tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/latin-185/articles
Latin – The Conversation
2024-03-12T18:53:02Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/224334
2024-03-12T18:53:02Z
2024-03-12T18:53:02Z
Ancient scrolls are being ‘read’ by machine learning – with human knowledge to detect language and make sense of them
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580263/original/file-20240306-30-3x4aw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1040%2C0%2C1253%2C379&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Vesuvius Challenge incentivizes technological development by inviting researchers to figure out how to ‘read’ ancient papyri excavated from volcanic ash of Mount Vesuvius in Italy. Columns of Greek text retrieved from a portion of a scroll. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Vesuvius Challenge)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A groundbreaking announcement for the recovery of lost ancient literature was recently made. Using a non-invasive method that harnesses <a href="https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/machine-learning-explained">machine learning</a>, an international trio of scholars retrieved 15 columns of ancient Greek text from within a carbonized papyrus from <a href="https://www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk/about-us/story-of-herculaneum">Herculaneum</a>, a seaside Roman town eight kilometres southeast of Naples, Italy.</p>
<p>Their achievement earned them a US$700,000 grand prize from the <a href="https://scrollprize.org/">Vesuvius Challenge</a>. The challenge sought to incentivize technological development by inviting public participation in the research. </p>
<p>It emerged from collaboration between computer scientist Brent Seales — who has <a href="https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2304.02084">a long-standing interest</a> in non-invasive <a href="https://www2.cs.uky.edu/dri/the-scroll-from-en-gedi">technologies for studying</a> manuscripts — and technology investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross. </p>
<p>While the developments are exciting, technology is only part of the progress of scholarship. The work of reading and analyzing the new Greek and Latin texts recovered from the papyri will fall to human beings.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Painting showing a mountain with a volcano erupting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘An Eruption of Vesuvius,’ by Johan Christian Dahl (1824).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The Metropolitan Museum of Art)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Buried in ash</h2>
<p>Like Pompeii, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5b8igA644o">Herculaneum</a> was buried by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. </p>
<p>Much of the ancient town remains underground. But <a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-will-let-us-read-lost-ancient-works-in-the-library-at-herculaneum-for-the-first-time-223583">in 1752</a>, excavation uncovered hundreds of papyrus scrolls in the library of an elaborate Roman villa. The Herculaneum papyri <a href="https://www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk/research-and-publications/papyri">are the largest surviving example of an</a> intact ancient library preserved in the archaeological record: the library was found as it actually existed in 79 CE. </p>
<p>The precise number of books is unknown, says Michael McOsker, a research fellow in papyrology at University College London, and different methods of estimating give different results. </p>
<h2>Carbonized papyri</h2>
<p>Starved of oxygen, the intense heat of Vesuvius’ <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/pyroclastic-flow/">pyroclastic flow</a> carbonized (but did not ignite) the papyri. Resembling lumps of coal to the eye, 18th-century excavators did not immediately recognize them as ancient books.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three dark grey rectangular objects seen in a box." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Three unopened papyri from Herculaneum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Bodleian Libraries/University of Oxford)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The papyri are so brittle that many were destroyed by early attempts to access their texts. Studying them has therefore always required ingenuity. In 1754, a <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/buried-ash-vesuvius-scrolls-are-being-read-new-xray-technique-180969358">conservator and priest at the Vatican library</a> devised a machine for slowly unrolling them. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A dark grey scroll." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C7027%2C4995&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portion of an unrolled Herculaneum papyrus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/cac4db6a-8af5-4234-%20acb8-4b1ce819ef14">(Bodleian Libraries/University of Oxford)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More recently, <a href="https://www.imaging.org/common/uploaded%20files/pdfs/Papers/2001/PICS-0-251/4625.pdf">multispectral photography</a> has dramatically improved their legibility. But until now, a non-invasive method that would leave the scrolls intact remained out of reach. Its development marks a significant breakthrough.</p>
<p>McOsker notes there are 659 items in the catalogue listed as “not unrolled,” but some of these are parts of scrolls. </p>
<h2>Sparking innovation</h2>
<p>To kick-start the challenge, Seales <a href="https://scrollprize.org/data">made public</a> an array of high-resolution X-ray computed tomography (CT) scans of two scrolls as well as similar scans of detached fragments with visible ink. The latter are essential as a reference point (or “control”) for innovative approaches. </p>
<p>The competition’s design encouraged transparency and collaboration: data published in the pursuit <a href="https://scrollprize.org/winners">of smaller goals</a> benefited all competitors. Additionally, transparency enabled the independent verification of results. Teams coalesced around shared ideas and approaches to the problem.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-will-let-us-read-lost-ancient-works-in-the-library-at-herculaneum-for-the-first-time-223583">AI will let us read 'lost' ancient works in the library at Herculaneum for the first time</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Text mentions music, taste, sight</h2>
<p>The challenge made news in <a href="https://scrollprize.org/firstletters">October</a>, when the first letters were read: πορφυρας (a noun or adjective involving “purple”). </p>
<p>By the end of 2023, the criteria for awarding the grand prize were met: four passages of 140 characters, with 85 per cent of the letters recovered. <a href="https://scrollprize.org/grandprize">A PhD student studying machine learning, an engineer studying computer science and a robotics student</a> were declared
the victors.</p>
<p>According to McOsker, the text they retrieved mentions music twice, as well as the senses of taste and sight. He thinks it is likely a work about sensation and decision-making, in the tradition of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/ENTRIES/epicurus/">the philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BCE)</a>. The challenge’s papyrological team is still analyzing it.</p>
<h2>Hundreds of rolls to be studied</h2>
<p>This year brings with it new goals: after five per cent of one scroll was read in 2023, the challenge set a <a href="https://scrollprize.org/2024_prizes#2024-grand-prize">2024 grand prize goal</a> of reading 90 per cent of four scrolls. With hundreds of rolls yet to be studied, the new method of recovering the contents of the Herculaneum papyri is only getting started.</p>
<p>But several obstacles remain. The production of scans at sufficiently high resolution can’t be done via ordinary equipment, but requires access to a facility with a particle accelerator. Access to the right equipment is limited and costly. To date, four scrolls and numerous detached fragments <a href="https://www.diamond.ac.uk">have been processed at a facility</a> near Oxford, England. </p>
<p>Most of the unopened scrolls are housed in Naples, and getting them safely to a facility will be complicated, as will reserving and paying for the beam time required to scan them.</p>
<p>Another limitation is that the technology for unrolling and flattening out a papyrus by virtual means — a process the challenge calls “segmentation” — is slow and expensive. Via current techniques, which involve a fair bit of manual manipulation, fully segmenting one scroll would cost US$1–5 million. Segmentation needs to become much more efficient to avoid a bottleneck.</p>
<h2>Critical minds needed</h2>
<p>Technology is only part of the equation. Essential to the challenge’s work is an international team of papyrologists. Their role is to analyze the model’s output of legible ancient Greek — and in so doing determine which approaches are most effective.</p>
<p>Papyrology is thrilling work, but also challenging and painstaking. It requires mastery of ancient languages and ideas as well as the puzzle-solver’s ability to fill in the inevitable gaps. Papyrology is a niche specialization: in the larger world of classics, papyrologists are rare birds. The number of Herculaneum specialists is even fewer. </p>
<p>For the challenge truly to succeed, we’re going to need critical minds as well as whizbang technology. There’s potentially a fair bit of new ancient philosophy headed our way, but it needs to be pieced together into a coherent text — letter by letter, word by word, sentence by sentence — before it can be studied more widely. That’s going to require scholars.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224334/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>C. Michael Sampson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for 'the Books of Karanis,' a project that studies fragmentary Greek literature from the Egyptian village Karanis. </span></em></p>
However exciting the technological developments may be, the task of reading and analyzing the Greek and Latin texts recovered from the papyri will fall to human beings.
