21/4/2014 A Don’s Life: A revision course in Livy

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Mary Beard writes "A Don's Life" reporting on both the modern and the ancient world.Subscribe to a feed of this Times Online blog athttp://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/rss.xml

April 16, 2014

A revision course in Livy

I think I have already said that my next book (the one that I am w orking on now m notthe one just about to appear) is a History of Rome -- from Romulus to Caracalla(reasons for end point w ill be revealed in due course). It is primarily meant for ageneral intelligent audience, and the register I am trying to hit is the one I struck inPompeii. That is to say: I'm not assuming that the reader know s a lot about ancientRome, certainly not the technicalities, but I am not assuming that they are stupid eitheror that they w ant to be given a "baby version" w ith the problems and big questionsskated over.

The point about Roman history (as w ith the archaeology of Pompeii) is that "how w eknow w hat w e know " can be almost as interesting (sometimes as interesting) aswhat w e know . On the other hand, readers dont w ant a book w hich adds up to littlemore than a series of laments about how inadequate the evidence is (you cantbelieve Livy, the archaeology is misleading, etc etc, over and over again). The knackseems to me (and I hope I have got it) to f ind the right questions to ask of the materialw e do have, There is a hell of a lot of surviving evidence for ancient Rome. It is onlyinadequate if you ask it the w rong question.

Take the stories of Rome's foundation, Romulus and Remus inter alia.

There is very little benefit at all in trying to w ork out w hich bits of the ancient narratvehistory of the earliest phases of Rome might reflect historical reality. All those thatsurvive w ere w ritten w ell over half a millennium after the supposed eventsconcerned, draw ing on lost sources w ritten about half a millennium. It is absolutelyclear that some of the story is fantasy/myth (the suckling of the babies by the w olf,for example; some Romans themselves saw that couldnt be factually accurate andpointed out that lupa meant both w olf and prostitute -- the tw ins had actually beenfound by a prostitute). It is also quite likely that there are a few traces in the accountsof some aspects that may go back, albeit indirectly, to the very earliest period. Thetrouble is that w e dont have any reliable criteria at all for sorting the w heat from thechaff. Most historians simply cherry pick the "facts" that suit their argument.

On the other hand, if you read the extensive foundation stories that w e have (Livy'sf irst book, 4 books of Dionysius of Halicarnassus etc ), you get a w onderfully richview of how Rome had come to see itself, and debate its ow n position by the f irstcentury BC. The very "fact" that Romulus killed Remus seemed to w rite fratricide andcivil w ar into Roman identity from the start (continued according to the "myth" by theidea that Romulus' death w as not necessarily natural, nor some form of apotheosis;some said he w as hacked to death by the senators). And the notion that Romulusfirst acquired a population for his new city by declaring an asylum, and inviting therunaw ays and criminals from Italy to join his settlement, chimes loudly w ith Rome'shistorical approach to migration and the extension of citizenship.

But the foundation stories (w hich are almost alw ays retrospective creations anyw ay,in any culture) are the easy bit. I am now trying to get to feel a bit more comfortablew ith the "history" of the early Republic, and its rather ambivalent heroes (Camillus andCincinnatus and co). It's not a period that I have taught for years and years. So I amsitting dow n w ith my Livy and reading it quite carefully (f litting a bit betw een the Latinand the translation I confess).

Going back to it after so long (and reading at a bit of a pace) , I must say that Livyseems sharper and w ittier than I recall. Over the last few years, I have got ratherstuck in all the cruces and puzzles (like on the impenetrable discussion on the originof Roman theatrical performance in Book 7), to the exclusion of all else.

My favourite bit so far? It's w hen he w rites (also in Book 7 I think) "I expect readersmight have got a bit bored by now w ith all these w ars against the Volsci"! Well, yesand no.

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Comments

Vince dijo...

The She-Wolf could be a reference to the w oman/w ife of a Greek/Mycenaean shipscaptain/f leet admiral. What I f ind interesting is position of the Vestals and the similarity -and lack- to thePrytaneion.

Responder April 16, 2014 at 02:26 PMA reader dijo...Learning English from a superb text... Bliss!

Responder April 16, 2014 at 03:01 PMadennis dijo...EPISTIMOLOGICALLYSPEAKING.........

How do you knoww hat youdon't knowand how do youknow w hatyou do,I guess

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21/4/2014 A Don’s Life: A revision course in Livy

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it's likehitting ahigh-lowand concotingit all ina stew !

Responder April 16, 2014 at 04:28 PMJane S dijo...The past is damnably diff icult to reconstruct. Forensically researching a single archaicGreek myth, I found it’s made up of *disjecta membra.* (Unfortunately, it doesn’t lackfanciful embroidery by Roman w riters!) From this remove, w e can’t truly access ancient processes of thought but only w hatthe thoughts produced – or, rather, w hat is extant, given the hazards of survival. Thefurther back w e go, the more tenuous the evidence.My guess is the Romans, like the Greeks, held that behind a name there had to behistorical reality and this is one of the problems in reconstruction.

