outsiders -- defence mechanisms, I would say, and such defences are sometimes needed. As your brother evidently found, you can get past these initial responses if you're prepared to work at it and respond sensitively.

We Brits call them 'sleeping policemen'. Do you call them that too? I must say it never occurred to me that the Romans invented them. I, like others, thought those big paving-stones were purely to serve as stepping stones during heavy rain -- but I quite agree that they would also have the effect you mention. I don't remember any source hinting at chariot races in city streets ... perhaps this is why!

Yes, I'm quite sure it helped me with speaking French. You get a much better idea than from school textbooks of the kind of things people really say in lively conversation. Just so long as you remember not to say "par Toutatis"!

Caesar can make it look like that in his Commentaries. No doubt he had the odd victory. He cleared off rather quickly, though, didn't he? It was a hundred years afterwards, when Roman culture and economy was spreading all across conquered Gaul -- just across the Channel -- that Britain actually was conquered. By that time Britain, in turn, had been "softened".

I think you're right, GO. It was before Schliemann that people thought the Trojan War was all legend. Schliemann showed that at least some of it was true -- a real Mycenaean civilization, Mycenae a rich place, Troy a real location and maybe besieged and burned. Whatever the problems over details of Schliemann's work, he did show that there was some reality behind the legends. And so it's from Schliemann onwards, up to the present day, that we get people trying to identify every geographical detail as true -- he started all that, in a way. My explanation (for what it's worth!) for the problems of identifying Ithaca is different from Bittlestone's. I don't see any reason to think the poet of the Odyssey had ever been anywhere near Ithaca -- it's a very out-of-the-way corner of Greece, and a long way from where people generally suppose the Odyssey was composed. So I wouldn't expect the geographical descriptions in the poem to be accurate. But I don't mean to say that Bittlestone's wrong. The peninsula of Kefalonia that he selects might really be the place where "Odysseus's palace" will be identified. It will be fascinating to see what the current investigations show.

As to that last point, I believe they'd been farmers for a long time already -- you can't live permanently by war. But, yes, I understand (partly from reading Barry Cunliffe on the subject) that Gaulish/Celtic tribes were becoming a bit too attracted to Roman luxury products, e.g. wine. They were softened up by trade well before Caesar's conquests. I seem to think that Strabo, Caesar himself, and Tacitus all give indications of this. Perhaps others will have some quotations to hand.

Yes, I see -- sorry! -- OK, here's my best shot at an answer. What's known -- and this is all -- is that Suetonius, more than once, cites letters by Antony, and says explicitly that he is doing so. The letters are not apparently all to the same recipient (I didn't mean to imply that they were addressed to Antonia, though indeed some may have been). The only reason the fact is relevant to us right now is that (as PP reminded me somewhere above) at the root of this thread is a claim made by Antony, disreputable to Augustus, which Suetonius repeats very briefly in ''oratio obliqua'' (i.e. giving it no support of his own). Since, elsewhere, Suetonius relies for his report of Antony's gossip on citing Antony's letters, it seems likely to me that this detail, too, is drawn from one of Antony's letters; but this time Suetonius doesn't say so. Therefore one might alternatively argue that, this time, he had a different source. The answer expected by your question, above, is no. And that's the RIGHT answer, too! No others have seen it. Now, there are several possible conclusions to draw from that. One is that Suetonius invented this source (and maybe lots of other sources too). Suetonius is doing biographical fiction, in fact, rather than biography. I didn't mention that possibility earlier, mainy because having read a lot of Suetonius (not just the Lives of the Caesars) I have personally been convinced that he doesn't do that. He's a fellow like me -- very much like me, since he once worked as an archivist. He really enjoyed hunting through the Imperial archives, to which he had privileged access, and finding curious details (both true and false) about people of the past whose lives and slanders were revealed there. So, mainly, I don't think that is a likely explanation. Others may, of course. The other likely conclusion is that Suetonius really did read Antony's letters (or some of them). That's the conclusion I personally accept, for the reasons just given and because he does specifically say so. If he did, how? Why did no one else see them? Suggestion: because they were not published, but tucked away in the Imperial archives. Since Suetonius cites A's letters to more than one recipient, that implies -- especially to a former archivist like me -- that they were there as a group: the alternative conjecture is that he made lot of lucky hits on Antony in what must have been a vast store of documents. But that alternative is possible, too. And the further alternative, that he got hold of them in some other way, can't be discounted. Well, if Antony's letters were in the Imperial archives as a group, how did they get there? And since they were so disreputable to Augustus, why didn't he destroy them? Someone earlier in the thread posed a question that reminded me I had previously mused on this. My suggestion -- which appeared on this thread for the first time in human history (I think) -- but it is only a suggestion, there's no direct evidence at all -- is that Antony kept his own copies of his letters (as we know Cicero and others did), and that his personal archive was inherited by Antonia. It was then incorporated into the Imperial archive either on Antonia's death (Caligula was proud of his descent from Antony) or on Claudius's accession -- and thus escaped destruction by Augustus. In this chain there are more 'ifs' than a careful historian likes; all I can say in extenuation is that the 'ifs' hang together. I think.

