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I dont think it would be that hard to learn to read latin.
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May 29, 2014 14:14
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UnquietDream posted:I'm reading a translation of Catullus poems at the moment by Guy Lee and there are occasional touches that put me off, colloquialisms like 'clever dick' and what I assume are artifacts of a post Christian dominated world inserted back into the text for instance mentions of a God or Gods eternally capitalised and an anachronistic 'Thy' when referring to the presence of a deity, things that are not present in the Latin presented opposite the text. These, to lack a better phrase, pull me out of the poems, so what translation, bearing in mind that I still would like readability as opposed to a straight Google translate job, would be more faithful to the original text (I do not however mind if it lacks a rhyming structure in English). I just looked at the Amazon page for his book, and it claims "Of all the classical poets Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84-54 BC) is the most accessible to the modern reader." I think this is so untrue for the reasons you cite and more: the poems are elliptical and heavily contextual, making ANY translation automatically mediocre. Any nods to modern idiom are at the expense of accuracy, and neither sits well with English metered poetry. The only Classical poets less accessible than Catullus are the ones who only wrote fragments.
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May 29, 2014 14:18
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Grand Fromage posted:Yep, Xenophon. As far as anyone in the area was concerned, the Assyrians were just gone. Two centuries later and nobody living right at the ruins of Nineveh had any idea who they were. Yeah, I hear they play football now  Liking the China posts. The Dowager Empress seems to have held considerable power, seems a little familiar to to the members of the Ottoman harem. History is usually about burly men chopping off heads and the like, but the women wielded some considerable soft power (not that it seems to have been recorded all that often).
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May 29, 2014 18:41
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euphronius posted:I dont think it would be that hard to learn to read latin. It's harder than you'd think, because Latin is surprisingly imprecise. There are far, far fewer words in Latin than in English, and since Latin lacks a definite article (and can be very flexible in word order), it can get messy. That said, more than half of English comes from Latin, so a lot of words are familiar in some sense.
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May 29, 2014 20:30
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homullus posted:It's harder than you'd think, because Latin is surprisingly imprecise. There are far, far fewer words in Latin than in English, and since Latin lacks a definite article (and can be very flexible in word order), it can get messy. That said, more than half of English comes from Latin, so a lot of words are familiar in some sense. Four semesters of university Latin later and I can't translate more than the most basic sentences. Still, it gave me a good knowledge of sentence structure for English and I can translate most actual Latin words I come across. I've been told if you can get past the basics of Ancient Greek, which are very difficult, it's all easy sailing afterwards, whereas it's the inverse for Latin.
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May 29, 2014 22:52
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Octy posted:Four semesters of university Latin later and I can't translate more than the most basic sentences. Still, it gave me a good knowledge of sentence structure for English and I can translate most actual Latin words I come across. I would not characterize Ancient Greek as necessarily easy sailing at any point, but it has more words (and therefore fewer meanings per word) and more precision of every kind, and is more agglutinative than Latin or English, so you can pick unfamiliar words apart more often. On the "basics" end, though, it has a tense (aorist), a mood (optative), a person (dual), and a voice (middle) that English and Latin do not, along with more declensions and conjugations than Latin. Its alphabet may have been adapted from the Phoenician consonant-alphabet explicitly to write down Homer, though, which is a pretty interesting adaptation of technology.
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May 29, 2014 23:31
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homullus posted:I would not characterize Ancient Greek as necessarily easy sailing at any point, but it has more words (and therefore fewer meanings per word) and more precision of every kind, and is more agglutinative than Latin or English, so you can pick unfamiliar words apart more often. On the "basics" end, though, it has a tense (aorist), a mood (optative), a person (dual), and a voice (middle) that English and Latin do not, along with more declensions and conjugations than Latin. Its alphabet may have been adapted from the Phoenician consonant-alphabet explicitly to write down Homer, though, which is a pretty interesting adaptation of technology. Speaking of, I once heard a version of the Lord's Prayer by a benedictine priest in which he had attempted to stay closer to the original tone by eschewing the imperative ("Give us..", "Forgive us..", "Lead us not.." and so on), and endeavored to convey a feeling of wishing or hoping rather than begging. Like: Give us this day our daily bread τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον Is δὸς in the imperative or is it something different?