Interpretations and theories are often speculative and unverif iable, but archaeology’sa BIT easier? e.g., w hen a bit of ancient w all uncovered at Ostia suggests the cityw as perhaps bigger than w e originally believed?As long as w e can w ork out the palimpsest of w hat w as said, or built, w hen and / orby w hom; as a giant modern emporium declares, ‘Every little helps’.

Responder April 16, 2014 at 04:50 PMPL dijo...Have you thought about parallels to the Hebrew story of origins? In both the founderand name-giver (Romulus, Jacob/Israel) is a trickster w ho overcomes his tw inbrother; their remote ancestor (Aeneas, Abraham) is a chosen one divinely guidedfrom afar to settle in the promised land; the sense that the nation itself is chosen andbound to some universal mission ("In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth beblessed," "Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento"). It's not a new observation,but I w onder if it's been pursued much in modern times, e.g. from an anthropologicalperspective. I suspect the motif of the "culture-hero" as trickster is also foundelsew here.

Responder April 16, 2014 at 05:03 PMOlivia Byard dijo...Mary, I don't know if this is any help, but in Holland's book I am getting a bit boggeddow n in political intrigue now w e've got to the point of the triumverate - mid50s BC

I w ill get back to it (and I've had other recent matters of more urgency), but my earlierenthusiasm has died dow n a bit... I w ould like to know more about the foundationmyths and the development of the actual myths. I w as intrigued to understand thatRome and Greece stood together for a quite a w hile.

History is so simplif ied into a series of tidy events. Like the 'sixties' that really took offin about '67 and w ent on until '74-5.So something that sheds light on how one hugeculture slow ly declines w hile another grow s w ould interest me and is also timely. Andmore on how Rome related to the other countries around the Med. and further afield.Holland glosses over that a lot.But f iltered as ever through your acute look at how people lived.

I'm not really fascinated by all the corrupt Emperors -- there's been a lot on that. Butw hether a republic's corruption is inevitable interests me. Ditto Empire. How half thechurches in Rome got to be built by w omen's funding fascinates me too. (if indeed it'strue w hich I have been told)

Lastly I don't know if you're going to the other end of it all. Someone on a historyprogram recently gave an exact date for w hen the Romans left Britain, as though theyall suddenly got up one morning and headed for Dover like lemmings.

What w ere they like after 400 years here? How did the end happen? And how did itw ork w hen it w as going strong, transport and messages and spices and culturalexchanges etc.? How much of our DNA is still 'Roman'?

Anyw ay, just a few reader's queries and interests. Good luck.

Responder April 16, 2014 at 08:48 PMSusan Cater dijo...Oh how I hated Livy w hen I did my Latin A-level! Even the elephants sliding around onthe ice didn't amuse. Although poor Sophonisba appealing to the sickeningly uprightScipio Africanus did amuse rather. I have never been able to face Livy since althoughI am considering re-reading Tacitus w ho w as more diff icult to translate butw onderfully sarcastic. I am looking forw ard to your book Mary and w ill certainly buy acopy.

Responder April 16, 2014 at 09:31 PMMalcolm McLean dijo en respuesta a PL...The fratricidal tw in theme appears at least tw ice in Genesis. I also suspect that tw insw ere a component of the zodiac, because you need a double lunar month to f it asolar year, so if a group consists of 11 plus one set of tw ins, that suggests an originin the zodiac.But it's very diff icult to say w hat sort of historical reality these stories have. I'm surethat historians 3000 years hence w ill regard a modern account of 20th centuryJew ish history as hopelessly infected w ith myth and implausibilities.

Responder April 16, 2014 at 11:36 PMMichael Bulley dijo...Livy can be a grammatical pow erhouse. Take the passage in Bk1,58 about the rape ofLucretia: ubi exceptus benigne ab ignaris consilii cum post cenam in hospitalecubiculum deductus esset amore ardens postquam satis tuta circa sopitique omnesuidebantur stricto gladio ad dormientem Lucretiam uenit sinistraque manu mulierispectore oppresso ‘tace Lucretia’ inquit ‘Sextus Tarquinius sum. ferrum in manu est.moriere si emiseris uocem.’

For a small fee, I w ill give you a syntactical analysis of it. On the other hand, Livysays Hannibal split some rocks by using vinegar. He doesn’t say w hether there w asa vinegar factory nearby. The Latin for vinegar is acetum. The Italian for an axe isaccetta.

