Empires of the Word - Nicholas Ostler [164]
The Gallo-Greeks never left a trace of written Gaulish, although they provided the inspiration for some of the finest artistic evocations of the Gauls (in statuary at Pergamum); and the evidence of their names is pretty authentic (Tectosages, ‘home-seekers’, Deiotarus, ‘holy bull’.*) Nevertheless, a memory of their linguistic identity lingered: at the end of the fourth century AD, St Jerome, famous for his Latin translation of the Bible, which became the Vulgate, was declaring that he could communicate with Ancyra’s Galatians in much the same language as he had heard spoken in his youth near Trier, on the Moselle. But four hundred years is an awfully long time for a language without a written tradition to survive in the midst of Hellenised Asia Minor: perhaps he was just alluding to something he had read.
* Perhaps this is a glimpse of Gaulish with a Greek accent: the natural Gaulish for this would be Deiwo-tarwos, but Greek had dropped all [w].
This venture into Asia Minor, with its linguistic impact on the central highlands round Ancyra, is instructive about the way in which a language like Gaulish could be spread, and the conditions for its survival. It was the language of a lineage. When its speakers moved, its domain would move with them, and if the community grew, so would the number of its speakers. If the community lost its identity, or its distinguishing customs, the language would disappear.
Consilium: The rationale of Roman Imperium
Consilium: (a) deliberation, consultation, a considering together, counsel; (b) a conclusion made with consideration, determination, resolution, measure, plan, purpose, intention; (c) the persons who deliberate, a council.
Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary
The Celtic speakers in Britain proved surprisingly impervious to Latin in the long term, even if it was the country’s language of officialdom and literacy for four hundred years. Latin never became the language of the common people in Britain. So it was that Britain’s derisory reputation with the Romans was ultimately fulfilled: ‘neither brave in battle nor faithful in peace’.33 We must ask how this spread of the conqueror’s language could fail to occur.
Mōs Māiōrum—the Roman way
It is no secret that the basis for the spread of Latin was the political and military spread of the Roman imperium (a word originally meaning command, but later carrying all the connotations of its French rendering, empire.) In this it was unlike Celtic, but rather like English in its early modern career. But like the speakers of English too (and again unlike the Celts), the Romans were seldom nakedly aggressive or belligerent in motivating their campaigns. There was also, among both sets of empire-builders, an unwillingness to talk openly about the commercial and material benefits of what was achieved—again unlike the Celts with their emphasis on the joys of booty. What really drew Rome out to conquer every country round the Mediterranean?
We have seen that very early on (the second century BC) it was a matter of curiosity to Greeks such as Polybius to figure out what made the Romans so speedily victorious, apparently against all comers. Although he made some trenchant remarks about the Roman character (see ‘The contenders: Greek and Roman views’, p. 279), he did not settle for any easy or simple answer. And even with the benefit of two thousand years’ hindsight, it smacks of special pleading (or ex post facto rationalisation) to detect reasons