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May 30, 2014 01:13
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2nd singular aorist active imperative, yeah. διδῷς for subjunctive, διδοίης for optative. Optative's better for wishing instead of commanding.
Sleep of Bronze fucked around with this message at 01:36 on May 30, 2014 |
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May 30, 2014 01:31
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Mr Havafap posted:Speaking of, I once heard a version of the Lord's Prayer by a benedictine priest in which he had attempted to stay closer to the original tone by eschewing the imperative ("Give us..", "Forgive us..", "Lead us not.." and so on), and endeavored to convey a feeling of wishing or hoping rather than begging. It's the aorist imperative of δίδωμι, which does have a sense of "grant us this one time" I guess, as opposed to "start giving it, we'll tell you when to stop." Edit: of the present imperative, I mean, and then also as opposed to "please it might be nice if you were to grant us" of the optative.
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May 30, 2014 01:38
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Pimpmust posted:Yeah, I hear they play football now The Dowager Empress would be regents for underage Emperors and also choose the next Emperor when one died without choosing an heir, so it's a powerful position. Probably more powerful than anyone intended. It's an obvious structural problem in the Han court. If you want to rule China one path to power is to become the Emperor's primary wife and then outlive him. . . either naturally or with a little outside help. Then you put a 2 year old on the throne and rule for a good decade before you have to deal with him again. And if he looks like he wants to rule you can always outlive him too. Tragic how many male heirs never made it to adulthood in the late Han dynasty.  I don't know who set up those laws but I can't imagine they intended to have such am obvious path to de facto rule for women. You can see why Chinese historians are constantly writing warnings about the various noble clans who were trying to marry their daughters to the Emperor. It's not just a marriage, it's a well trodden path to usurpation. I really don't know why they didn't just change the law. Any sort of nominal list would be better than the Dowager Empress skipping dozens of uncles and brothers to put infants on the throne over and over for 20 years. Often the Empress did a fine job of ruling but the problem as I said was the collapse of the imperial court because eventually there had been no strong emperor for 80 years. There were Dowager Empresses who exercised their power responsibly, and by that I mean put a viable ruler on the throne, but I haven't heard of any in the Han Dynasty.
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May 30, 2014 04:58
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Arglebargle III posted:The Dowager Empress would be regents for underage Emperors and also choose the next Emperor when one died without choosing an heir, so it's a powerful position. Probably more powerful than anyone intended. It's an obvious structural problem in the Han court. If you want to rule China one path to power is to become the Emperor's primary wife and then outlive him. . . either naturally or with a little outside help. Then you put a 2 year old on the throne and rule for a good decade before you have to deal with him again. And if he looks like he wants to rule you can always outlive him too. Tragic how many male heirs never made it to adulthood in the late Han dynasty. I think it was set up once the first Han emperor died? After his first wife torture-murdered the second wife and her kid, everybody just kinda let her decide who was going to be the next emperor. Since it was easier than having your arms and legs chopped off.
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May 30, 2014 06:07
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Yeah, sounds like a de jure implementation of something that was already de facto. When you have several wives and possible heirs they'll get up to all sorts of shenanigans to A smaller royal family has some advantages to that, but is also more dependent on everyone else to run things (which may lead to the same final destination anyhow).