Responder April 17, 2014 at 08:36 AMPL dijo en respuesta a Michael Bulley...Let me see if I can make a grammatical English sentence out of it w ord for w ord, atsight:

VBI At w hich point, EXCEPTVS having betaken himself BENIGNE peaceably AB fromIGNARIS the unw itting ones CONSILII of the council POST after CENAM supper, IN intoHOSPITALE the accommodating CVBICVLVM bedchamber DEDVCTVS ESSET havingintroduced himself, AMORE by love (or by Cupid) ARDENS incensed, POSTQVAMsince SATIS suff iciently TVTA secure CIRCA everything about SOPITIQVE and inslumber OMNES everyone VIDEBANTVR appeared, STRICTO w ith draw n GLADIOsw ord AD to DORMIENTEM the sleeping LVCRETIA Lucretia VENIT he cameSINISTRAQVE and w ith his left MANV hand MVLIERIS the w oman’s PECTORE breastOPPRESSO being held dow n, TACE LVCRETIA ‘Be silent, Lucretia’ INQVIT did he say:SEXTUS TARQVINVS SVM ‘I am Sextus Tarquinus; FERRVM my sw ord IN MANV ESTis in my hand; MORIERE you die SI if EMISERSIS you let out VOCEM your voice’.

I’m a bit unsure of the forms of ‘moriere’ and ‘emiseris’ but their meaning is plain fromthe context.

Responder April 17, 2014 at 12:26 PMchris y dijo..."The Latin for vinegar is acetum. The Italian for an axe is accetta."

So are you suggesting corrupted transcription of the text w e have, or that Livy w asidle in analysing his sources?

Responder April 17, 2014 at 01:32 PManna dijo en respuesta a Michael Bulley...Depends on the kind of rock. My reference (21.37.2) has the phrase "acetoputrefaciunt", w hich suggests that the rocks w ere limestone (calcium carbonate)w hich w hen in contact w ith vinegar or sour w ine, w hich contain varyingconcentrations of acetic acid, w ill partially dissolve.

As to the w ider point, it is interesting to observe the gradual absorption of legend intoaccepted fact in English history also. If there ever w as anything w ritten dow n by theindigenous Celts once the Romans had left, it has not survived, and the earliestrecords w e have are the matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxon Chronicles from the 8th century.By the medieval period, Celtic history had been rew ritten, composed of rememberedlegends of a semisupernatural people, Germanic interpolations from later invasions,

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plus half-understood importations from Roman history in order to give an air ofauthority (did you know Aeneas w as one of our ancestors as w ell?). Presumably thesame or similar process w ent on as regards Roman history.

Responder April 17, 2014 at 03:23 PMPL dijo...Or rather HOSPITALE must mean "guest's (or host's?) rather than "accommodating."

Responder April 17, 2014 at 07:07 PMMalcolm McLean dijo en respuesta a anna...Britain w as supposedly named after Brutus, w ho w as Anaeas' grandson. The legenddoesn't seem to go back before the 7th century, according to Wikipedia anyw ay.How ever there w ere Gaelic people in the region of Troy, most famed for being theGalatians to w hom St Paul addressed his epistle.

Responder April 17, 2014 at 07:13 PMMichael Bulley dijo en respuesta a chris y...I think Livy had a source saying that Hannibal's men cleared the rocks by splitting themw ith axes (thus making them smaller and easier to move), but that he didn't recognizethe dialect w ord for axe and interpreted it as 'acetum' (vinegar). He then had to thinkhow rocks might be split by vinegar.

Responder April 17, 2014 at 07:33 PMMichael Bulley dijo en respuesta a PL...Your version hasn’t quite the style of Aubrey de Sélincourt’s (Penguin edition). Hebegins w ith the preceding sentence: [A few days later Sextus, w ithout Collatinus’sknow ledge, returned w ith one companion to Collatia] w here he w as hospitablyw elcomed in Lucretia’s house, and, after supper, escorted, like the honoured visitorhe w as thought to be, to the guest-chamber. Here he w aited till the house w asasleep, and then, w hen all w as quiet, he drew his sw ord and made his w ay toLucretia’s room determined to rape her. She w as asleep. Laying his left hand on herbreast, ‘Lucretia,’ he w hispered, ‘not a sound! I am Sextus Tarquinius. I am armed – ifyou utter a w ord, I w ill kill you.’

Note that de Sélincourt’s version hardly follow s the grammar of the Latin at all,introduces things that aren’t in the Latin and misses some out that are. That’s how itshould be w ith a good translation.

On your grammar questions: moriere is future and emiseris is future-perfect: literally“you w ill die, if you w ill have uttered a sound.”

For the Latinists – but you’ll need a stif f drink f irst, here’s the syntactical analysis. Iw as going to demand money for it, but Gareth Bale’s brilliant goal last night is still in mymind and has left me mellow .

sinistra... inquit (((ubi... consilii ((postquam... (cum... esset... ardens)... uidebantur))...stricto... uenit))) ((tace... moriere (si... uocem))

The main verb is inquit. In the clause of w hich it is the main verb is the participialphrase sinistra... oppresso. The object of inquit is the direct speech, the last sentenceof w hich has a subordinate conditional. The f irst subordinate temporal clause is theubi one, w hich ends at uenit and contains the three participial phrases exceptus...consilii, stricto gladio and dormientem Lucretiam. Inside and subordinate to the ubiclause is the postquam one, subordinate to w hich, and inside it, is the cum clause,w hose verb is deductus esset, to w hich is tacked on the participial phrase amoreardens. Is that clear?