C. Michael Sampson, Associate Professor of Classics, University of Manitoba
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210941
2023-12-27T09:10:11Z
2023-12-27T09:10:11Z
Horse skulls and harmony singing – two winter customs which bring people in Wales together
<p>Imagine you’re having a quiet evening at home when suddenly there’s a knock on the door. You open it to find a boisterous crowd carrying a horse’s skull mounted on a pole and draped in ribbons – the <em><a href="https://museum.wales/articles/1187/Christmas-Traditions-The-Mari-Lwyd">Mari Lwyd</a></em> has arrived. </p>
<p>The <em>Mari Lwyd</em>, meaning “grey (or pale) mare”, is a Christmas and new year custom in areas of south Wales dating back to the 18th century. A horse’s skull is placed on a pole and covered in a white sheet, decorated with ribbons. A person, concealed under the sheet, carries the pole and operates the horse’s jaw, making it snap. A group of stock characters accompany them including Sergeant, Merryman, Punch and Judy. </p>
<p>The procession goes from house to house and the group sing verses asking for admittance. The household is expected to respond, also in verse. And so begins a (sometimes very long) improvised poetic contest or rhyming ritual known as <em>pwnco</em> before the group is finally invited into the house and offered food and drink.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AcvvWcDLagY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Mari Lwyd goes from door to door but would you let her in?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Several explanations have been proposed as to the origin of the custom. Some argue that its roots lie in a pre-Christian fertility <a href="http://www.folkwales.org.uk/mari.html">ritual</a>. Others have argued that the <em>Mari Lwyd</em> has associations with the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2791759">Virgin Mary</a>. </p>
<p>The custom is clearly connected to the practice of <a href="https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/history/art-collections/wassailing-ritual-and-revelry#">wassailing</a>, where groups of merrymakers go from one house to another asking for food and drink. It may be linked to other folk performances found elsewhere in Britain and Ireland, including the <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100300697">hobby-horse</a> tradition. </p>
<h2>Plygain</h2>
<p>Further north, a tradition celebrated in Montgomeryshire, where I was brought up, is much less colourful and firmly located within a religious context. Deriving from the Latin “pullicantio” (cock crow), the <em><a href="https://museum.wales/articles/1185/Christmas-Traditions-Plygain-Singing/">plygain</a></em> (pronounced “plug-ine”), was an early-morning service originally held on Christmas Day in parish churches and then also in nonconformist chapels, beginning in candlelight and continuing into daylight. </p>
<p>It is now mainly an evening service, although some stalwarts still adhere to the early morning tradition. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a6Id_jRy1E4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A trio singing plygain.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After a congregational hymn, a reading and a prayer, the vicar or minister will announce, “<em>Mae’r blygien yn awr yn agored</em>” (the plygain is now open). There is no programme; rather, a party of singers will get up and make their way to the chancel or the <em>sêt fawr</em> (the elder’s pew in a chapel), and sing a carol, unaccompanied and with no conductor. </p>
<p>These are often from the same family and with an ancient pedigree, their frayed carol books (usually old notebooks) having been passed down through the generations. A tuning fork is often used to pitch the tune – I’ve even seen it struck against a singer’s tooth. </p>
<p>The carols would often have been composed by local poets and sung to popular tunes of the time. They do not describe solely the birth of Christ and frequently focus on the crucifixion. Often very long, they are usually sung in three-part harmonies. </p>
<p>The <em>plygain</em> ends with the spine-chilling sound of <em><a href="http://daibach-welldigger.blogspot.com/2020/12/welsh-carols-15-carol-y-swper.html">Carol y Swper</a></em> (the Supper Carol), when all the men in the congregation come forward to sing. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Carol y Swper performed at a church in Montgomeryshire.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Revival and reinvention</h2>
<p>In the 1960s, the <a href="https://museum.wales/stfagans/">St Fagans National Museum of History</a>, or the Welsh Folk Museum as it was then known, began <a href="https://museum.wales/collections/folksongs/?action=background">collecting</a> different genres of Welsh folk songs. These included <em>plygain</em> carols and <em>Mari Lwyd</em> verses. This has helped to renew interest in both traditions. </p>
<p>The museum hosts annual <em>Mari Lwyd</em> <a href="https://museum.wales/stfagans/whatson/12104/Christmas-Traditions-The-Mari-Lwyd-Performances">performances</a>, while many a Cardiff pub-goer will likely be startled by the sudden appearance of a snapping horse’s skull. The practice has evolved over time – visits can be pre-arranged, participants will sing from song sheets, the <em>Mari</em> may even be made of cardboard. In fact, anything goes.</p>
<p>Today, the <em>Mari</em> (in various guises) is thriving, and can be found as far afield as the USA and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/welshzombiechristmashorse/">Australia</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1477386261761564672"}"></div></p>
<p>The <em>plygain</em> is still going strong in Montgomeryshire and, indeed, all over Wales and beyond. Around 50 <a href="https://plygain.org/dyddiadur.htm">services</a> are held during December and January. </p>
<p>And this tradition, too, has undergone many changes. Several collections of <em>plygain</em> songs have by now been published enabling new carollers to participate. </p>
<p>In 2020 and 2021, a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yifxPBea1f0">virtual</a> <em>plygain</em> took place during the pandemic. A bilingual <em>plygain</em> <a href="https://www.plygain.org/home.htm">website</a> has also been set up and a new carol composed specifically for women’s voices, so that women, too, have their <em>Carol y Swper</em>. </p>
<p>Purists would argue that traditions should not be revived and re-invented. But it is in the nature of traditions to change and constantly evolve – they must do so in order to survive. </p>
<p>We should continue to celebrate the modern-day versions of the <em>Mari Lwyd</em> tradition and the <em>plygain</em> because they contribute to a shared sense of identity and instil in participants a sense of belonging.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210941/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sioned Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Mari Lwyd and the plygain are two prominent Welsh traditions celebrated over Christmas and the new year.
