ancient languages Archives - Page 2 of 4 - Tales of Times Forgotten

Why Are Some Names Used in the ‘Iliad’ Used in English Today While Others Are Not?

If you have ever read the Iliad, you have probably noticed that there are many characters in it who have names that are not commonly used as given names in countries that are predominantly English-speaking today. I’m talking about names like Agamemnon, Menelaos, Patroklos, Idomeneus, Hekabe, Andromache, and so forth. Meanwhile, there are also names like Alexandros, Helene, Hektor, and Kassandra that are still used today in Anglicized forms like Alexander, Helen, Hector, and Cassandra. Many people have wondered why some of these names are commonly used today in English, while others of them are not.

As it turns out, the vast majority of the names that are used in the Iliad have never been widely used in English, but a handful of these names have passed into English through various channels, mostly not through the Iliad itself. Of all the names of characters in the Iliad, the two that have been in continuous use as names for people in English the longest are Alexander and Helen, which passed from Greek into Latin and from Latin into English very early due to both of these names having been held by particularly famous and revered ancient figures. The names Hector and Cassandra first passed into English a bit later via the medieval “Matter of Rome” (i.e., the corpus of romances based on ancient Greek and Roman stories), but they didn’t become popular until the eighteenth century.

What Did the Ancient Romans Use Latin For?

Someone on Quora has asked: “What was Latin used for in ancient Rome?” At first glance, this question might sound rather silly. After all, it seems obvious that people in ancient Rome used Latin for all different kinds of oral and written communication. This may explain why the people who have answered this question so far have all given brief and flippant responses. I initially thought about giving such a response as well. After a bit of consideration, though, I realized that this is not actually a bad question, or a silly one.

Quite simply, Latin was not the only language that people in the Roman cultural sphere used. There were many Roman people in ancient times who could not speak Latin. Also, many Roman people who did speak Latin spoke it in addition to at least one other language. In this post, I intend to first explain who in ancient Rome actually spoke Latin and then explain in what sorts of contexts multilingual people who knew Latin used it.

Yes, English Does Have Grammatical Gender (Sort Of)

Grammatical gender is a kind of noun class system that exists in many languages, in which nouns are said to possess a certain, inherent “gender” and articles, adjectives, and/or pronouns applied to these nouns are declined to match the gender of the noun. To illustrate, in Ancient Greek, the noun πόλεμος (pólemos), meaning “war,” is considered masculine, so it takes the masculine form of the article, which is ὁ (ho). If you wanted to describe the war as, say, “savage,” you would use the masculine form of the adjective with this meaning, which is ἄγριος (agrios). Thus, you would end up with the phrase ὁ ἄγριος πόλεμος, which means “the savage war.”

The grammatical gender of a noun may or may not correspond to the natural gender of the person or thing to whom it refers. For instance, the Modern High German word for “girl” or “young woman” is Mädchen, which is grammatically neuter, even though the subject’s natural gender would obviously be feminine, because it is a diminutive of the more archaic word Magd, and all diminutives in German are neuter.

It is often stated as objective fact that Modern English has “no grammatical gender.” This is not, however, entirely true. Modern English does, in fact, have grammatical gender to some extent, but it is very limited compared to other Indo-European languages, and a noun’s grammatical gender usually corresponds to the natural gender of the person or thing to whom it refers.

No, Cerberus’s Name Does Not Mean “Spot”

In Greek mythology, Cerberus—or, to use a spelling that is more faithful to the Greek pronunciation, Kerberos—is the ferocious, many-headed watchdog who guards the entrance to the underworld. Ancient Greek sources disagree on exactly how many heads he has. The Theogonia, a long narrative poem in dactylic hexameter composed by the poet Hesiodos of Askre in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, says (in lines 308–312) that Kerberos has fifty heads. The later poet Pindaros of Thebes (lived c. 518 – c. 438 BCE) says in a fragment (F249a/b SM) that he has no less than one hundred heads. In Greek vase paintings, he is usually portrayed with either two or three heads. He is often also depicted with a serpent for a tail. From the fourth century BCE onward, though, three heads seem to have become the standard.

There is a popular meme that has been circulating on the internet for a long time claiming that the name Κέρβερος (Kérberos) actually means “Spot.” This is a cute story. How deliciously ironic it would be for a literal Hellhound to have such a normal dog name like “Spot”! Unfortunately, the story probably isn’t true. Kerberos’s name certainly does not mean “Spot” in Ancient Greek, and it probably doesn’t mean this in any language at all.

Lucifer Is Not a Name for Satan!

Most people believe that Lucifer is the true name for Satan. This notion has been reinforced by over a thousand years of western Christian tradition and by the constant appearances of Lucifer as a name for Satan in popular culture. In reality, however, the name Lucifer does not occur anywhere in any of the Hebrew or Aramaic texts that make up the Hebrew Bible, nor any of the Koine Greek texts that make up the Christian New Testament.

In fact, although the name does occur in many English translations of the Bible, it only occurs in one verse—the Book of Isaiah 14:12—which actually has nothing to do with Satan in any way. The only reason why anyone associates this passage in Isaiah with Satan at all is because some early Christians, including the church fathers Ioustinos Martys, Tertullianus of Carthage, and Origenes of Alexandria, spuriously interpreted it as an allegory for the fall of Satan.