There are so many English w ords related to the Latin ones in that passage thatsomeone w ho knew no Latin could get the gist, given the big clue of Lucretia.

Responder April 17, 2014 at 08:22 PMAndrew Cater dijo en respuesta a anna..."Here I am and here I rest, and this place shall be called Totnes" - Brutus, annexingDevon and ensuring that the Queen is descended from Aeneas .. .

Celtic history - there are chronicles from Cumbria, Wales and Strathclyde - all BritishCeltic at the time the Romans left but nothing that necessarily states how it felt: it w asa gradual realisation that things changed and there w as not necessarily acatastrophic collapse.

For Olivia - traditionally the date given for the w ithdraw al of the Romans is 410 CE.The British appealed to Honorius to send military help against the raiders launchingsporadic raids. "The barbarians drive us into the mountains, the mountains push usinto the sea" (from memory) - but (apparently) got no response - there w as no helpforthcoming from across the Channel as people turned inw ards.

As far as Livy goes, I'm prejudiced by generations of bad press: many people seemrelieved that w e lost ~30 volumes of Roman histories from Livy.

What's diff icult is that in the 1000 years of Roman history in Rome, most of w hat w ehave left is w ritten up to 500 years or more later than the original events - and w eonly have the texts that w ere preserved as good Latin / good examples as they w ereglossed by later copyists.

Responder April 17, 2014 at 09:13 PMChristopher Nelson dijo...Eheu, if only Livy translations w ere allow ed for us A2 students. It's a don's life eh...CN

Responder April 17, 2014 at 09:55 PMPL dijo...Just looked at the Loeb. My sight version made the elementary mistake of supposing‘consilii’ referred to a deliberative body. What the other guests w ere ‘ignari’ of w asSextus’s intentions.

What a pow erful episode that w hole Rape of Lucretia motif is! How typical of all those(male) early Roman heroes Lucretia is, sacrif icing self to the high demands of theSenatus populusque. And how signif icant that, as Livy tells it, it took her heroicsuicide to set off the revolution that founded the Republic.Augustine’s refutation of her heroism, in The City of God, marks a real w atershed inthe history of ethical thought.

Responder April 18, 2014 at 09:52 AMMalcolm McLean dijo en respuesta a Christopher Nelson...Our know ledge of Latin is in a very poor state. A hundred years also, boys used tocompose Latin verses as a routine school exercise. Now , even the Professor ofClassic at Cambridge admits she's not entirely comfortable w ith Livy. It's not that Maryshouldn't have the job, probably no-one better could be found. But it's a reflection ofthe times. Even the Pope now adays composes his encyclicals in his native tongue,and gets someone to translate into Latin.

It's now dow n to you youngsters to take the torch of learning from us, and fan it into abrighter f lame.

Responder April 18, 2014 at 11:42 AMchris y dijo en respuesta a Malcolm McLean...Malcolm, the Galatians arrived in Anatolia in Hellenistic times - the event is w elldocumented. That's a thousand years after Aeneas, supposing he existed.

Responder April 18, 2014 at 11:58 AMMary Beard dijo en respuesta a Malcolm McLean...Just in self defence.. re Livy.I think I feel comfortable w ith Livy's Latin, but it takes a lot longer..and you get adifferent view of the pace of the book if you are not occasionally having to strugglew ith a tricky sentence

Responder April 18, 2014 at 07:13 PMOlivia Byard dijo...I can't follow any of this --don't feel I belong here at all, for the f irst time ever.

I do hope it all becomes a little less specialized and contains more English andexplanation before it reaches the shelves!!

Think I'll tune in next time.Meanw hile I'll leave you anoraks to it.Enjoy.

Happy Easter!

Responder April 18, 2014 at 08:05 PMMichael Bulley dijo...What w ill Mary Beard’s opening sentence be, as author of a complete history ofRome? Will she follow the example of Livy, w ho w rote “facturusne operae pretiumsim si a primordio urbis res populi Romani perscripserim nec satis scio nec si sciamdicere ausim.” (roughly speaking: I’m going to have a stab at w riting a history of Rome

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from the year dot. I’m not sure w hether I’ll do it justice and, even if I w as, I w ouldn’tdream of saying so). She’d have a job f itting in four subjunctives like that, in English.

Responder April 18, 2014 at 08:18 PMMalcolm McLean dijo en respuesta a Mary Beard...It's almost certainly a case of not being taught to f luency as a child. It's much morediff icult, maybe even impossible, to become fluent in another language as an adult.The adult mind is different, it treats the language as a sort of logical puzzle or set ofrules to be applied, so initially the adult learner seems to make good progress, forminga few sentences grammatically. But he seldom achieves real facility.