Sioned Davies, Emeritus Professor of Welsh, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210939
2023-10-30T12:11:30Z
2023-10-30T12:11:30Z
Nos Galan Gaeaf: the traditional Welsh celebration being eclipsed by modern Halloween
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555331/original/file-20231023-27-3fyhsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6016%2C3998&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nos Galan Gaeaf on October 31 is followed by Calan Gaeaf on November 1 in Wales. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sheep-cow-animal-skull-on-abandon-2353014109">PBabic/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Children throughout Wales will be dressed in witch or ghost costumes come October 31, going from door to door, chorusing “trick or treat” in the hope of receiving sweets. In other words, the scene will be very much like that encountered at Halloween in the rest of the UK. </p>
<p>On posters advertising Halloween events in Wales, the word Halloween is rendered in Welsh as <a href="https://museum.wales/blog/1857/Halloween-Traditions/"><em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em></a>. A <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/call-to-ditch-anglo-american-halloween-and-restore-welsh-traditions/">common complaint</a> is that traditional customs at this time of year have been eclipsed by an increasingly homogenised and commercialised event imported from the USA. </p>
<p>But how would Welsh people have celebrated <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em> in former centuries? What is its origin? And has it always been intrinsically linked to Halloween?</p>
<h2>October 31 celebrations</h2>
<p>Halloween has its <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/All-Saints-Day">origins</a> in AD609 or AD610 when the Pantheon in Rome was converted to a place of Christian worship and dedicated to Mary and to all the martyrs by Pope Boniface IV, who ordered an anniversary to be celebrated. </p>
<p>In the eighth century, the date of the celebration at the Basilica of St. Peter was fixed on November 1. This was extended by Gregory IV in the early ninth century to the whole church. </p>
<p>This celebration was known in English as “All Hallows Day”, and thus the eve is Halloween. It is quite plausible that there was already a seasonal festival of some sort at this date and that some of the features of this festival were transferred to Halloween.</p>
<p>A common <a href="https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2021/10/the-origins-of-halloween-traditions/#:%7E:text=Yet%2C%20the%20Halloween%20holiday%20has,costumes%20to%20ward%20off%20ghosts.">claim</a> is that Halloween is essentially Celtic. It is true that Gaelic-speaking places (Ireland, Gaelic Scotland and the Isle of Man) celebrated, at this time, a festival called <em><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Samhain">Samhain</a></em>, references to which abound in early medieval Irish <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=tXEyEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT8&dq=medieval+irish+samhain&ots=7srml1iSDo&sig=cZXC5ybD81Yu1vJAreNFi34Q1RI&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=medieval%20irish%20samhain&f=false">literature</a>. It was presented as a time of uncanny events and otherworldly visitations. </p>
<p>The name <em>Samhain</em> is often mispronounced by non-Gaelic speakers as “Sam Hain”. But it is actually closer, in modern Irish pronunciation, to “sow won” (sow as in female pig). </p>
<p>However, while Welsh is also a Celtic language, there is no evidence for <em>Samhain</em> having been celebrated in Wales – so, it could well be a Gaelic rather than a Celtic institution. The oft-repeated <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/halloween-owes-its-tricks-and-treats-celtic-new-years-eve-180960944/">claim</a> that it signifies the start of the Celtic year is based on the speculation of comparative mythologists.</p>
<p>The name <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em> certainly does not go back to a prehistoric period of Celtic linguistic unity. The word <a href="https://geiriadur.ac.uk/gpc/gpc.html"><em>calan</em></a> is borrowed from the Latin <em>calends</em>, meaning “the first day of the month”, while <em>gaeaf</em> means “winter”. </p>
<p>So we can think of it as “the winter calends”, or “the first day of winter”. <em>Calan</em> was one of hundreds of Latin loan words that entered the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Brythonic-languages">Brittonic</a> language, the ancestor of the Welsh language, during the period in which Britain was part of the Roman Empire. </p>
<p>There is, however, an element of the name which does have Celtic ancestry. <em>Calan Gaeaf</em> on its own is November 1, but <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em> (the “night of the winter calends”), is the night before. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0001">Julius Caesar</a> said of the Celtic-speaking Gauls (who inhabited what is now France and Belgium), that they counted the day to begin on the previous evening. This is reflected in <a href="https://celt.ucc.ie">medieval Irish</a>, where the term <em>aidche Lúain</em> means “the night before Monday” – what we would call Sunday night. This is merely a linguistic fossil, however, and does not prove anything about the antiquity of <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em>.</p>
<p>There are medieval references to it, for example, in poetry from the <a href="https://www.library.wales/discover-learn/digital-exhibitions/manuscripts/the-middle-ages/the-black-book-of-carmarthen">Black Book of Carmarthen</a>, a collection of early Welsh poems and manuscripts. <em>Calan Gaeaf</em> is also mentioned in the <a href="https://www.library.wales/discover-learn/digital-exhibitions/manuscripts/the-middle-ages/laws-of-hywel-dda#:%7E:text=The%20%27Laws%20of%20Hywel%20Dda,quarter%20of%20the%2013th%20century.">early Welsh laws</a>, detailed in 13th-century manuscripts, but those references are disappointingly prosaic. </p>
<p>And, it is only in the modern period that we have <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.29074/page/n5/mode/2up">references</a> to <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em> customs, exhaustively catalogued in the 20th century by the historian, Trefor M. Owen.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A spooky black and white forest with twisted trees." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beware the lurking Hwch Ddu Gwta and the Ladi Wen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/spooky-wooodland-scene-twisted-trees-black-619428050">bearacreative/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Spooky customs</h2>
<p>How people <a href="https://museum.wales/blog/1857/Halloween-Traditions/">celebrated</a> varied significantly from region to region. Many, such as bobbing for apples, and various types of divination to determine who will marry who, are far from unique to Wales. Nonetheless, some have an unfamiliar twist. </p>
<p>In south Wales, parties of young people would maraud from door to door like modern trick or treaters. In Glamorgan, boys would wear women’s clothing. Much more sinister were the <em>gwrachod</em> (meaning “witches” or “hags”) of Powys though. These were men who would go about in pairs, dressed as an old man and old woman, or in gangs dressed in sheep skins and masks, drinking heavily and demanding gifts.</p>
<p>The lighting of a bonfire, or <em>coelcerth</em>, was a notable feature too. Close to the fires, people would be safe from wandering spirits, but the return home could be a fraught business. In the darkness lurked the <em><a href="https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/606778">Hwch Ddu Gwta</a></em> (tail-less black sow) accompanied by the <em><a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100047409">Ladi Wen</a> heb ddim pen</em> (the white lady without a head). </p>
<p>If you want to stand out from the crowd of mummies and vampires this October 31, you could do worse than dressing as one of these gruesome characters instead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210939/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Rodway does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Nos Galan Gaeaf on October 31 in Wales is steeped in folklore and tradition.
Simon Rodway, Lecturer in Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/203137
2023-04-17T02:28:37Z
2023-04-17T02:28:37Z
Caveat emptor: a new book on the best lines in Latin misses the bigger picture
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518907/original/file-20230403-4850-nkisrp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=41%2C213%2C2440%2C2237&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Preparation of actors for a satyric drama, from the House of the Tragic Poet, Pompeii.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of my favourite Roman artefacts to show visiting school groups or beginner’s Latin classes is a floor mosaic from the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii. The mosaic depicts a chained dog accompanied by the Latin words, <em>CAVE CANEM</em> (“beware of the dog”). </p>
<p>The cute familiarity of the image never fails to generate a chuckle or two. But importantly, it provides me with an opening to explore more important issues with the students, from Roman social history to the intricacies of the Latin imperative (used for commands and entreaties, like “beware”!)</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518902/original/file-20230402-18-vqsrxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518902/original/file-20230402-18-vqsrxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518902/original/file-20230402-18-vqsrxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518902/original/file-20230402-18-vqsrxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518902/original/file-20230402-18-vqsrxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518902/original/file-20230402-18-vqsrxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518902/original/file-20230402-18-vqsrxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518902/original/file-20230402-18-vqsrxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cave Canem: mosaic at the House of the Tragic Poet.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Latin is perhaps most familiar today as the language of practical short-cuts (etc, e.g., i.e.) and quotable lines, beloved by creators of school mottos and political speechwriters alike. </p>