Question 1: what do you mean by 'this'? Question 2: I have explained, earlier in this thread, why in my view one would be unwise to take Antony's word seriously.

Last night I was reading Samuel Johnson's Rasselas in bed. (Maybe I should cross-post this information to "what do you guys do for fun"!) In this novel, published 1759, there is an Arab kidnapper; he is also a philosopher (this is a philosophical novel after all). He has a conversation with his temporary guest or victim about the foreign invaders of his country from whom we are compelled to take by the sword what is denied to justice. The violence of war admits no distinction; the lance that is lifted at guilt and power will sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness. It struck me Johnson's reflections are not totally irrelevant to what's being discussed in this thread.

There is truth in these sentences, but, I think, it is totally irrelevant to the Caesar-Octavian question. Romans thought it acceptable to use slave children in this way -- they were one's possessions; but not citizen children -- they were someone else's possessions. Most societies make very strict distinctions between who is possible sexual prey and who isn't. If you cross the line, there's a big public scandal. If Caesar had kept Octavian, child of a citizen, in the way suggested in these sentences, it would have been a big, big scandal.

Mefeels that that is a 'moot' point or it is a 'moot' point? I guess that that depends on how closed one's alleged mind is. I cannot see that this illustrates a closed mind. I actually applaud the fact that they dismantled the Republic, MPC mourns the fact. We both agree on the agents but differ in opinion. Or is there a case for saying that neither of them did any dismantling? Caesar's and Augustus' biggest contribution to history, in other words, was not what they did in private - that was the point being made. I'll translate my bit of word play: "Mefeels that this is an 'arguable' point or is it an 'unarguable' point?" I believe that the Senate, the 'good beings', and dare I say, the People of Rome were as culpable as the two scoundrels mentioned. Good point AD, we sometimes seem to forget that the Antonian legacy lived on and was an integral part of imperial politics well after his actual defeat. So, to sum up, the absence of proof is proof that the absence of proof is proof! That's the nature of this thread, I think. For sexual relationships 2000 years ago, especially if the alleged participants wanted to keep them secret, you're not likely to get much more than an absence of proof!

That's a point I hadn't considered. It's very far from positive evidence for a sexual relationship! -- but, yes, it would help to explain why the only such claim now recorded emerges so much later. In response to questions raised in this thread about Suetonius's source: he makes it clear, elsewhere in the Life of Augustus, that he is able to quote Antony's correspondence. (And, at the risk of starting another dispute about Suetonius, which happens here from time to time, I'll say right now that I think Suetonius is remarkable -- unique -- among ancient biographers in the precision with which he attributes material to named sources. I believe him. As imperial archivist he clearly did have unique access to documents. How lucky we are that he managed to quote Augustus's private comments about Tiberius and Claudius!). If Suetonius cites Antony, so far as I remember, it's always for disreputable claims about Augustus's private life. In one case, it's a letter from Antony to Augustus that's being cited. Why did Antony make such statements, and when, exactly, did he make them? Was it because he knew something? Was it because he wanted to undermine Augustus? Or both? And how was it that Antony's correspondence survived for Suetonius to read? Why didn't Augustus destroy it? My suggestion is that this correspondence reached the Imperial archives after Augustus's death, having previously been the private property of his daughter, Antonia "Minor", mother of Claudius and grandmother of Caligula.

Under the Empire it was less and less a question of "blood". More and more provincials were becoming citizens -- until, eventually, under Caracalla, the citizenship was extended to all free inhabitants. In my opinion, this is one way in which Rome was far more advanced than any Greek city (and perhaps one reason why Rome so easily annexed all the Greek cities). In the typical Greek city, to be a citizen, you were supposed to be able to prove your descent from citizens, and very few outsiders were made "honorary citizens". Over time, the citizen body of a Greek city would tend to get smaller. Roman citizenship was far more inclusive -- and Rome built an empire on it.

Very interesting material, Doc. I believe that many of these Judaeo-Spanish speakers formerly lived in Thessalonica -- which used to be an extremely cosmopolitan city before the twentieth century and its successive nationalism/racism/ethnic cleansing/sorting-people-out crazes. If I remember rightly, the other language called Ladino that you mention -- not the one that these samples belong to -- is spoken somewhere around the upper valley of the Adige, in (as you say) northeastern Italy.