As a society w e attach so little importance to ancient languages that teaching them isnot even considered a legitimate charitable purpose. The charity commission doesn'taccept it as a public benefit. Recognising our situation for w hat it is isn't an attack onthe few people, like yourself, w ho do retain some learning.

Responder April 18, 2014 at 08:45 PMAsplund dijo...Tw o new books to look forw ard to - hahae! I love your books, especially "Confrontingthe Classics". Your combination of erudition and sense of humour is completelyirresistible. (And I really appreciate it that you take your readers seriously.) By thew ay, I remember my Latin teacher saying she thought Livy's syntax w as perverted.

Responder April 18, 2014 at 10:42 PMAndrew Cater dijo en respuesta a Andrew Cater...Corrections to the above:

From reading a little further - on w hat is now sometimes referred to as Sub-Roman /Post Roman / Brythonic Britain.

Troops started being draw n dow n about 383. There w ere rebellions in England inabout 407 CE and some of the troops left for Gaul round then.

Emperor Honorius w as asked for help - the Rescript of Honorius - his imperial reply -w as addressed to the civitates - the citizens - telling them to look to their ow ndefence - w hich some commentatators have taken as implying no Imperial control atthat stage.

This much from a later Byzantine commentator.

A later British commentator - Gildas - suggests that the Britons appealed to Aetius /Egitius in about 546 - that's the "barbarians drive us into the hills, the hills push us intothe sea so w e must either be killed or drow n" - Gildas, in turn, w as quoted by Ven.Bede.

Responder April 18, 2014 at 11:30 PMSteve Meikle dijo...Assuming too much know ledge on the part of your listeners or readers and confusingthem; or assuming too little and insulting them,

Aye, that is the question. How to balance this one?

When I get to expounding on my pet topics I do it all the time, one or the other!!

Responder April 19, 2014 at 03:06 AMSteve Meikle dijo...Ah, yes, the decline in Latin education. They removed Latin from the curriculum for mystream in 1971, the year before I f irst w ent to my high school. It w as no longerrelevant in the modern w orld, they thought. We had to content ourselves w ith French.So I comfort myself w ith Elizabeth I's dictum "Our progenitors, Kings of England, w erelords of the English sea on every side."

I might like to learn Latin. It seems I am good at languages. But I am tired and lack theenergy, w hich is a pity as nothing appeals to my w arped sense of humour as muchas pontif icating in REAL Latin

Responder April 19, 2014 at 03:11 AMRoss McPherson dijo...I'm sorry to see you still citing Wikipedia, Mary. To be fair, you publish my piff le asw ell. How ever, I don't pretend to be an encyclopaedia and this is just a 'talk page'view ed by only a very few of your readers.

If you look at the references to the article, you w ill get some understanding of how itw as constructed. Know ing Wikipedia as I do, I can guess that the content w asprobably lif ted verbatim from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica and some editorshave f iddled w ith it since to give it the appearance of more credibility. The clearestreference is to a w ork by E. Gabba but there are no page numbers and the citation ismerely used to support a citation to the 1937 Loeb, w hich of course is almost entirelya primary source (Wikipedians love to do original research). The reference list alsomentions Ruthven 1979 minus title, and Jansen minus title and page number. Anothersource w as published in 1867. Possibly the missing information w as supplied oncebut somew here along the line it has been deleted. Or maybe I am reading it w ith aveteran editor's prejudice against that house of nonsense.

The question is w hy nobody has got around to f ixing the article w hen there are somany professors, teachers and students of classical literature w ho could managemuch better than that. That is the encyclopaedia anyone can edit.

The answ er is fairly simple. The social dynamics behind Wikipedia are often hellish.How ever this article is fairly good by Wikipedia standards. Nobody seems to befighting over it. Dionsysus of H is not a focus for national, sexual and religious politics,nor has any editor adopted the article for an ego trip - yet.

I don't think you should be citing an 'encyclopaedia' that is so badly organised andw here conscientious editors are so routinely trashed. Personally I think you might justas w ell cite the 1911 encyclopaedia. Failing that,you should link to the last Wikipediaedit, w hich w as August 2013. Here:

http://en.w ikipedia.org/w /index.php?title=Dionysius_of_Halicarnassus&oldid=569174235

That link should enable people to better understand w hat Wikipedia is about. Some ofyour reputation as a scholar rubs off on Wikipedia every time you cite it w ithout somesuch safeguard. There are many people w ho have no real idea how Wikipedia w orks.I didn't w hen I started editing there. Many editors w ho sign up today are headed foryears of anger and misery, moral compromise and sloppy scholarship.

I don't think anyone should be in the habit of editing it or relying on it for information. Ithas some interest as a place of drama but that is about all it can offer. You w ould getmore value out of reading Milton's or Dante's vision of hell than out of readingWikipedia's talk pages.

