Janse, Mark

The Classical Review

English

Mark Janse

Crossref

BILINGUALISM - J.B. Torres Guerra (ed.) Vtroque sermone nostro. Bilingüismo social y literario en el imperio de Roma / Social and Literary Bilingualism in the Roman Empire. (Colección Mundo Antiguo 14.) Pp. 164. Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra (EUNSA), 2011. Paper, €9. ISBN: 978-84-313-2749-1.

Ghent University Academic Bibliography

texts, particularly those that present themselves as a resource for scholars. We must strive fora more sophisticated level of discourse than the simple alteration of a text.On occasion the translation suffers from infelicitous expressions. An example of astrictly linguistic nature appears at 2.28.1 where numquam autem excidere ab ea suasionequa manifestissime praedicatur quia hic solus uere sit Deus et Pater is rendered ‘Nevershould we, however, give up the conviction that most clearly preaches that he alone istruly God and Father . . .’ Translating qua . . . praedicatur as simply ‘that . . . preaches’does not satisfactorily render either the present passive or subjunctive. An example of atheological nature appears at 2.28.3 where U.’s translation approximates the misguidedversion of the ANF when he presents Si ergo, secundum hunc modum quem diximus, quae-dam quidem quaestionum Deo commiseriumus as ‘So if, according to the method stated,we leave some of the questions in God’s hands . . .’ The idiomatic use of ‘hands’ in thetranslation has the potential to mislead readers who could find in it an allusion toIrenaeus’ identification of the Son and Holy Spirit as the Hands of God.As with every translation published by ACW the text is bolstered by substantial notes.Most often, these notes provide excellent discussions of the interpretative decisions thatoccupied the translator, which is especially helpful given the, at times, frustrating state ofthe Latin text. The notes indicate that the translation largely follows the text of theSources Chrétiennes volumes edited by A. Rousseau, et al. The degree to which the notesoffer a satisfactory engagement with scholarship varies. At times we find references toarticles published in obscure journals or in-depth discussions of scholarship that reveal anintimate familiarity with the surrounding literature. So, for instance, we are provided withthe excellent note on Irenaeus’ understanding of the natural knowledge of God that beginson p. 122 and runs for two full pages. At other times, however, we find no references to scho-larly debates that have stretched over the course of a century. In particular, the notes on 2.14which betray nary a whisper of the role of this text in the debate over Irenaeus’ philosophicalacumen initiated by H. Diels’ comments (1879) and carried forth by G. Bardy (1928), R.M.Grant (HTR 1949), A. Benoît (1960) and W.R. Schoedel (VC 1959; JTS 1984). It is not clearhow much this is due to the post-mortem publication of U.’s text.Readers who have waited for the release of the remaining portions of U.’s translationwill not mind such minor deficiencies. Students and scholars of early Christianity owe adebt of gratitude to the work of U. and to the continuing efforts of Dillon on his behalf.This translation will be enthusiastically welcomed, and will find a ready place on curriculaand bookshelves around the world.Emory University ANTHONY BR IGGMAN Q1anthony.a.briggman@emory.eduB I L I NGUAL I SMT O R R E S G U E R R A ( J . B . ) (ed.) Vtroque sermone nostro. Bilingüismosocial y literario en el imperio de Roma / Social and LiteraryBilingualism in the Roman Empire. (Colección Mundo Antiguo 14.)Pp. 164. Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra (EUNSA), 2011.Paper, E9. ISBN: 978-84-313-2749-1.doi:10.1017/S0009840X13000723Vtroque sermone nostro, the main title of this (appropriately multilingual) collection, isa quotation from the emperor Claudius who, according to Suetonius (Claud. 