<p>Harry Mount and John Davie’s book, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/et-tu-brute-9781399400978/">Et tu, Brute? The Best Latin Lines Ever</a>, brings together many of Latin’s greatest hits, from “Fortune favours the brave” to “Who will guard the guards?” But collecting the lines is easy – the difficulty is trying to work out what they add up to.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Et tu, Brute? The Best Latin Lines Ever – Harry Mount and John Davie (Bloomsbury)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Mount and Davie take the easy way out. “The fundamental reason for reading Latin is because it’s the language of Western civilization,” they write. </p>
<p>I couldn’t disagree more. We should read Latin because it is fun, challenging, amusing, and exciting, not because it forms part of any putative “inheritance” of the West.</p>
<p>But for these authors, Latin exists within a very limited thought-world. Yes, the book contains some funerary inscriptions and graffiti, and the occasional early modern philosopher, but again and again the authors return to the poetry and prose of the late Republic and early imperial period, which have long been the staple of English public (read: private) school and university (especially Oxbridge) curricula.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that within these traditional boundaries, Mount and Davie know their stuff. We are treated to the poetry of Catullus, Horace and Propertius, the satires and epigrams of Juvenal and Martial, and the histories and biographies of Tacitus and Suetonius. </p>
<p>Cicero’s speeches are likewise combed for memorable lines, from the instantly recognisable <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/cui-bono"><em>Cui bono</em> (“Who benefits?”)</a> to his <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0021">invectives against Mark Antony</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-tacitus-annals-and-its-enduring-portrait-of-monarchical-power-107277">Guide to the classics: Tacitus' Annals and its enduring portrait of monarchical power</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The translations themselves are witty and evocative, but the contextual material is often weak or lacking. Catullus’s <a href="https://diotima-doctafemina.org/translations/latin/catullus-16/">Poem 16</a>, which comes billed as “the rudest poem in Latin”, features raw, confronting, sexually violent language. Yet there is no discussion of why Catullus uses such shocking obscenities or of the purposes of sexual invective in Latin.</p>
<p>The treatment of Ovid, most famous for his <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/100142.The_Art_of_Love">Art of Love</a>, is little better. While the authors acknowledge that his sexual advice – that young men should take advantage of drunk women and rape them – is “evil” and “wicked”, they also state that Ovid “wouldn’t last a second these days”, as if modern cancel culture is the problem, rather than the poet’s own words.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-ovids-metamorphoses-and-reading-rape-65316">Guide to the classics: Ovid's Metamorphoses and reading rape</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>I acknowledge that, as a university academic who thinks, writes, and teaches about the Romans on a daily basis, I am not the intended audience for this book. Instead, it is clearly aimed at the general reader with no prior knowledge of Latin and Roman history, or those with long-buried school Latin, eager to reacquaint themselves with the language. But I think these readers deserve better than what Mount and Davie have to offer.</p>
<h2>Glossing over women’s stories</h2>
<p>Women, in particular, come off badly in this book. This is admittedly, partly the result of the fact that most surviving Latin literature was written by men. But there is something decidedly uncomfortable about the parade of female lovers, goddesses, and Pompeiian sex workers offered here, which is not really alleviated by the inclusion of the famous <a href="https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/TabVindol291">letter from Vindolanda</a> in which an officer’s wife invites another woman to her birthday party.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Perpetua as depicted in the Euphrasian Basilica in Poreč, Croatia" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518994/original/file-20230403-28-14bsg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518994/original/file-20230403-28-14bsg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518994/original/file-20230403-28-14bsg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518994/original/file-20230403-28-14bsg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518994/original/file-20230403-28-14bsg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518994/original/file-20230403-28-14bsg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518994/original/file-20230403-28-14bsg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Perpetua as depicted in the Euphrasian Basilica in Poreč, Croatia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I missed texts like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Passion-of-Saints-Perpetua-and-Felicity">The Passion of Perpetua</a>, which contains the first-hand account of a young Christian woman from North Africa, written while awaiting execution at the imperial games in the early third century AD. One cannot but helped be moved by Perpetua’s account of her separation from her baby, whom she was still breastfeeding. </p>
<p>After being granted permission to keep her child with her, Perpetua wrote: “prison was immediately transformed into a palace for me, so that I preferred to be there than anywhere else” (<em>factus est mihi carcer subito praetorium, ut ibi mallem esse quam alicubi</em>). </p>
<p>The resonance of these heartfelt words only increases when Perpetua abandons her child, and her life, for her Christian faith.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518903/original/file-20230402-20-5dooep.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518903/original/file-20230402-20-5dooep.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518903/original/file-20230402-20-5dooep.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518903/original/file-20230402-20-5dooep.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518903/original/file-20230402-20-5dooep.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518903/original/file-20230402-20-5dooep.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1243&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518903/original/file-20230402-20-5dooep.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1243&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518903/original/file-20230402-20-5dooep.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1243&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The rise of Christianity and the entire course of Roman history after the early
second century is not well treated by Mount and Davie. Their account of Roman emperors comes to a sputtering halt with the reign of Domitian, erroneously credited with fighting against the Sarmatians “in modern Iran” – actually eastern Europe. A famous (and misleading) <a href="https://www.ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/volume1/chap3.htm">quotation from Edward Gibbon</a> about the age of the Antonines then suffices for the next hundred years or so. </p>
<p>The poetry, panegyric, and pilgrim’s tales of the vibrant world of Late Antiquity are all but absent. Had they been included we could have journeyed to Persia with the soldier-historian <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ammianus-Marcellinus">Ammianus Marcellinus</a> or to the Holy Land with the Christian woman <a href="https://www.ccel.org/m/mcclure/etheria/etheria.htm">Egeria</a>.</p>
<p>Most of Et tu, Brute? could have been written decades ago with nary a word being changed. Our understanding and appreciation of Latin and Roman culture has long moved on, for the better. <em>Caveat emptor</em> (“Let the buyer beware”).</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203137/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caillan Davenport has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. </span></em></p>
Collecting choice Latin lines is easy – the difficulty is trying to work out what they add up to. And women, in particular, come off badly in this collection of Latin’s greatest hits.
Caillan Davenport, Associate Professor of Classics and Head of the Centre for Classical Studies, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/151784
2020-12-10T16:47:44Z
2020-12-10T16:47:44Z
Airbnb going public is a maverick move
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374208/original/file-20201210-13-1m6zc9u.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C1137%2C654&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">AirBNB IPO share price as at December 10, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In early 2020, Airbnb’s management announced that to address the slowing growth in sales, it wanted to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/deniselyohn/2020/11/10/how-airbnb-survived-the-pandemic--and-how-you-can-too/">scale back ancillary activities</a> and focus on the company’s core strength of mid-range and budget short-term rentals. This was just before COVID-19 stopped the travel and leisure industry in its tracks.</p>
<p>Against such a bleak backdrop, it was a surprise when the company’s CEO Brian Chesky announced that the online holiday rental company would go public in <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/cf865bb6-daea-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17">December 2020</a> – and it did just that on December 10. </p>
<p>Shares were originally priced from US$45-US$50 (£34-£38) per share. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/07/airbnb-hikes-share-pricing-to-up-to-60-before-ipo-on-thursday">This went up</a> to US$55-US$60 the day before listing. By the time of the listing, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/business/airbnb-ipo-price.html">final share price</a> was US$68. The Initial Public Offering (IPO) is expected to bring in fresh cash for the business of up to US$3 billion, and if successful, it will increase the value of <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/airbnb-sets-ipo-terms-sending-valuation-as-high-as-35-billion-11606835610">Airbnb close to US$42 billion</a>. </p>