Are There More Surviving Ancient Writings in Greek or Latin?

Most people are aware that the vast majority of everything that was written in ancient times has been lost. Some languages, however, have more surviving works than others. To give a somewhat extreme example, the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (lived c. 23 – 79 CE) records in his Natural History 18.5.22 that the city of Carthage contained libraries of scrolls written in the Punic language. In 146 BCE, however, the Romans utterly destroyed Carthage. They burned the entire city to the ground and killed or enslaved every single person who lived there.

The Romans dispersed whatever survived of the contents of the Carthaginian libraries among the various kings of North Africa—except, Pliny tells us, for a treatise on agriculture written in a set of twenty-eight scrolls by the Carthaginian writer Mago, which the Senate ordered be translated into Latin. The Latin translation of Mago’s treatise was later lost and is only known today from references in Greek and Roman sources. The Punic language itself went extinct sometime around the fifth century CE. As a result, not a single literary work that was originally written in the Punic language has survived to the present day complete; even the works that are known are known only in name, summary, or fragmentary quotation.

Ancient texts written in the Greek and Latin languages have been relatively fortunate in terms of their survival. Scholars often estimate off-the-cuff that around 1% of the known works written in Greek and Latin in ancient times has survived to the present day. This may not seem like a lot, but it is still far more writing than any individual can possibly hope to read, even in a lifetime, and it is a great deal more than what has survived in Punic. Given these circumstances, it is only natural that many people are curious which of these two languages has more surviving ancient texts: Greek or Latin? The answer, for reasons I will explain shortly, is almost unquestionably Greek.

“There Are No Pronouns in the Bible”?

I’m sure that most of my readers already know what a pronoun is, but, just in case you happened to skip (or forget) every grammar lesson in elementary, middle, and high school, a pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun. Pronouns are considered a part of speech. They have also generated a lot of controversy in recent years, due to the fact that personal pronouns are sometimes gendered.

Some people with left-leaning or progressive political inclinations have started stating their pronouns in their social media profiles or (less frequently) when they introduce themselves in person, so that other people will know how to refer to them. They do this because, in some cases, a person’s gendered pronouns may not be obvious from their name or appearance. This is especially often true in the case of transgender people.

Naturally, many conservatives are outraged over this. In fact, the word pronouns has become such a buzzword among conservatives that some conservatives seem to have forgotten what the word itself actually means. Some conservatives, falsely assuming that pronouns are something that only transgender people have and seeking to undermine them, have made the assertion: “There are no pronouns in the Bible.” This claim, however, is false, regardless of whether you are reading the Bible in English or in the original languages.

Why Is Latin Considered a “Dead Language”?

When I tell someone that I’m studying Ancient Greek and Latin, it is very common for the person with whom I am speaking to react with surprise at the fact that it is even possible to study Latin. They often say things like, “I thought Latin was a dead language!” with the implication that they thought nobody knew how to speak or even read Latin and it was impossible for anybody to learn. I most commonly receive this reaction from people who are of my own generation, who have had little exposure to Latin.

These reactions clearly stem from a misunderstanding of what linguists and classicists mean when they say that Latin is a “dead language.” In this article, I would like to address what the term “dead language” really means, why it is applied to Latin, and why the use of this descriptor in many ways masks a more complicated reality.

Here’s the Meaning of the Symbolism in Lil Nas X’s Controversial New Music Video

Until last Sunday, I honestly had no idea who Lil Nas X was. I don’t really follow music in general and I honestly know especially little about rap in particular. Then, while we were driving back to Bloomington after visiting our parents for Easter, my sister mentioned to me that Lil Nas X is a rapper, that he wrote a song about being gay—which I later learned is titled “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”—and that the music video for it includes a scene of him riding a stripper pole down to Hell and giving Satan a lap dance. She explained that religious conservatives were having a huge moral panic over this music video because they think it glorifies homosexuality and Satanism.

Having heard this, I naturally decided to look up the music video for myself to see what all the fuss was about. I have to say that, for a three-minute clip that involves the main character riding a stripper pole to Hell and giving Satan a lap dance, the music video is remarkably intellectually sophisticated. The people who worked on this video clearly did a ton of research. As soon as I watched it, I was genuinely impressed by the sheer number of classical and Biblical allusions that they managed to cram in.

It incorporates specific references to works of ancient Greek and Roman art, the Bible, Greek mythology, works of Greek philosophy, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. They even managed to include an exact, direct quote from Plato’s Symposion in the original Classical Attic Greek! Here’s a detailed explanation of the music video’s classical and Biblical symbolism.

No, Ancient Greek Is Not Albanian

One of the most bizarre yet persistent linguistic claims I have encountered so far on Quora is the claim that Ancient Greek is somehow actually Albanian. This claim seems utterly bizarre to me, because I have been studying Ancient Greek on my own since high school, I have taken four semesters of it so far at the college level, and I can read texts written in it fairly well. I do not speak Albanian, but I have listened to recordings of people speaking it and tried to read passages written in it and I can say for a fact that it is not Ancient Greek.

Indeed, I have no idea how anyone who knows Albanian or Ancient Greek could possibly think that they are the same language. Nonetheless, again and again, I have encountered Albanian nationalists claiming that they are. I therefore think it is time for me to address this hypothesis (if we can even call it that) once and for all.