42.2),THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 463The Classical Review 63.2 463–465 © The Classical Association (2013)expressed his surprise at the fact that a ‘barbarian’ was fluent in Greek as well as inLatin. By referring to these as ‘both our languages’, Claudius acknowledged the pre-vailing bilingualism in the Roman Empire, even though he lost no opportunity todeclare his preference for the Greek language and its superiority. Greek–Latin bilingu-alism was epitomised in another set phrase utraque lingua, attested many times in Latinliterature and used as the main title of recent works dealing with Greek–Latin bilingu-alism, for example C. Nicolas (1996) and T. Fögen (2003). The relation between Eastand West in the Roman Empire is the central idea behind the research projectGRAECAPTA of the University of Navarra. The present volume collects revisions ofeight papers presented at an international workshop in Pamplona (2009). The originaltitle of the workshop was Vtraque lingua but changed to Vtroque sermone nostro forthe published collection. Contributions are in English, Spanish, French and German, butSpanish and English abstracts are provided at the end of the volume, which also has anindex rerum ac nominum and an index locorum.The volume opens with a brief introduction by T.G. with the punning title ‘Imperialisdiglossia’. The majority of the papers deal with social and literary aspects of Greek–Romanbiculturalism. Two are devoted to Aulus Gellius’ Noctes Atticae. In ‘La simbiosisgreco-romana en el siglo II: Las Noctes Atticae’, C. Castillo discusses aspects of the cul-tural life of the Antonine period on the basis of ‘los amigos de Gelio’, particularly the useof Greek as a ‘genre language’ in the philosophical and medical discourse of Arrian andFavorinus. F. García Jurado analyses Gellius’ conception of litterae Graecae et Latinaein ‘Qué entiende Aulo Gellio por “literatura griega” y “literatura latina”?’. He concludesthat Gellius advocates ‘una visión acumulativa de la literatura’, based on parameterswhich are partly language-independent such as the distinction between classici (Latini)and idonei (Graeci), poetae recentes et ueteres and patria lingua et electa. T.G. studiesthe ‘Roman Elements in Annaeus Cornutus’s ἐπιδρομή’. Elements betraying the‘Romanness’ of Cornutus include the use of Δεύς instead of Ζεύς and θρίαμβος in thesense of triumphus, and the attribution of a common ritual to Dionysus and Aphroditeon the analogy of the Roman Bacchanalia. M. Hose considers the Roman histories ofAppian and Ammianus Marcellinus as ‘beachtenswerte Zeugnisse für einen erfolgreichenAkkulturations geschichte’ in ‘Appian und Ammian: Griechisches historisches Denken inzwei Sprachen’. He discusses the techniques used by Appian to create a ‘gemeinsameReichsgeschichte’ with which both Greeks and Romans could identify. Ammianus’ useof exempla from both Greek and Roman history is considered indicative of the fact thatthe unification of the Empire had been achieved by the fourth century. The article containsan interesting analysis of Ammianus’ frequent use of proverbs and proverbial expressions,which are said to derive from both Greek and Latin sources in the main text, but claimed tobe ‘part of the Greek cultural tradition’ in the abstract. Á. Sánchez-Ostiz explores Juvenal’sinfluence on Claudian in ‘Reading Juvenal: Roman Satire in Claudianus’s Invectivesagainst Rufinus and Eutropius’. He focusses on Claudian’s imitation of expositional struc-tures used by Juvenal and argues at length that Claudian must have used a text pre-datingthe so-called ‘Nicaeus emendation’.The remaining papers present a more linguistic perspective on questions of bilingual-ism. In ‘Le bilinguisme et la politique linguistique des empereurs romains sous le princi-pat’ B. Rochette analyses the use of Greek and Latin in official documents during thePrincipate. Following an overview of the ‘balanced bilingualism’ of emperors likeClaudius, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius as opposed to the ‘dominant bilingualism’ ofthe likes of Augustus, he discusses the use of both languages in various imperial consti-tutions. Whereas the bilingual publication of official texts was exceptional, the choicefor Greek or Latin depended on three factors: the nature of the document, the geographicalTHE CLASSICAL REVIEW464region to which the constitution pertained and the language of the addressee. This last fac-tor is particularly evident in the case