Responder April 19, 2014 at 08:07 AMGemima Clairmont dijo en respuesta a Malcolm McLean...I'm not sure w hat the source is but I'm sure Britain w as called Prydain by theindigenous inhabitants and the "p" got replaced for a "b" by w hoever it w as thatinformed Julius Caesar about the land not he other side of the channel, so the Brutusconnection does seem unlikely. Also the Galatians in Turkey didn't settle there until the3rd century BC so long after Aeneas could have left Troy. The Gallic migrations isw est to east not the other w ay round. It is all interesting stuff though.

Responder April 19, 2014 at 08:57 AMPL dijo en respuesta a Malcolm McLean...I may be w rong about this but I suspect that even a hundred years ago it w ould havebeen hard to f ind an English-speaking scholar w ho could read Latin w ith the sameease and f luency w ith w hich he read French.

Responder April 19, 2014 at 09:02 AMRoss McPherson dijo en respuesta a Malcolm McLean...Name any discipline w here a Cambridge professor is practising the same skill settoday as a hundred years ago. Recent advances in archaeology, literary criticism andreception theory for example amount to more specialisation and few er scholarsdedicated to the basics. There are scholars w ho do retain the old skills and there isno need to reduplicate that w ork surely.

Responder April 19, 2014 at 09:37 AMPL dijo...To follow up on my last observation: One reason I f ind French much easier to readthan Latin (leaving aside the obviously important fact that it is intrinsically much closerto English) is that behind w ritten French I can hear a human voice w ith all thesemantically and syntactically suggestive variations of tone w hich leave no mark onthe printed page. Behind w ritten Latin I can hear nothing of the sort, much as I try.(The fact that, apart from school texts, Latin is rarely printed w ith a distinction show nbetw een long and short vow els further muffles the perceived audio: think of the huge

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difference betw een w hat -a and -is endings indicate depending on w hether thevow el is to be heard as long or short.) I don’t mean one w ants necessarily to hear thevoice of an ancient Roman. That of an 18th-c scholar — or ven of 18th-c educatedgentleman — w ould do. For in the 18th c Latin w as still a spoken language — alearned language, to be sure, not anyone’s vernacular. But it w as still living speech. Inthe course of the 19th c that pretty much came to an end. Which is w hy I suspect thatby 1914 few if any scholars could live imaginatively inside a Latin text as easily asthey could inside something w ritten in French —— or any language familiar to them byear as w ell as by eye.I’d be curious to hear other people’s view s on this.

Responder April 19, 2014 at 10:26 AMT.B. dijo...Goodreads says Roman Laughter is due out in July, is that correct?

Responder April 19, 2014 at 11:54 AMMalcolm McLean dijo en respuesta a Ross McPherson...The Cambridge Professor of Classics shouldn't necessarily be the person w ith mostf luency in Latin and Greek. Being able to read the texts is a basic requirement for thejob, but only in the same w ay that being able to hold a pencil is a basic requirement fora novelist.

In Tom Brow n's Schooldays, there's a scene w here a schoolmaster castigates Tomfor his lackadaisical know ledge of Greek. They're w atching a cricket match. "Youmiss all the fun", the schoolmaster explains, "but just as I know w hen the ball hasbeen hit for six, you know w hen Aristophanes has ..." But Tom spent virtually all histime on Latin and Greek. I had to study Latin before regular school, an obviouslyunsatisfactory arrangement, and I didn't have any opportunity to learn Greek at all. Sothere's no w ay I could have achieved the level of f luency of the schoolmaster. Andyou have to question the value, yes you pick up the nuances of ancient comedy, butthere are lots of other subjects I'm also interested in.

"Advance" is a bit of a loaded w ord. Not every change is an advance. It's not clear tome that w e are better poets, or even better literary critics, than the ancient Greeks.We are better archaeologists, I'll grant you that. People die. As the older generation dieoff, you need young people coming in to replace them. It not suff icient just to say "thisis old hat, w e do reception theory now ".

Responder April 19, 2014 at 12:43 PMOlivia Byard dijo...I said I w as bailing out but have decided that is w hat w omen just do w hen they feelbored or excluded. So back I come for another try

I realize now my premise that Mary might go to the fall of Rome is w rong - shespecif ies that she w ill only go to 3rdC AD to Caracalla.

But the problem I f ind w ith much of the discussion here is that it turns into a kind ofintellectual 'pissing contest', to put it crudely, and I learn nothing.

Maybe w e all take from Mary's posts w hat interests us most, but I am one of the fewgeneral readers on this blog and so I took it that she w as interested in creating a bookfor general readers.

Maybe she w ants minutiae on Livy, in w hich case I apologize and w ithdraw . But thegeneral reader, 'GR' after this) does not know Livy in English, let alone Latin, so mostof your comments are at best abstruse, mostly incomprehensible.

I do know Livy w as an historian, that's about it. I could look him up on Wikipedia andrisk Ross's ire. But even if I had time, more so, I know Mary w ants to show how theclassics can still teach us now .