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May 30, 2014 10:19
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Oh man in the Tang Dynasty there's a guy who murders two brothers, like personally,* and forces his father to abdicate. Shenanigans abound. That's Taizong though and he's the real brains behind the foundation of the Tang Dynasty and like the best emperor ever so it turns out okay. It's hard for modern readers not to love a dude who hacks his way to power and then is like "let's give this rationalism thing a try and by the way please fill out your "How Am I Ruling?" comment forms before you leave." *Okay he only killed one of them by himself
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May 30, 2014 14:20
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Since there was mention of the Ottomans, I was wondering if you knew if there was some kind of an unwritten rule like over at the Sublime Porte concerning line of succession. To elaborate: Let's assume you're Mehmed III, you have a number of sons and you pick Ahmed I to be your heir. Since his mother is the valide sultan, he comes of age without any accidents and takes over the throne. Since you're eager to spend your time hunting, making love to extremely obese women, and flight shooting instead of doing paperwork and conquering (or surviving the occasional arson by the Janissaries). What happens next is that all but 1 or 2 brothers of Ahmed I. (the potential heirs if something should happen to him) are locked up, the rest gets strangled with a bowstring. The brothers spend their time in confinement, more or less comfortable in the Kafes. In case of Mustafa I., less. So much less that he goes completely insane. Muy loco. Happens if you get locked in a small, stinky room for a decade without anything to do or anyone to speak to. Here we divert from actual history to elaborate the next step: Allah is mercyful! Ahmed I. fathered multiple sons. They look healthy and reach a certain age. Good for Ahmed I., bad for the reserve brothers who sit in the cage. They get strangled. So, that's the system in a nutshell. Actually it's a bit watered down, because before Mehmed III. there was actually quite alot more strangling, but hey. Sultan fathers multiple sons, Sultan's brothers get the string, and so on. That's the rule. Was it like that in the Han and Tang court?
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May 30, 2014 20:06
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Arglebargle III posted:Oh man in the Tang Dynasty there's a guy who murders two brothers, like personally,* and forces his father to abdicate. Shenanigans abound. That's Taizong though and he's the real brains behind the foundation of the Tang Dynasty and like the best emperor ever so it turns out okay. It's hard for modern readers not to love a dude who hacks his way to power and then is like "let's give this rationalism thing a try and by the way please fill out your "How Am I Ruling?" comment forms before you leave." He only had two family members killed? Constantius II laughs at that weak poo poo.
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May 31, 2014 05:04
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He shot him with a bow himself though, while the other guy was shooting back.
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May 31, 2014 05:16
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Relating to ancient stuff being very in-continuity with things, how many old Roman traditions still hang around Italy? Insert Silvio Berlusconi and the Roman tradition of rampant bribery here, but I mean more along the lines of holidays, superstitions, observances--all presumably Christianized but having stuff in common with what we know of Rome.
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May 31, 2014 05:41
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Mister Olympus posted:Relating to ancient stuff being very in-continuity with things, how many old Roman traditions still hang around Italy? Insert Silvio Berlusconi and the Roman tradition of rampant bribery here, but I mean more along the lines of holidays, superstitions, observances--all presumably Christianized but having stuff in common with what we know of Rome. I would love to get into the Vatican Archives to see what venerated traditions we follow now because some dude thought it'd be funny to try and others started copying him.
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May 31, 2014 06:13
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Mister Olympus posted:Relating to ancient stuff being very in-continuity with things, how many old Roman traditions still hang around Italy? Insert Silvio Berlusconi and the Roman tradition of rampant bribery here, but I mean more along the lines of holidays, superstitions, observances--all presumably Christianized but having stuff in common with what we know of Rome.
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May 31, 2014 06:24
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Sergiu64 posted:Not sure if this is the place to ask, but: This post is from a way back but you have had some great suggestions. Athens is, of course, another must see. If you get the chance take the ferry to Aegina, you will sail past a temple (to poseidon I think?) on the mainland jutting out which is just beautiful at dusk. Thermopylae is underwhelming because it's not there anymore, at least in any recognisable form. haakman fucked around with this message at 07:56 on May 31, 2014 |
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May 31, 2014 07:54
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I'm taking a class on Ancient Greece and looking through my textbook, I saw a picture of Serapis. This got me thinking, why were mystery religions so popular? Weren't the old gods good enough? I mean, they'd stuck by you and done pretty well for the Greeks and Romans, I thought.