of official letters, for which the emperor availed him-self of two separate offices: ab epistulis Graecis and ab epistulis Latinis. For the imperialconstitutions, unless they had universal application, the choice was dictated by the geo-graphical region to which they applied. Rochette discusses several edicta, decreta andmandata, written directly in Greek or translated from a Latin original, pertaining to citiesor regions in the eastern provinces. Special attention is devoted to the ‘translation Greek’ ofthe so-called ἀποκρίματα of Septimius Severus (P.Col. VI 123), published in Alexandriaand written in Greek, very likely on the basis of a Latin original because of their legal con-tent. L. Rodríguez-Noriega Guillén, ‘Greek and Latin in the Late Second and Early ThirdCenturies CE: Athenaeus of Naucratis and Claudius Aelian’, discusses aspects of bilingu-alism such as borrowing and code-switching. In the first part, she identifies possiblesigns of knowledge of Latin as a spoken language in Athenaeus’ Δεινποσοφισταί. She dis-tinguishes between loanwords and instances of ‘intrasentential code-switching’, the latteroften accompanied by a metalinguistic reference to the spoken language, for exampleδηκόκτα / decocta, III 121E–122A. She also identifies cases of ‘Roman Greek’ definedas ‘terms which, despite being Greek both in etymology and formation, are not consideredto be Greek, but explicitly assigned to the language of the Romans’, for exampleκαλλιστρούθια / callistruthia, III 75E. In the second part, she reviews some possible inter-ferences of Latin in Aelian’s Greek.In ‘Bilingualism in the Pseudo-Epigraphical Correspondence between Seneca and Paul’I.L.E. Ramelli rejects the traditional thesis that the correspondence between Seneca andPaul was originally written in Greek and clumsily translated into Latin by a ‘Medieval bar-barian’. The question is, of course, why the correspondence should have been written inLatin rather than in Greek, given Seneca’s ‘balanced’ as opposed to Paul’s ‘dominant’bilingualism. Assuming that Paul wanted to practise his Latin for missionary purposesduring his stay in Rome, Ramelli goes on to explain some alleged Graecisms in his partof the correspondence: lexical, syntactical and ‘obscure and awkward sentences’. Theseare said to be typical of ‘a person who thinks in Greek’ or, alternatively, ‘a person whodoes not think in Latin’ (p. 35). Her conclusion is that Paul, ‘who thought in Greek’,‘had to write in Latin’ and, ‘knowing it very little . . . transposed Greek terms and con-structs into it’ (p. 34). I am not convinced by Ramelli’s argumentation. Among the lexicalGraecisms, for instance, sophia is mentioned as a ‘manifest loanword from Greek . . .employed in Letter XIV instead of Latin sapientia’ (p. 32). Sophia is, of course, unques-tionably a Greek loanword, but why should Paul have avoided it since it is acknowledgedto be ‘pivotal in Paul’s thought, especially in the Epistles to the Romans and theCorinthians’ (ibid.). In a footnote on the same page, Ramelli quotes Paul’s addresseeSeneca who asserts: Sapientia est quam Graeci σοϕίαν uocant. Hoc uerbo quoqueRomani utuntur (Ep. 89). The syntactical Graecisms are said to be ‘even more revealing,in that a forger would have needed much more competence and subtlety to reproduce suchdetails, to an extent that seems almost unthinkable’ (p. 32). The ‘translation Greek’ of theSeptuagint, as well as the ‘translation Latin’ of the Vetus Latina should warn us againstdrawing such conclusions. In her overzealous effort to prove the originality of the corre-spondence, Ramelli seems to have ignored systematically all the elements that couldpoint in the opposite direction (including the possibility that Paul’s letters might havebeen translated at the time of their composition).Ghent University MARK JANSE Q1mark.janse@ugent.beTHE CLASSICAL REVIEW 465

Vtroque sermone nostro: social and literary bilingualism in the Roman Empire

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/3161045/file/3229914

Vtroque sermone nostro: social and literary bilingualism in the Roman Empire

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Crossref

Ghent University Academic Bibliography