Vol. 25 No. 10 · 22 May 2003
pages 15-16 | 2880 words
God’s Will
Leofranc Holford-Strevens
- Bilingualism and the Latin Language by J.N. Adams
Cambridge, 836 pp, £100.00, January 2003, ISBN 0 521 81771 4
A poor gardener in Macedonia was riding a donkey when a soldier addressed him in Latin, asking him where he was taking the beast; unable to understand the question, he said nothing, whereupon the soldier knocked him off his mount. The gardener humbly explained in Greek that he did not know Latin; the soldier repeated his question in Greek, and received his answer. So runs an episode in the Golden Ass; although in the end the gardener beats up the soldier, the story indicates the need for subjects and citizens of the Roman Empire to know some basic Latin for their own sake. It also shows the soldier, even though he can speak Greek and is in Greek-speaking country, using Latin in order to remind the natives who is master.
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[*] Oxford, 494 pp., £65, November 2002, 0 19 924506 1.
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Letters
Vol. 25 No. 11 · 5 June 2003
From Rex Winsbury
It is still a surprise and disappointment to be reminded, as Leofranc Holford-Strevens reminds us (LRB, 22 May), that Julius Caesar did not say 'Et tu, Brute' as he died under 23 dagger thrusts on the Ides of March. Footnotes to Shakespeare make clear that this phrase was just a stage tag, but what did Caesar say? Suetonius and Cassius Dio give two versions, one that he said nothing, only grunted, the other that he said, as Holford-Strevens reports, kai su teknon. That is, his last words were in Greek. Why? And what did he mean? J.N. Adams, the author of the book reviewed by Holford-Strevens, says that it was a form of code-switching for magical or apotropaic purposes. Clearly, the standard translation, 'You too, my child' (in Robert Graves's version), doesn't quite convey code-switching for magical purposes, and Marcus Brutus, to whom the words were addressed, was a bit old to be 'my child' (Caesar was not his father, despite the rumours). James Russell, whom Adams quotes, argued that the first two words were common in Greek curses and curse tablets of the time, and Caesar and Brutus, both good Greek speakers, would have been familiar with this sub-literary argot. So Caesar may have died with a curse on his lips, and perhaps 'child' was meant contemptuously. But how to render that into English? Adams and Russell (and Holford-Strevens) offer: 'To hell with you too, lad.' Is this the best the English language can do? Suetonius could have helped: he wrote a 'Guide to Greek Terms of Abuse'. Sadly, it is lost.
Rex Winsbury
London WC1
Vol. 25 No. 12 · 19 June 2003
From Dan Jameson
If Cassius Dio is right about Caesar's last words, their meaning may not be all that hard to guess (Letters, 5 June). Caesar's skill with words is clear from his own writings, and it is hard to believe that his use of Greek, here of all times, was accidental, or that it escaped his notice that this particular form was common in curses. I have no idea about Greek inflectional endings, but the English translation has one fairly obvious meaning: 'You too will die bloodily because of this deed.' 'My child' is less easily explained. Given the closeness between Caesar and Brutus it could suggest Caesar's sadness that Brutus, too, would die. Or it could be a way of emphasising the first part of the warning. The meaning would be something along these lines: 'You too will die because of this; your death shall be child to mine.' On the other hand, this may be too complex a thought for someone being stabbed 23 times.
Dan Jameson
Haltwhistle, Northumberland