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May 31, 2014 19:45
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Mister Olympus posted:Relating to ancient stuff being very in-continuity with things, how many old Roman traditions still hang around Italy? Insert Silvio Berlusconi and the Roman tradition of rampant bribery here, but I mean more along the lines of holidays, superstitions, observances--all presumably Christianized but having stuff in common with what we know of Rome. The first thing that comes to mind for me is the old tradition of a newly married husband carrying his wife over the threshold into their house. This was something that the Romans came up with because they thought it would bring bad luck on the marriage if the wife were to trip when entering her new home for the first time. I assume the husband tripping might have also been bad luck, but less so since he already lived there. I think there are a lot of wedding things that come from ancient Roman traditions actually; the thing where the bride throws the bouquet over her shoulder is one too I think. Smoking Crow posted:I'm taking a class on Ancient Greece and looking through my textbook, I saw a picture of Serapis. This got me thinking, why were mystery religions so popular? Weren't the old gods good enough? I mean, they'd stuck by you and done pretty well for the Greeks and Romans, I thought. Lots of reasons I suppose. For one thing, the major old gods were often a thing by and for elites - Jupiter was a god of kings and the state, so one can imagine that shepherds or farmers might not care about him. There are also always plenty of things that can shake someone's faith in their gods, whether major events like war and famine, or more personal tragedies. Also I imagine some of the mystery religions gave people a specific place in their world or a new way of looking at existence that was more appealing than what the old religions could provide.
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May 31, 2014 20:27
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Been reading this thread off and on for months now and I'm just a little sad that's I've "finished" it. I wanted to thank everyone involved for giving such great input and spending the time it takes to explore history. I personally feel no detail is too small and that those small details have often given us huge insight as new things are discovered. I was especially excited to see the link to Göbekli Tepe and just how it excites/challenges our idea of how agricultural societies formed and actually worked. These mysteries of the past keep me constantly engaged and I'm glad people have this thread to talk about it all. So, thanks Big Cheese and everyone for contributing. And thanks Arglebargle III for that awesome Chinese history!
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May 31, 2014 21:06
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Arglebargle III posted:He shot him with a bow himself though, while the other guy was shooting back. Can we get a post on his reign?
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May 31, 2014 21:15
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Third Murderer posted:Lots of reasons I suppose. For one thing, the major old gods were often a thing by and for elites - Jupiter was a god of kings and the state, so one can imagine that shepherds or farmers might not care about him. There are also always plenty of things that can shake someone's faith in their gods, whether major events like war and famine, or more personal tragedies. Also I imagine some of the mystery religions gave people a specific place in their world or a new way of looking at existence that was more appealing than what the old religions could provide. But what about other gods like Demeter and Pan that were directly related to things farmers were doing? Is this the reason why the cult of Bacchus was big in Rome?
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May 31, 2014 21:18
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Smoking Crow posted:But what about other gods like Demeter and Pan that were directly related to things farmers were doing? Is this the reason why the cult of Bacchus was big in Rome? Well, that's why I mentioned stuff like war and famine. Demeter is awesome, until you have a couple poor harvests in a row and now maybe you're in the market for a new god who'll actually make the barley grow. Although Demeter did have her own mystery cult. Plus, like I said, there could be philosophical reasons to switch, if something about some other religion seemed more reasonable or more appealing to someone, just like today. I don't know anything about the history of Bacchus worship, although my naive assumption is that a god associated with drunken partying would be pretty popular for a variety of reasons.
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May 31, 2014 21:33
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Third Murderer posted:Well, that's why I mentioned stuff like war and famine. Demeter is awesome, until you have a couple poor harvests in a row and now maybe you're in the market for a new god who'll actually make the barley grow. Although Demeter did have her own mystery cult. Plus, like I said, there could be philosophical reasons to switch, if something about some other religion seemed more reasonable or more appealing to someone, just like today. Demeter's mystery cult was kind of a big thing. Lasted until the third century AD, at least. Back in its heyday, revealing its mysteries was supposedly punishable by death.
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May 31, 2014 22:23
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Any other ancient historians that wrote their own History Of Rome books like Livy? I just finished what he has online and now I really wanna pick up from where he left off. e: It really troubles me that even though he was one of the most influential historians on the planet, and even though his works have been reprinted for thousands of years after his death in uncountable numbers, only a fraction of his writing still exists. Being a historian who studies antiquity must be really frustrating. 
