Sources (I)

Sources for antiquity How do we know what happened in the Greek and Roman world? How do we know when it happened? How do we know what events meant to the ancients?

Chronology and time-reckoning Literary Sources –Language –Greek and Latin Literature –Inscriptions Archaeology –Architecture –Painting –Sculpture

Chronology and time-reckoning This course focuses on the period ca 1500 BC to ca AD 476. These dates are a modern convention, reflecting the modern calendar. The ancient situation was more complex: –a strong awareness of the changing seasons and months (astronomy) –there were many calendars for individual cities –Caesar reformed the Roman calendar, bringing it close to the modern system.

The ancient situation (cont.) –Historical events were typically dated by the year of a particular priest or magistrate in which they fell. –Often reference is made to a particular season. –Rough lengths for a single generation were used to date past dynasties. –The ‘acme’ system was widely used in ancient biography. –Occasionally the distance is measured from some single event, common era (e.g., the first Olympics 776 BC, founding of Rome 753/2 BC, Trojan War 1183/2 BC).

Modern statements of historical chronology represent a conversion of ancient modes of time-reckoning to modern. –e.g., a Roman writer would say that Caesar was murdered on the Ides of March C. Caesare V et M. Antonio consulibus. –We would say that Caesar was killed on 15 March 44 BC. This modern ‘fact’ represents a series of interpretations.

Literary Sources

Languages: Greek and Latin Greek is descended from Indo-European, and Indo-European speakers seem to have moved into the Greek world some time before the Mycenaean Age (ca 2000 BC). This new language seems to have displaced an indigenous language (or languages), but traces of pre-Greek vocabulary remain in the lexicon of classical Greek.

The Greek world is geographically disparate, and during the classical period Greeks inhabited not only mainland Greece, but the Aegean islands, the coast of Asia Minor, parts of north Africa and southern Italy. A number of dialects flourished, each with considerable variation in phonology, morphology and vocabulary. Although to the modern student ancient Greek is often synonymous with Attic Greek, in fact a standard version of Greek did not emerge until the later part of the Hellenistic period when koinê was used throughout much of the Greek-speaking world.

Latin began as the language of Latium, the region of which Rome is the most important centre, and Latin belongs to the Italic group of Indo-European languages. Having originally been spoken at Latium from ca 800 BC, Latin came to be the dominant language of Italy, and later became the common tongue of the western Mediterranean world and as far as the Balkans to the east. The diffusion of Latin is a direct reflection of the growing influence of Rome, the city that dominated Italy politically and culturally.

After the middle of the third century BC there emerged a formal literary language, which is conventionally called Classical Latin. The Romans themselves spoke of sermo urbanus, a phrase which suggests both ‘urbane speech’ and ‘speech of the city.’ In sharp contrast to early Greece, where the literary language reflects the influence of a number of dialects and so a number of regions, other Italian dialects seem to have had little or no influence on the development of Latin literary culture.

The character of Greek and Latin Very different from English. Inflected languages (i.e., meaning and syntactical function are determined by word-forms, not word-order). Extensive vocabularies. Translation is a difficult and often inexact science.