So let's begin w ith our w orld: w e are in the middle of a revolution and a change ofempire. We are still a small Island off the coast of Europe trying to make sense againof our place in this new landscape. Climate change makes this a very dangerouslandscape w here the know ledge w e need is debated and often highjacked forpolitical reasons; and people are offered all sorts of false certainties, myths if you like,from endless shopping to fundamentalism, to the dictum that the English do not dorevolution (a bit strange that, given our violent history and abrupt ejection of tw okings!)

Those w ho have responded to my question about w hen the Romans left Britain havegot bogged dow n in the w rong answ er. The date w as never my question. I live in themiddle of this country surrounded by the ruins of big Roman villas. These people livedhere for four hundred years - that's as long ago as Shakespeare lived. People I knoww ho came here tw o decades ago call themselves British. Were the people in thoseVillas British or Roman? Was an apartheid kept? How did the locals relate to them?Was there inter-marriage? Andy Cater said they sent for help. Who sent for help?How did the populace and army co-exist after four hundred years here?

Then to foundation myths. We are a country that moves forw ard full of inventedmyths from the past. What function do our myths have? Arthur for instance hasfeatured/altered many times.

So, to go back to Mary's expressed timescale, w hat function did tw in myths have inthe Mediterranean? Resurrection myths? What did it mean to be made a 'God' then?What w as actually meant by 'A Republic' Is it something w e'd understand at all?? Howdid Greece and Rome relate to each other as one fell and the other rose? What didthey give/take from each other, besides altering the names of the various gods (GPknow ledge)

Most GP know only of Peter's crucif iction, a few catacombs, a few Christians throw nto lions (w hich Mary said in one of her books w as over-counted) and Constantine,Council of Nicaea, etc. What happened in betw een? Why w as it all so popular tow omen?

I saw The Rape of Lucrece performed last year. The ensuing debate w as lively andbitter. I notice here, the Latin w ords used are that she must shut up. So w e return torape as the shutting up of w oman's voice.

On the study of Latin, students have to learn a lot of other things now like IT, in order to just live in this w orld. Latin has to live w ithliterature and poetry and other threatened areas w here people learn to think. I thinkthe f ight back must be mostly about how the humanities teach us all to think and feel.Teach us principles too.

About sources: DNA testing, archeology, geophysics, literary sources, artifacts,trade records, recipes, engineering history, records from all parts of the Romanempire and its enemies, etc. are very helpful now to students/teachers of humankind,like Mary. A holistic and broad approach w ill fascinate her GP readers as it alw ayshas. Livy must only be a tiny bit of this, surely!?

Responder April 19, 2014 at 12:50 PMOlivia Byard dijo...ps sorry GRs mutated into GPs ...see things are alw ays on the move....

Responder April 19, 2014 at 12:53 PMRobert Barrett dijo en respuesta a Steve Meikle...I'm alw ays delighted w hen Prof. Beard and all you others shoot far above my head.Keeps me on my toes. For an American, I had a very good education in Latin, but itw as 50 years ago (groan). So please keep the comments on Livy's use of thesubjunctive coming hot and fast; I'll keep up, or not. Much better than being talkeddow n to.

Responder April 19, 2014 at 01:40 PMMary Beard dijo en respuesta a T.B....probably in june, but july is safe!

Responder April 19, 2014 at 06:59 PMOlivia Byard dijo en respuesta a Robert Barrett...Maybe then I should apologize and w ithdraw .

But the question is -- is this post about learning Latin, the language, and about Livyhimself, his usefulness and best translation? Or is it about w orking on an approach toa book?

A bit of a blue skies thinker, I'm a loather of grammar and nit-picking arguments,(except a perfectionist in my ow n field) so this puts me to sleep and not onto my toes.

Which is f ine. It certainly doesn't have to suit everyone, every time. But I don't think itw ould teach Latin or Livy either, unless the reader already knew a fair amount.

I guess this is all territory Mary w ill have to negotiate again. It w ill be interesting to seew ho w ill w ant to/can read the f inished book!

21/4/2014 A Don’s Life: A revision course in Livy

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2014/04/a-revision-course-in-livy.html 6/8

Different strokes, I guess.

Responder April 19, 2014 at 07:48 PMMichael Bulley dijo en respuesta a PL...Just as it w ould be odd to say someone knew French, but not how to pronounce it,the same applies, I'd say, to Latin. I don't mean, of course, that the pronunciationshould be that of a genuine ancient Roman (w e can't know ) or even close to it, like anative English speaker speaking French pretty w ell, but still w ith a bit of an Englishaccent, but the fairly crude aspect of vow el length should certainly be part of"know ing Latin". I w onder w hether Mary Beard's f inal-year Latin students can allpronounce a Latin text w ith the correct vow el-lengths.