Imapanda fucked around with this message at 22:34 on May 31, 2014 |
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May 31, 2014 22:25
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There were lots of reasons why mystery cults became popular. But one of the main ones was similar to why Judaism (to a lesser extent) and later Christianity were popular around the same time. Traditional Greco-Roman religions were mostly defined in terms of obligations of a worshipper to a deity as part of civic or occupational responsibility. You don't want Zeus to nail your crops with a huge storm, so you sacrificed to him. Mystery religions were defined about the relationship of you, the worshipper, to the god or cultic figure. Want to join a Mithraic cult? You need to learn about and get involved with the cult. You feel a sense of belonging and a personal attachment to the deity or cult that is lacking with the more traditional gods. As an example, imagine someone brought up as a traditional, do-your-duty Catholic who goes to a Scientology seminar, or a charismatic Christian revival. Without making any statements about the truth of any particular belief system, it's easy to see why some people, especially those looking for a sense of belonging or identity, would be attracted to a religion or cult that seems to invite personal involvement rather than mere ritual worship. A skeptic would argue that the details of many of the mystery cults (and some of my modern day examples) were designed specifically with this kind of attraction in mind. Some of the more ancient, less civic or national religious traditions, such as worship based around a local traditional hero or minor deity, might have had similarly strong personal appeal, but we know less about them, since they were typically practiced only locally and often by people who didn't leave much historical record.
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May 31, 2014 22:35
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Imapanda posted:Any other ancient historians that wrote their own History Of Rome books like Livy? Republican history? Polybius is pretty famous, though his book ends at the end of the Third Punic War. Plutarch wrote dozens upon dozens of mini-biographies (40-50 pages in translation, usually) of prominent Greeks and Romans, with a famous figure from Greek history put against a famous figure from Roman history.
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May 31, 2014 22:58
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achillesforever6 posted:The evil eye (Malocchio) is an ancient superstition that still persists to this day, the defense of it is what led to the devil horns gesture at Heavy Metal shows because Dio's grandmother was Italian. I read somewhere that the gesture you mention was used back in ancient Greece to invoke the protection of Hecate to ward off against evil and magic. Can't remember the source, so maybe I'm wrong.
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May 31, 2014 23:42
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Smoking Crow posted:I'm taking a class on Ancient Greece and looking through my textbook, I saw a picture of Serapis. This got me thinking, why were mystery religions so popular? Weren't the old gods good enough? I mean, they'd stuck by you and done pretty well for the Greeks and Romans, I thought. Because Clint Eastwood really is that loving cool?
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Jun 1, 2014 00:05
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Patter Song posted:Republican history? We might also add Sallust and Appian. For other complete histories outside the Republic, Tacitus, Suetonius, Dio Cassius, Ammianus Marcellinus and Zosimus are all worth reading.
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Jun 1, 2014 00:26
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Ennius' Annales was the standard-bearer for history before Livy.
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Jun 1, 2014 00:31
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Sleep of Bronze posted:Ennius' Annales was the standard-bearer for history before Livy. And now he serves well in providing easy sentences for Latin students to translate.
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Jun 1, 2014 00:47
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Octy posted:And now he serves well in providing easy sentences for Latin students to translate. I am assuming you mean Livy rather than Ennius. Few Latin students are going to know what to do with saxo cere comminuit brum at sight.
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Jun 1, 2014 01:20
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homullus posted:I am assuming you mean Livy rather than Ennius. Few Latin students are going to know what to do with saxo cere comminuit brum at sight. No, Ennius. I don't know the Latin, but I remember having to translate these repeatedly: "The strength of Rome is founded on her ancient customs as much as on the strength of her sons." "The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so" "Good deeds, if badly placed, become bad deeds." When we translated Livy, it was only in large slabs.
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Jun 1, 2014 01:24
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Wow. At my school, they let us use paper and pencil. Pen, if you were feeling confident.
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Jun 1, 2014 02:43
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There's a discount when you get your Latin in bulk.
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Jun 1, 2014 02:45
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