Archive for May 13th, 2005

“He Has No Greek”

I was talking abut the fact that both Jesus and Pilate were expected to speak Greek.

If you read Roman history, you will often run into the phrase, “He has no Greek.” This meant the person only spoke Latin and so he was completely uneducated and had no place among Roman gentlemen.

One prominent Roman – I have forgotten his name, but I did know his daddy – suffered constantly under the insult, “He has no Greek.” Actually he spoke Greek fluently and used it in the Senate as one was supposed to do – the Roman Senate was composed of Romans of the upper class.

But this unfortunate gentleman had been taught by a Greek scholar who used the wrong accent. So he was constantly ridiculed for this. The Roman upper class not only spoke Greek constantly, but they had very specific tastes about WHICH Greek one spoke.

That was in Rome itself.

The OFFICIAL language of the EASTERN Roman Empire, even in the days of the Republic, was Greek and only Greek.

Which makes me wonder: Is there a single memorial or set of laws in the EASTERN Roman Empire that was ever written in Latin?

I am proud to say that, while not one in a thousand people could possibly know the answer to this, the one who can is probably a reader of Bob’s Blog.

If you don’t think my readers know their stuff, just look at the comments.

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