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.
#1 by Elizabeth on 05/14/2005 - 12:32 pm
Justinian’s Code consisted of two collections of Roman law and a collection of new laws. From what I can find on a Google search, the two collections of Roman law were in Latin and most of the new laws were in Greek. This was in the 500s, and apparently done in the capital, Constantinople (Byzantium).
This is the only work I know of that came out of the Eastern Roman Empire in Latin.
#2 by Peter on 05/15/2005 - 12:28 am
So did Casca have no Greek or have his words been famously misinterpreted?
#3 by Bob on 05/15/2005 - 8:35 am
Casca, frightened, called to his brother in Greek: “Help, brother!” (“αδελφέ βοήθει!”)
#4 by Richard L. Hardison on 05/17/2005 - 9:58 pm
In the Roman Republic, the law was posted in the forum. At the time the Empire had not become Toynbee’s “Universal Hellenist State” so Latin would have been the language of the posting.
It is interesting to note that the most influential of the western theologians, Augustine, had no Greek. His Greek was at best halting and a goodly many of his “translations” are utterly laughable by the standards of any beginning undergrad Koine class. In combination with his Manicheeism, and philosophy, it is no wonder that some the trash he wrote is so screwy. John Calvin cherry picked Augustine, and ignored the things he didn’t like, to arrive at his “Institutes.”
There are a good many interesting things one can pick up by reading Durant’s “Story of Civilization.” One example is the Latin alphabet was actually one of several Greek alphabets. Only two survive, that used by the modern Greeks and our own.