Recently borrowed The Romans: From Village to Empire (Mary T. Boatwright, Daniel J. Gargola & Richard A. Talbert: Oxford Press). There is, of course, a pretty full plate of stuff to talk about where the Romans are concerned, especially if you start at a point before it was a real city, as is the case here.
One interesting topic involves the Romans themselves writing history:
Roman historians only rarely undertook what a modern historian might recognize as research. Undoubtedly, Romans of a later age had access to information regarding earlier centuries that was, in modern terms, reliable. Some documents did survive, although later Romans found them difficult to decipher and interpret...
However, few Roman historians seem to have consulted the old texts directly. Instead, they relied on interpretations of them (not always accurate) encountered in the work of earlier writers.
The history of Rome by the time it had reached its imperial phase was already quite long. Long enough for the Latin language to mutate and evolve. We understand Shakespeare because actors have worked to keep him contemporary and he's been quoted by thousands of other authors, but dropped in a sixteenth century English village we'd scarcely understand a word. anyone was speaking. Later Roman historians had a similar problem, running into a Latin that was already archaic. Not too surprising that they chose to copy what had already been written. Especially since originality wasn't really what was selling. (Is it ever?)
2 comments:
One does not know - indeed..
I suppose it should have occurred to me that for much of Roman history Latin was a living rather than a static language. It's simply that I never considered that it must have changed over the centuries, although I also don't see it changing as much as English has done over the course of so many technological developments. The Romans were brilliant engineers, craftsmen, writers and architects, but there are only so many names for their objects and job categories. Then again, Rome did last a very long time.
(I took Latin in high school for three years, giving it up as my marks dropped precipitously with every term. I was good at translating Latin to English but Latin declensions eventually defeated me.)
The part about Roman historians relying on interpretations rather that basic facts isn't so much different from what we see today. You're right that medieval English is only comprehensible because of the literature, particularly Shakespeare. Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is another - not too difficult to understand when read but one can only imagine the difficulty in making out the spoken words. Be like listening to my grandfather - but even more challenging.
Yeah, that's the thing. It's first attested in the eighth century, when Rome was still a kingdom. So it was a dominant language for a number of centuries, and there were changes in those times, even if to us the technology would look pretty static. During its spread through the Italian peninsula it displaced other languages, some related (like Umbrian) and some not (like Etruscan). That meant that it was now being spoken or written between people who didn't live near each other, which is a significant change.
The funny thing about Rome going from kingdom to republic before becoming an empire is that the transition had none of the hallmarks we expect from the end of a kingdom. There were no revolutions, no manifestoes. There was just a lot of internal strife within the royal family, leading to a minor civil war. In the meantime the landowners decided that they preferred leaving things up to the senate, which they essentially controlled.
Yeah, I can see why you'd fine declension in Latin to be a real bear. The language's grammar in that respect is shockingly complex. All the still surviving Romance languages have simplified.
Shakespeare is oddly worded but has close equivalents in Modern English. Chaucer is mostly published alongside modern day translations now. Of course Old English lit like Beowulf stymies everyone except for people who have studied it.
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