[lbo-talk] Bar-bar-bar Barian (Was Re: Cockeyed Optimism)

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Thu Jan 22 14:37:32 PST 2009


On Jan 22, 2009, at 12:32 AM, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> ...Fluent in Greek could mark as an effete intellectual snob among
> the Romans...

The Romans were bilingual. Caesar made love and plotted strategy with Kleopatra in Greek. His famous exclamation [mis]translated as "The Die is Cast" was spoken in Greek (a line from Menander). The only intellectuals among Roman emperors (Claudius, Marcus Aurelius, Julian) wrote their books in Greek. Gaius Marius was scoffed at by the oligarchs because of his provincial accent in Greek. The standard language of the civil service under the Principate was Greek, and once the main capital was moved to Byzantium the dominant language of the Empire was Greek. What counted as "effete" among the Roman aristocracy was a Hellenism marked (as with Cicero's friend Atticus) by an *excessive* fondness for boys.

Shane Mage


> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos



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