[B-Greek] Off-topic: source for Imperial quote
Kenneth Litwak
javajedi2 at yahoo.com
Sun Jun 13 23:51:00 EDT 2004
--- "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
wrote:
> At 10:25 PM -0700 6/11/04, Kenneth Litwak wrote:
> > This may seem like a silly question, but since
> the
> >quote is mentioed in a work that is in Latin, and
> the
> >emperor would have presumably known Latin, why is
> it
> >assert4d that the original statment was in Greek
> and
> >that therefore there is a pun involved? Thanks.
>
> Ken, I think your question has already been answered
> by George: the pun is
> the linkage of hUS (sow/pig) and hUIOS (son). And
> Augustus DID know Greek
> (he was a "college" student in Athens at the time of
> the assassination of
> his adoptive father Julius Caesar.
HI Carl,
No disrespect meant, but of course Augsutus knew
Greek. My assumption is that vitually eveyrone in the
Greco-Roan empire could at least speak Greek, though
perhaps not read complex texts (as the papyri seem to
indicate that even "ordinary" people could write
shopping lists, love letters, etc.).. I never doubted
this. I'm confident that virtually eeryone in the
Greco-Roman empire was multi-lingual. I suppose in
fact that a Galilean Jew would be would
quadra-lingual: Grrek in teh Agora, Hebrew in the
synagogue, Aramaic at the dinner table and Latin for
paying taxes or other interfaces with the government.
My question was not whether August would know
Greek but why it is suppsoed that he used it allegedly
in this particular instance. It's the same issue as
in NT studies when it is argued by someone about what
something meant if retrojected into the "original
Aramaic." The problem with such statements is that we
simply don't know whethere there was an original
Aramaic.
Ken Litwak
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