medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
See intercalations below:
On Thursday, March 10, 2005, at 9:34 am, John Briggs wrote:
> There are several points to be made.
>
> 1. That Gibson should chose a modern ecclesiastical pronunciation
> (even
> "after consideration of all the alternatives") gives an insight
> into his
> motivation.
>
> 2. One should not confuse the reasons for "artistic" choices,
> with the post
> hoc rationalisations of those choices.
>
> 3. The Eastern Roman Empire was administered in Greek. Those
> 'Roman'
> soldiers would have been Greek-speaking.
Their officers would probably have been Greek-Aramaic bilinguals, with
perhaps a Latin-speaker or two at the highest echelon. How much Greek
the ordinary soldier in Pilate's Judaea would have had is an open
question. If Helen Bond is correct, the common language of virtually
all the soldiers is likely to have been Aramaic. See her Ecole
Initiative piece on Pontius Pilate:
http://www2.evansville.edu/ecoleweb/articles/pilate.html
especially this bit:
"The governors of Judaea had only auxilliary [sic] troops at their
disposal. These appear to have been descendents of the Herodian troops
drawn predominantly from Caesarea and Sebaste. They amounted to five
infantry cohorts and one cavalry regiment scattered throughout the
province. One cohort was permanently posted in the Antonia Fortress in
Jerusalem."
Which, assuming Gibson's advisors agreed with Bond and informed Gibson
on this point, would make having the soldiers speak Latin an artistic
choice (emphasizing the foreign nature of the rule at the top rather
than the continued use of native instruments of rule/oppression).
That said, the form of Latin used, many of whose most salient
characteristics are evidenced only centuries Later, is not demonstrably
closer to any _sermo plebeius_ or regional patois that Gibson's
imaginary first-century Latin-speaking soldiers might actually have
used than is the reconstructed pronunciation of the ancient (mostly
late antique) grammarians.
> 4. An awful lot is known about the pronunciation of Latin. The
> standard
> work is Allen's "Vox Latina".
One thing to remember, though, was that Allen was not a substratist.
His book is basically about the pronunciation of the Latin of Rome and
vicinity and (later) of educated people elsewhere who learned the
pronunciation of the grammarians. There was class and, especially,
regional variation in the pronunciation of Latin in the first century
CE. But though we know this variation existed, the forms that it took
is something about which an awful lot is _not_ known.
Best,
John Dillon
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|