<p>According to details filed by Airbnb with the <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1559720/000119312520294801/d81668ds1.htm">US Securities and Exchange Commission</a>, the plan is for the business to raise additional capital for funding future growth. </p>
<p>Typically businesses prefer to launch IPOs during a phase of sustained economic growth to gain advantage of the confidence in the market. They avoid IPOs during economic slumps and catastrophic events: like World War I and II, the great recession or a pandemic. Going by traditional corporate finance practice standards, <a href="https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/audit-assurance/ipo-centre/global-ipo-watch.html">Airbnb’s decision to go public</a> was nothing less than maverick. And its timing has attracted extraordinary attention.</p>
<h2>Airbnb’s IPO decision in a sea of business gloom</h2>
<p>But Airbnb had some strategic advantages, the first being its tech-based business model. Unlike other leisure and holiday businesses – such as hotels and airlines – Airbnb does not need to spend large amounts of money on the cost associated with the upkeep of its fixed assets. Instead, Airbnb can successfully pass on the risk of such rigid payment obligations to its “hosts” – the property owners. It then retains the profitable parts of the business for itself with enough agility to face systematic disruptions like Covid-19. </p>
<p>The company’s second advantage is that it has become a well known name in the word of travel, building a strong brand and a loyal customer base. If we compare the sales in the first nine months of the year for 2019 and 2020, everyone suffered a drop, but the decrease was least (in percentage terms) for <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a82ad334-ed34-48bb-82e1-9e2e57c7b9c6">Airbnb</a> among all its close rivals like booking.com and Expedia. </p>
<p>In addition to its competitive status, ongoing <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d47d875d-bf7f-4527-a879-a3f33761c78f">market changes</a> also created confidence for Airbnb’s IPO. Towards the end of 2020, markets across the world started reviving. South-East Asian, African and Latin American <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/2020/11/are-economics-driving-countries-to-reopen-to-tourists-coronavirus/">travel destinations reopened for business </a>, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/13/covid-vaccines-in-the-uk-who-is-in-charge-and-what-is-the-plan">vaccines for COVID-19</a> were announced. This bolstered confidence and hope for a return of “business as usual” and reflected in the immediate increase in the valuation of shares among the travel industry. The shares of Easyjet and Jet2 went up by more than 40%. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Nurse holding COVID_19 vaccine bottle" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373976/original/file-20201209-19-1yowpya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373976/original/file-20201209-19-1yowpya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373976/original/file-20201209-19-1yowpya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373976/original/file-20201209-19-1yowpya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373976/original/file-20201209-19-1yowpya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373976/original/file-20201209-19-1yowpya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373976/original/file-20201209-19-1yowpya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">COVID-19 vaccine hopes bolstered confidence in the markets.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shuttershock</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Airbnb also managed to quieten its critics and avoid aggravating local housing regulators. However, adverse local regulatory reactions isn’t specific to Airbnb. Amazon, Facebook and Uber have all had their own stories. Given the combined bargaining power of the Silicon Valley giants, there are limited chances that any worldwide systematic regulatory change will happen in the near future. </p>
<h2>COVID-19 and Airbnb</h2>
<p>The travel and leisure industry in the UK were the main casualties of the pandemic. Airlines, hotels and holiday homes saw their revenue streams switched off almost overnight. The travel industry had already bid farewell to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53868447">STA Travel</a>, an agency for cheap flights. The latest <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/leisureandtourism">UK travel statistics</a> indicate that the effect of the pandemic on the travel industry may result in further business collapses. The <a href="https://www.unwto.org/news/covid-19-international-tourist-numbers-could-fall-60-80-in-2020#:%7E:text=article%20on%20linkedin-,International%20Tourist%20Numbers%20Could%20Fall,80%25%20in%202020%2C%20UNWTO%20Reports&text=The%20COVID%2D19%20pandemic%20has,Tourism%20Organization%20(UNWTO)%20shows.">UN World Tourism Organization</a> (UNWTO) estimates that the travel and tourism sector has lost export revenues to the tune of US$910 billion to US$1.2 trillion. </p>
<p>As Airbnb enabled peer-to-peer consumption of travel accommodation or <a href="https://www.airbnb.co.uk/">experiences</a>, it also suffered its fair share of financial stress. In May 2020, it decided to sack 1,900 people from their jobs – almost a quarter of its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-under-scrutiny-for-laying-off-1900-employees-2020-7?r=US&IR=T">workforce</a> and its market valuation fell from US$31 billion in 2017 to US$18 billion in April 2020. But with a market value that touched <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d5aa43db-1aee-472f-abff-9ee315aa2e0c">US$60 billion</a>, minutes after trading begin on December 10, it seems to be poised for some rapid growth.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Middle-aged man in brown t-shirt making hand gesture." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374263/original/file-20201210-21-1nspi5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374263/original/file-20201210-21-1nspi5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374263/original/file-20201210-21-1nspi5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374263/original/file-20201210-21-1nspi5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374263/original/file-20201210-21-1nspi5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374263/original/file-20201210-21-1nspi5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374263/original/file-20201210-21-1nspi5i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bullish approach: Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, February 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hope for “normal”</h2>
<p>The travel and tourism industry is hopeful for a much faster recovery than other market segments. There are two reasons for this: first, there is a psychological demand for travel and holidays after a very long lockdown.</p>
<p>Second, the availability of cash. A significant part of the working population saved a large portion of their income by not spending on commuting and leisure costs. </p>
<p>The Airbnb IPO seems to be boldly positioned right at the expected beginning of the recovery in Europe and the improving market conditions encouraged last minute share issue price. </p>
<p>This successful IPO have brought in the required cash to feed its relentless growth, but more than that, it has proved the quality of its strategic leadership. It has also establish its dominant position in the online leisure and travel business for years to come, further boosting its competitive advantage. Of course, we must remember that these are just predictions and only time will tell.</p>
<p>For the markets in general, this IPO is a watershed movement that signifies the transformation towards an economic recovery based on hope for a return of “normal” life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151784/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Airbnb is taking a very bold step by issuing a multi billion dollar IPO during a global economic slowdown – something that was unthinkable a few years ago.
Olga Cam, Lecturer in Accounting, University of Sheffield
Mohammad Rajjaque, Teaching Associate in Accounting and Finance, University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/138900
2020-05-21T12:20:03Z
2020-05-21T12:20:03Z
The Scripps spelling bee is off this year, but the controversy over including foreign words is still on
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336091/original/file-20200519-152298-ty7qju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=145%2C50%2C4041%2C2686&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Co-champions celebrate at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in National Harbor, Maryland, on May 31, 2019. The winning spellers made history with eight co-champions, most ever in spelling event's history.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/co-champions-sohum-sukhatankar-of-dallas-texas-saketh-news-photo/1152757579?adppopup=true">Alex Wong/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a normal year, millions of Americans would be following closely this week as preteens showcase their knowledge of words most of us have never heard of. </p>
<p>The contestants and their families may be devastated by the cancellation of the <a href="http://spellingbee.com/">Scripps National Spelling Bee</a>. As a <a href="http://huc.edu/directory/sarah-bunin-benor">linguist</a> who studies <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/263681">languages</a> that <a href="https://becomingfrum.weebly.com/">draw</a> from multiple <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/mandel/projects/hebrewatcamp.html">sources</a>, I’m disappointed our country is missing its annual lesson in English linguistics.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/shalini-shankar/beeline/9780465094523/">social and professional benefits</a> of spelling bees are hard to ignore. The participants, including many from immigrant families, develop skills of grit and performance, and they and their parents form new social networks. An entire industry has emerged surrounding the preparation of elite contestants.</p>
