Empires of the Word - Nicholas Ostler [152]
† Both Greek homilía and Latin sermō originally meant an informal conversation, a chat.
* His host, Artavazdes, the king of Armenia, was also a Greek scholar, apparently, to the extent of having written his own plays in the language (Plutarch, Crassus, fin.).
† Over the three years AD 114-17, the whole area was taken and lost again by the emperor Trajan. But the north-western portion, Osroëne, was incorporated for two centuries after a Roman campaign in 164.
* Mango (1980: ch. 1) puts the population of the eastern Mediterranean provinces in the mid-sixth century at 30 million, with 8 million in Egypt, 9 million in Syria-Palestine-Mesopotamia, 10 million in Anatolia and 3-4 million in the Balkans. Note also how Anatolia had twice the population of Greece and the European provinces.
* The writing was on the wall for the Byzantines in that year of 1071: news also arrived that the Normans had taken Bari, ending 535 years of their empire in Italy.
* The Greek Orthodox patriarchate indeed gained from the Turkish conquest, since the Sultan Mehmet rationalised his Orthodox subjects after taking Constantinople, incorporating the Bulgarian and Serbian patriarchates under the authority of Constantinople. Linguistically, of course, they remained separate.
* e.g. zingiberi, ‘ginger’, sakkharon, ‘sugar’ (see Chapter 5, “The character of Sanskrit’, p. 192).
* Close to the full list seems to be spíti, ‘house’ (from Latin hospitium, ‘inn’), skamnío, ‘bench’ (scamnum), pórta, ‘door’, kámara, ‘room’, vérga, ‘rod’, and possibly áspros, ‘white’ (from Latin asper, ‘rough’). Compare the vastly longer list of borrowings by Welsh (which was in close contact with Latin for half the time). (See Chapter 7, ‘Consilium: The rationale of Roman imperium’, p. 303.)
† It has been suggested that the favourite choice of the Christian word for ‘love’, agápē, is influenced by Hebrew ’āhēb, ‘love’ (which happens to have much stronger sexual overtones than the Greek), and Greek skébar;nē, ‘tent’, by Hebrew &scar;eken, ‘dwelling’ (Moule 1959: 186).
7
Contesting Europe: Celt, Roman, German and Slav
[The Gauls are] in their conversation terse and enigmatic, often speaking in allusive riddles.
iodorus Siculus, v.31
Trí húaithaid ata ferr sochaidi: úathad dagbríathar, úathad bó hi feór, úathad carat im chuirm.
Three scarcities that are better than plenty: a scarcity of fine words, a scarcity of cows in a meadow, a scarcity of friends at beer.
The Triads of Ireland, ed. Kuno Meyer, 93
nor was it fitting for the government of the Romans…given that they were possessed more than anyone by a hatred of the very nature and name of absolute power (’tyranny’).
Arrian, Alexander’s Campaign, vii.15.6
hoc vero regnum est, et ferri nullo pacto potest.
But this is kingship, and can in no wise be tolerated.
Cicero, Letter to Atticus, ii.12.1
…et ingrata genti quies et facilius inter ancipitia clarescunt magnumque comitatum non nisi vi belloque tueare.
Peace is disliked by the [German] nation; they distinguish themselves more easily in a crisis and you will not see them in large numbers except in wartime.
Tacitus, Germania, 14.2
Want her dô ar arme wuntane baugš, cheisuhngu gitšn, sô imo se der chuning gap,
Huneô truhtîn: ‘dat ih dir it nŭ bi huldî gibu.’ Hadubrant gimahalta Hiltibrandes sunu
’Mit gěru seal man geba infšhan, ort widar orte.’
He took from his arm twisted tores worked with specie gold, given him by the king, lord of the Huns: ‘This I now give you in friendship.’ Rejoined Hadubrand, son of Hildebrand:
’With spears are gifts to be taken, point against point.’
Hildebrandslied, 33-8
Reversals of fortune
The history of Europe, over the three thousand years for which we have evidence, is dominated by the changing fortunes of four closely related families of languages: Celtic, Italic, Germanic and Slavonic. In every