Responder April 19, 2014 at 08:03 PMPL dijo en respuesta a Olivia Byard...Livy, even if unread by the General Reader, is a major source of many things the GRis probably familiar w ith. In the early period alone: Romulus and Remus and the she-w olf, the Capitoline geese, the “Vae Victis” (a great story, if you don’t know it),Horatius at the Bridge, the Rape of the Sabines (not rape but marriage by capture w ellaccepted by the brides), the rape of Lucretia (true rape in the w orst sense andpresented as a hideously evil act that cried out for expiation [in the victim’s view ] andrevenge [in that of her menfolk]).

Only tw o English kings abruptly ejected? I can think offhand of four, including Edw ardVIII.

Responder April 19, 2014 at 08:28 PMRoss McPherson dijo en respuesta a Malcolm McLean...Maybe you have some exaggerated notions of f luency in the 'dead' languages. It ispossible to know every w ord on a page and yet be stumped several times by apeculiar idiom or context. That can happen often since there is a w ide range ofepochs covered by those languages. There are also nuances that can get lost if youdon't know the background. That's w hy Loeb uses translators w ho specialize inparticular authors. Even those scholars have to make educated guesses aboutmeanings. Mary w as merely saying she reads the English translation to avoid thetedious processes of guessing and construing the diff icult bits. That is not to say shecan't do it. Even I can construe anything, given time, if I know the idiom and thecontext, and I w asn't trained in this stuff generally, let alone in the idiosyncracies ofparticular authors.

I agree that every change is not an advance but they have to be negotiated anyw ay ifyou are professional. I'm an amateur so I can skip w hole mountains of tripe w henstudying the classics.

Responder April 19, 2014 at 11:10 PMOlivia Byard dijo en respuesta a PL...I guess I w as thinking about out-and- out revolutions-- but you're right of course - Imean, if you go back to the Plantagenets one loses count!! Thanks so much for thebrief Livy intro. Makes much more sense to me now w hy you're all so interested inhim!

Shakespeare must have read him as a matter of course at grammar school I w ouldhave thought(?) In the original(?) There's so much baggage in that poem. To hear itperformed is emotionally exhausting.

Must have been his ow n spin on it! Because there's both deep ambiguity AND harm. Atypical increase of complexity on the original from w hat you say.

With all of w hat you say, it seems that the early stories are even more NB to Mary'sproject and its relevance to us and our myth makingthan I thought! They have fed so much of our culture and art, our imaginations. That'sa w hole different and rich approach to relevance, isn't it!

PL you alw ays make me feel better. Seem to understand w hat I need to hear. Are kindand informative w ithout being patronizing.

You do know you're pretty great, don't you! What I call a real sw eetie! Thanks somuch again.8--)

Responder April 19, 2014 at 11:29 PMAndrew Cater dijo en respuesta a Olivia Byard...History and memory can be selective, if and only if you've got enough evidence toselect from.

The problem w ith the end of the Roman empire in England is that w e don't have thesurviving material to distinguish w ho the people w ere and how they felt. [We don'thave that for the beginning either - w hen/if Celts identif ied w ith Roman culture astheirs / of interest to them]

A friend taught in Madagascar after the French had left: school students w ere stilltaught French history as their ow n and could w rite about "our ancestors the Gauls":in Latin America, native peoples in Peru and Bolivia celebrate the feast of San JuanMatamoros - St. John the Moor-killer - relevant to Castile, but not to them.

You can't separate Rome from Britain after 450 years of inf luence, any more than youcan separate Provence ("the Province") from Rome or "Rome" from "native Italian /Etruscan" in Italy itself. Then there's cultural aff iliation - Romania "w ants" to identifyw ith Roman Dacia and stress the Latin links.

Olivia - you have my email, w e can happily take this off blog if you w ant to discussthis further :)

Responder April 19, 2014 at 11:59 PMMalcolm McLean dijo en respuesta a Ross McPherson...Rashi, w ho is the foremost Jew ish commentator on the Pentateuch, is completelymeaningless if you put his commentary besides an English translation. Virtuallyeverything he says concerns the exact w ording used.

How ever you do w onder if he f inds nuances w hich are not there. For example heattaches great importance to the fact that the f irst day of creation is "one day", not"the f irst day as King James' has it. And the sixth day is "the sixth day", w ith thedefinite article, but all the others are "fourth day", "f if th day" (in Hebrew idiom,"Wednesday, Thursday").

Rashi says

Scripture added a "hey" [Hebrew definite article] on the sixth [day], at the completionof the Creation, to tell us that He stipulated w ith them, ["you w ere created"] on thecondition that Israel accept the Five Books of the Torah.” [The numerical value of the"hey" is f ive].

Now w as that of any importance to the author, and in any case, w hat do w e mean bythe "author"? It's hard to say w hether Rashi is barking up totally the w rong tree. Buteverything he says is based on very close examination of the text as w e have it.

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21/4/2014 A Don’s Life: A revision course in Livy

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