<p>But it’s also worth recognizing spelling bees’ contributions to the public’s awareness of world languages. Even if the acceptable spellings of many international words are debatable, their presence highlights the multicultural past and present of the English tongue.</p>
<p>In a millennium of global expeditions and conquests, English has cast its net in diverse linguistic habitats. It has captured words from many languages, often for concepts not previously expressed in English. Linguists call these words “<a href="https://www.ruf.rice.edu/%7Ekemmer/Words/loanwords.html">loanwords</a>,” which does not mean English eventually returns them.</p>
<h2>English loanwords</h2>
<p>Many loanwords have been part of English for centuries and are not considered foreign at all. Unless they’ve studied linguistics, most people would be surprised to learn that “skirt” entered English from Old Norse, “beef” from French and “expensive” from Latin.</p>
<p>With more recent loanwords, English speakers sense their language of origin but still see them as part of English. This is especially common in the domains of <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Language-of-Food/">cuisine</a>, as with “jambalaya” (from Louisiana French, originally Provençal), natural phenomena like “tsunami” (Japanese) and specialized terminology such as “fortissimo” (Italian) in music. </p>
<p>Although there is no English language academy that makes official rulings, the spellings of such loanwords are standardized, as they are frequently used in English and have been for many years. Nobody would question their inclusion in the spelling bee.</p>
<p>Most English loanwords borrow from languages that, like English, use the <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/e/borrowed-words/">Latin alphabet</a>. These words usually maintain their original spellings, such as “schadenfreude” (German: pleasure derived from another’s misfortune) and “coup d’état” (French: violent overthrow of a government). </p>
<p>Other examples, which showed up in the <a href="https://spellingbee.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Multiple%20Champs%20declared%20for%202019%20Scripps%20National%20Spelling%20Bee%205-31-19.pdf">2019 national spelling bee</a>, include “tjaele” (Swedish: frozen ground), “imbirussú” (Portuguese: a South American tree) and “geeldikkop” (Afrikaans: a disease among southern African sheep). Some viewers might wonder if words like these should be included in the bee, but nobody would question their spellings.</p>
<p>However, English – and therefore spelling bees – also includes many words from <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/where-do-spelling-bee-words-come-from/">languages</a> not historically written in Latin characters. Sometimes the English spellings of these words adhere to conventionalized phonetic transliteration. </p>
<p>Examples include “makimono” (Japanese: a horizontal ornamental scroll), “namaz” (Persian: Islamic prayer) and “teledu” (Malay: a Javanese skunk-like animal). In other cases, many possible transliterations are used within English, even if the dictionary provides only one spelling. Is it “falafel” or “felafel”? “Pad thai” or “phad thai”?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlHPxDsLQxg">Last year’s competition</a> featured several such ambiguous loanwords, including “chaebol,” which could be “jaebeol” (Korean: a family-controlled industrial conglomerate) and “kooletah,” which could be “kuleta” (Greenlandic Aleut: a caribou-skin coat). In fact, four of the five most <a href="https://twitter.com/FiveThirtyEight/status/1133783192861847553/photo/1">difficult</a> languages of origin in spelling bees are written in non-Latin letters.</p>
<h2>Wrangling over loanwords</h2>
<p>Of course, difficulty should not disqualify a word from being included in spelling bees. But such loanwords have generated <a href="https://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/05/knaidel-v-kneydl-debating-the-winning-spelling-bee-word/">controversy</a> in recent years, especially from <a href="https://thewordmavens.wordpress.com/2018/09/25/spelling-bee-mishegoss-yiddish-for-craziness/">word mavens</a> in the Jewish community upset about the spellings of the bee’s many <a href="https://forward.com/news/national/425240/yiddishkeit-scipps-spelling-bee-yiddish-jewish-words/">words from Hebrew and Yiddish</a>. </p>
<p>Some Hebrew and Yiddish sounds have multiple possible transliterations, and Jews of different backgrounds have different spelling preferences. To represent this diversity, when I moderate Hebrew and Yiddish entries in the crowdsourced <a href="https://jel.jewish-languages.org/">Jewish English Lexicon</a>, I list several spellings – sometimes more than a dozen.</p>
<p>A Hebrew example is “keriah” (Jewish ceremonial garment rending), spelled “correctly” by 13-year-old Rishik Gandhasri, one of the eight champions in 2019. This word has <a href="https://jel.jewish-languages.org/words/1473">many attested spellings</a>, including “kria,” “kriyah” and “qeri’ah.” “Kriah,” according to Google, is the most common spelling in English. But the E.W. Scripps Company, which has run the bee since 1941, allows only “keriah.” Why? Because that’s the spelling espoused by Merriam-Webster, <a href="http://spellingbee.com/sites/default/files/inline-files/Contest_Rules_of_the_2018_Scripps_National_Spelling_Bee.pdf">Scripps’ authoritative dictionary</a>. </p>
<p>Gandhasri advanced to another round in the bee with the Yiddish-origin word “yiddishkeit” (Jewishness). In a <a href="http://www.yiddishwit.com/transliteration.html">standard system</a> for transliterating Yiddish words, it’s spelled “yidishkayt.” However, a Yiddish culture organization in Los Angeles spells it “Yiddishkayt.” These spellings represent different ideologies regarding Yiddish and its relationship to German. And many who use them believe wholeheartedly that only their spelling is correct.</p>
<p>In the 2013 bee, the winning word was also from Yiddish: “knaidel” (Passover dumpling). I <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/culture/229899/linguists-take-knaidel-kneydl-controversy/">wrote</a> then that, if I had been a contestant: “I would have given 10 possible spellings, explained what various spellings indicate about the people who write them and then protested the English spelling bee’s use of loanwords from a language that does not use Latin script. Clearly, I would have lost.” </p>
<h2>Benefits of a growing lexicon</h2>
<p>Since then, I have recognized the benefits of including such loanwords. First, while contestants must learn the spelling and transliteration conventions of dozens of languages, the major skill tested is who can memorize more of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/31/us/spellpundit-scripps-spelling-bee.html">472,000 words</a> in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. The competition emphasizes this skill by including loanwords without standardized English spellings.</p>
<p>Second, the ubiquity of loanwords expands Americans’ awareness of new cultural domains. The broad media coverage of recent spelling bees has introduced Americans to a Brazilian drum, “atabaque” (from Portuguese, influenced by Arabic), a Norse merman, “marmennill” (from Icelandic) and a Polynesian chief or noble, “alii” (from Hawaiian).</p>
<p>Even when the dictionary’s one accepted spelling is debatable, members of immigrant, indigenous and religious groups <a href="https://www.kveller.com/this-yiddish-word-kicked-off-the-scripps-national-spelling-bee-finals/">are generally proud</a> when spelling bees feature their community’s language in such a public way. </p>
<p>Although 2020 news headlines won’t feature 13-year-olds’ spelling feats, we can still marvel, not only at the accomplishments of our youth, but also at the richness of the English lexicon. Whether loanwords are from Icelandic, Korean or Hebrew, they remind us of the layered history of our language and the increasingly interconnected nature of our world.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re too busy to read everything. We get it. That’s why we’ve got a weekly newsletter.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybusy">Sign up for good Sunday reading.</a> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Bunin Benor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Scripps National Spelling Bee highlights the richness of the English lexicon by picking some tough entries with foreign roots.
Sarah Bunin Benor, Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Linguistics, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129351
2020-03-02T19:03:51Z
2020-03-02T19:03:51Z
Guide to the classics: Petronius’s Satyricon – sex, satire and naughty boys
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315837/original/file-20200218-10995-131jrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6040%2C3586&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Musée d'Orsay</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Satyricon by Petronius is an unusual surviving text from the ancient world. It is not a work of history, nor a work of soaring epic poetry like Homer’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-homers-iliad-80968">Iliad</a> or Virgil’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-virgils-aeneid-85459">Aeneid</a>, and for various reasons it is hard to get a handle on. </p>
<p>Its contents are pretty grubby because it is about lowlifes and lowlife behaviour. It depicts petty theft, casual violence, opportunistic sex, prostitution, vulgar gluttony, crass displays of wealth by the most ridiculous social climber and gross disrespect for a range of gods, goddesses and hallowed religious rituals, like funerals and proper treatment of the dead. All the good sleazy stuff for when you’re in the mood for that sort of thing.</p>
<p>Rather than a work about heroes or kings or queens or uplifting examples of how to live a virtuous life, the Satyricon is almost a how-to manual for the opposite.</p>
<p>It is the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/au/academic/subjects/classical-studies/classical-literature/petronius-poet-verse-and-literary-tradition-satyricon?format=HB&isbn=9780521592314">earliest surviving novel</a> in Latin literature, but it is not even close to being intact. We appear to have bits of three books out of an original 16 or possibly more. So we run into problems trying to understand what the plot of the whole work might have been and whether the bits that survive are representative of it. </p>
<p>As far as we can tell, it’s a tale about the misadventures and love triangle of three young men – the narrator Encolpius, Ascyltus and the younger Gitōn.</p>
<p>They all behave disreputably, all know hunger and poverty, all hurt people, and all get hurt in return. </p>
<p>Encolpius arguably suffers the most when he upsets <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priapus">Priapus</a>, a god of fertility, who renders him impotent. Priapus is normally represented in Roman art sporting an enormous, erect phallus – even weighing it in one famous example. He is a minor deity in comparison to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_(mythology)">Jupiter</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules">Hercules</a>, but he has one outstanding trait, which means a great deal to the “heroes” of this novel. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308570/original/file-20200106-11946-hc2un.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308570/original/file-20200106-11946-hc2un.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308570/original/file-20200106-11946-hc2un.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308570/original/file-20200106-11946-hc2un.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308570/original/file-20200106-11946-hc2un.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308570/original/file-20200106-11946-hc2un.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308570/original/file-20200106-11946-hc2un.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308570/original/file-20200106-11946-hc2un.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fresco of Priapus, Casa dei Vettii, Pompeii, depicted weighing his enormous erect penis against a bag of gold.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Priapus deprives Encolpius of his virility, he strikes at the core of Encolpius’s identity, causing him much distress and forcing him in panic to seek a succession of absurd remedies. </p>
<p>The main characters are not good boys. They are jealous, perpetually randy, violent, unfaithful and capricious. They separate and come back together. They lack depth. And they meet a series of characters who complement their deficiencies with flaws of their own.</p>
<p>They look for food, shelter, sex and sexual restoration. Charlatans abound. Everyone is selfish and untrustworthy. Religion is flouted and abused, even though it plainly has power. </p>
<p>The attitude to religion seems to be “whatever works”, but no one is exactly sure what works, so they indulge themselves in equal amounts of devotion and derision – with predictable results.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-erotic-art-of-ancient-greece-and-rome-87859">Friday essay: the erotic art of Ancient Greece and Rome</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Our youths seem to be travelling between locations around the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/arts/design/24pomp.html">Bay of Naples</a> – a notorious region of excess and extravagance, heavily influenced by Greek culture and less constrained by traditional Roman discipline than other parts of Italy. </p>
<p>There is little certainty about this, as with so many features of the tale, but the easy movement between city dives and country villas makes sense in this region.</p>
<h2>The banquet of Trimalchio</h2>
<p>The most outrageous character they run across is the nouveau-riche pretender Trimalchio, whom they meet through an acquaintance, Eumolpus, who is said to be a poet but is more like a sleaze with intellectual pretensions. </p>
<p>Together they end up at a sumptuous feast at Trimalchio’s villa – the famous Cena Trimalchionis or “Banquet of Trimalchio”. </p>
<p>The feast is a riot of nonsense. Trimalchio, an ex-slave who has bought his freedom, tries to prove he is a man of culture as well as wealth like his free-born counterparts in neighbouring villas and regions. In doing so, of course, he proves only that he completely lacks class or sophistication of any kind and emerges as a self-loving ignoramus. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315838/original/file-20200218-11005-oz67yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315838/original/file-20200218-11005-oz67yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315838/original/file-20200218-11005-oz67yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315838/original/file-20200218-11005-oz67yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315838/original/file-20200218-11005-oz67yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315838/original/file-20200218-11005-oz67yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315838/original/file-20200218-11005-oz67yd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The feast is ‘a riot of nonsense’, illustrated here by Norman Lindsay.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Project Gutenberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is way too much food, especially the meats and sweets. The dishes are too exotic and difficult, especially the tiny birds. They are served in ostentatiously absurd ways by a bizarre collection of slaves and other functionaries. The guests grab greedily and unappreciatively, upsetting plates, cups and each other. The talk is gross and unedifying. </p>
<p>Trimalchio ends up inviting his cronies to a rehearsal of his funeral, which he has planned meticulously on the model of a noble’s or emperor’s funeral. He fails to see how far he falls short. Clothes, and other props, do not make the man.</p>
<p>But there is more to the feast than meets the eye. The vulgarity of the subject matter is especially memorable because it is conveyed by a master satirist or comic genius. </p>
<p>Trimalchio is described with great attention to detail and inventiveness, and with a certain sympathy rather than vindictiveness. Trimalchio and his hangers-on are acquainted with high literature, though they mangle it terribly, sometimes speaking in vulgar Latin and in language rendered comic by its malapropisms and other features. The writer is a virtuoso for pulling off these effects so cleverly.</p>
<h2>A comic approach</h2>
<p>The key to interpretation is that the text is a satire, as its name implies. It is inspired by the deeds of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyr">satyrs</a>: lecherous, half-human creatures of myth, obsessed with sex. They were symbols of the outrageous, the destabilising and the violent. </p>
<p>The youths of our tale are plainly modelled on them. And the text is comic in approach, designed for a festival atmosphere, when it’s okay to release the irrational, the absurd and the bottled-up frustrations that go along with daily commitment to civilised straightness.</p>
<p>The comic silliness of it all is important to consider when pondering the author and purpose of the work. The author, according to the name that has survived with the text, was Titus Petronius Arbiter. </p>
<p>He is generally identified with the prominent courtier of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero">Nero</a>, the senator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petronius">Gaius Petronius</a>, who was forced to commit suicide in AD 66 for his part in a conspiracy against the emperor. In a famous passage (<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Annals_(Tacitus)/Book_16">Annals 16.17-20</a>), Tacitus says Nero looked to this man as his “arbiter of elegance”, as though his judgment of culture and pleasure was admired. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mythbusting-ancient-rome-the-emperor-nero-65797">Mythbusting Ancient Rome – the emperor Nero</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This identification between the author of the Satyricon and the Petronius of Tacitus might be right. Roman nobles were highly educated in literature and philosophy. Intellectual attainment was one of the myriad ways they competed with one another for social pre-eminence. Such a man might well have been capable of the literary virtuosity and wit that is on display in the text as we have it. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316295/original/file-20200220-10995-y1b8kv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316295/original/file-20200220-10995-y1b8kv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316295/original/file-20200220-10995-y1b8kv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316295/original/file-20200220-10995-y1b8kv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316295/original/file-20200220-10995-y1b8kv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316295/original/file-20200220-10995-y1b8kv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316295/original/file-20200220-10995-y1b8kv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Martin Potter as Encolpio in Fellini’s 1969 film adaptation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What is slightly worrying about this identification, however, is that Tacitus gives an appreciative portrayal of a man who sends up and resists a tyrant. Nero was certainly this, as the paranoia and murders of his reign indicate. Yet he was also a great sponsor of culture, especially literature and drama. </p>
<p>Even if the identifications with Tacitus’s Petronius and the reign of Nero are correct, we don’t need to adopt Tacitus’s tone and perspective. The Satyricon does not have to be a work with subversive intent against Nero, and Nero does not have to be read into the story in place of Trimalchio. Petronius does not have to be a social critic who was appalled by the corruption and depravity of Nero’s court. </p>
<p>It’s much more fun if he wasn’t any of these things in this work, but was instead a man who was excellent at satire in a spirit that was fundamentally light and frivolous.</p>
<p><em>Suggested translations: J.P. Sullivan, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2723780-the-satyricon-and-the-fragments">The Satyricon and the Fragments</a>, translated with an introduction by J.P. Sullivan, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965. P.G. Walsh, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/168214.The_Satyricon">Petronius: The Satyricon</a>, translated with an introduction and explanatory notes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129351/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Stevenson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The oldest surviving novel in Latin literature, Satyricon follows three young men on their misadventures and homosexual love triangle.
Tom Stevenson, Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient History, UQ, The University of Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/127077
2019-11-25T13:36:20Z
2019-11-25T13:36:20Z
Quid pro quo: the origins of the Latin term and how its uses evolved in English
<p>Amid the drama of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/impeachment-two-quotes-that-defined-the-first-day-of-public-hearings-126900">impeachment investigation</a> into US President Donald Trump that is gripping Capitol Hill in Washington, the term <em>quid pro quo</em> has taken centre stage. </p>
<p>The investigation is trying to determine whether Trump demanded Ukraine open an investigation into Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, before its President Volodymr Zelenskiy would be invited to the White House. In his opening statement on November 20 in a series of impeachment hearings, the US ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2019/nov/20/trump-impeachment-there-was-a-quid-pro-quo-in-ukraine-scandal-says-key-witness-video">said</a>: “Was there a <em>quid pro quo</em>? … With regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes.” </p>
<p>A popular online legal dictionary <a href="https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/quid+pro+quo">defines the Latin phrase as</a>: “The mutual consideration that passes between two parties to a contractual agreement, thereby rendering the agreement valid and binding.”</p>
<p>In Latin, the phrase means literally “what for what”, or “something for something” (<em>quid</em> being short for <em>aliquid</em>, or “something”).</p>
<p>One issue with <em>quid pro quo</em> is that the sense in which the phrase is used nowadays is subtly different from its original use. The invaluable online version of the <a href="https://www.oed.com/">Oxford English Dictionary (OED)</a> states its first recorded use in English is from about 1535, in a translation of a work about Christian confession by the humanist writer Erasmus. There it is explained as “one thynge for another”. The context here was medical: the Erasmian text where it was first found describes it as a proverb used among “poticaries and phisions” (chemists and doctors in modern terms) and it is used with reference to medicines. </p>
<p>Let’s say you have trouble sleeping and can’t get your usual Somnotab, but the pharmacist has another sleeping tablet, Zizzoprene. Taking Zizzoprene instead of Somnotab would be a <em>quid pro quo</em> in the strict sense, something which can be readily exchanged for another. This sense didn’t bed into English long term, and the last reference to this meaning in the Oxford English Dictionary Online is from 1804. </p>
<p>It wasn’t long, though, before the sense we generally know, “something in return for something else” came in – OED says it is first mentioned in a legal document from 1560, also listed in the OED. It has kept this sense ever since. Another sense for the phrase, “someone pretending to be somebody they are not”, apparently died out before 1700. But both ideas would be expressed in Latin by <em>quid pro quo</em> – or so scholars think. The phrase doesn’t occur in a <a href="https://latin.packhum.org/">huge corpus</a> of classical Latin texts collated by Packhard Humanities Institute, so we can’t truly be sure if it was ever actually used in Latin.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302934/original/file-20191121-502-jgqgdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302934/original/file-20191121-502-jgqgdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302934/original/file-20191121-502-jgqgdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302934/original/file-20191121-502-jgqgdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302934/original/file-20191121-502-jgqgdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302934/original/file-20191121-502-jgqgdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302934/original/file-20191121-502-jgqgdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Quid pro quo: not a common Latin phrase.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/1447852784?src=015bf030-1d9f-4922-a801-c7b67294f257-1-14&size=medium_jpg">Sharaf Maksumov/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Common parlance</h2>
<p>The fact that a phrase from another language isn’t accompanied by an immediate translation should suggest that everyone understands it and that it is now firmly part of the language. My own research and others’ in the forthcoming <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-language-contact-9780199945092?cc=gb&lang=en&">Oxford Handbook of Language Contact</a>, which I edited, suggests that this is a good sign that it has therefore been fully “nativised”. But that should not be taken for granted. </p>
<p>Some phrases are used so often that people now neither know nor care what the original form was (AD is a good example, so are AM and PM). Others are written down but are hardly used in speech except when people are being especially pretentious or stiff: ie and eg (which often get confused) are examples of this. Some, such as percent and et cetera, will probably be used in English till the crack of doom.</p>
<p>But there are others which have dropped out of use or which remain as mere abbreviations. Sometimes this is the result of convenience: <em>nem. con.</em> is easier to put at the end of a minute in formal records than <em>nemine contradicente,</em> “with nobody speaking against it”, a phrase with four times as many syllables as its abbreviated form. </p>
<p>Even the Oxford English Dictionary is not immune from assuming that Latin abbreviations have self-evident meanings. Whole books have been produced explaining <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/A_Guide_to_the_Oxford_English_Dictionary.html?id=DHoYAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">how to use</a> the second edition of 1989, which includes frequent Latin abbreviations which any user needs to know. For example, <em>circa</em> for approximately and <em>ante</em> for before are written as single letters, c and a, immediately before dates, such as c1200 (around 1200). So is s.v. for <em>sub verbo</em> “under the word” – in other words, look for the word you seek under the dictionary entry for X. </p>
<h2>Made up Latin</h2>
<p>And some Latin phrases are tenacious in English without actually being old or even genuine. <em>Annus mirabilis</em> was minted in 1667 by the poet John Dryden to <a href="https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/john-dryden-annus-mirabilis-1666">describe the previous year</a>, while its opposite, <em>annus horribilis</em>, was originally coined in The Guardian in 1985 to describe <a href="https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/annus-horribilis.html">some of the events of 1968</a>. </p>
<p>There is also the matter of Procol Harum, Bach-influenced proto-prog rockers from the 1960s. Does their name mean, as rock enthusiasts have sometimes assumed, “beyond these things”? Julius Caesar wouldn’t have liked it. <em>Procul</em> (note the spelling) means “far away”, but if it were correct Latin it would need to be <em>procul his</em> (<em>harum</em> means “of these” with nouns that are feminine). So the correct Latin for the meaning they wanted would be, <em>procul his rebus</em> – which sounds to and English-speaking person more like an instruction to a medieval executioner than an attempt at showing that you are “far out”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127077/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony Grant does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The history of the Latin phrase at the centre of the impeachment investigation into Donald Trump.
Anthony Grant, Professor of Historical Linguistics and Language, Edge Hill University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/124861
2019-10-29T12:58:32Z
2019-10-29T12:58:32Z
Before Martin Luther, there was Erasmus – a Dutch theologian who paved the way for the Protestant Reformation
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298761/original/file-20191025-173558-1tmxpep.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch humanist and theologian.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Quentin_Massys-_Erasmus_of_Rotterdam.JPG">Quentin Matsys </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Martin Luther, a German theologian, is often credited with starting the Protestant Reformation. When he nailed his 95 Theses onto the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany on Oct. 31, 1517, dramatically demanding an end to church corruption, he <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/protestantism-after-500-years-9780190264796?q=%22remembering%20the%20reformation%22&lang=en&cc=us#">split Christianity</a> into Catholicism and Protestantism. </p>
<p>Luther’s disruptive act did not, however, emerge out of nowhere. The Reformation <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/erasmus-the-reformer/oclc/247822964&referer=brief_results">could not have happened</a> without Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch humanist and theologian. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268033873/transforming-work/">scholar of medieval Christianity</a>, I have noticed that Erasmus does not get much attention in conversations on the Reformation. And yet, in his own time, when Christianity was facing many controversies, he was accused of paving the way for Martin Luther and even of being a heretic. His contemporaries charged him with “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9780802059765">laying the egg that Luther hatched</a>.” </p>
<h2>Who was Erasmus?</h2>
<p>Born in A.D. 1467, about 20 years before Luther, Erasmus grew up in the Netherlands. The world of his youth, like that of Martin Luther’s, was almost entirely defined by medieval Christianity. Educated by monks, Erasmus joined the religious life. He studied Christian theology at the University of Paris and followed this interest even after he left the university.</p>
<p>At the same time, <a href="https://utorontopress.com/ca/literary-and-educational-writings-1-and-2-2">Erasmus was greatly inspired by the classics</a>. For Erasmus, ancient Greek and Roman authors – while technically pagan – were “the very fountain-head” of “almost all knowledge.” </p>
<p>Because of his love of the ancients, he is <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/From_humanism_to_the_humanities.html?id=VGPuAAAAMAAJ">often called a Renaissance humanist</a>, or, more appropriately, a Christian humanist. At a time when training in Greek and Latin was highly valued, Erasmus’ remarkable abilities made him much sought after. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298998/original/file-20191028-113991-utgh2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298998/original/file-20191028-113991-utgh2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298998/original/file-20191028-113991-utgh2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298998/original/file-20191028-113991-utgh2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298998/original/file-20191028-113991-utgh2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298998/original/file-20191028-113991-utgh2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298998/original/file-20191028-113991-utgh2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298998/original/file-20191028-113991-utgh2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hans Holbein’s portrait of Erasmus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/rl/original/DP164857.jpg">Robert Lehman Collection, 1975</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With the support of wealthy patrons, he traveled around Europe, teaching at universities, writing books and meeting many prominent people. In England, he formed a close, intellectual friendship with the English author and fellow humanist <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/286334/utopia-by-thomas-more/">Thomas More</a>, whose book “Utopia” was about an imaginary society.</p>
<p>Together with More, Erasmus helped launch the career of one of the greatest artists of the 16th century, Hans Holbein, who <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/459080">painted</a> both of their portraits. Erasmus’ portrait, along with many other masterpieces by Holbein, is now held at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. </p>
<h2>Erasmus paves way for Luther</h2>
<p>Luther famously used the printing press to publish polemical tracts that attacked the church and called for changes. The rapid and broad distribution of his ideas accelerated the Reformation. </p>
<p>It was Erasmus, however, who provided a model for Luther in how to take advantage of this new technology, how to use print as “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/printing-press-as-an-agent-of-change/7DC19878AB937940DE13075FE839BDBA">an agent of change</a>.” </p>
<p>Erasmus began publishing his books widely beginning in 1500, about 50 years after the first printed books appeared in Germany. He helped create an audience for Luther’s writings by popularizing Christian topics, such as how to be a good Christian and how to interpret the Bible. <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691165691/erasmus-man-of-letters">Many of his books were best-sellers</a> during his lifetime. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298762/original/file-20191025-173548-1caw34k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298762/original/file-20191025-173548-1caw34k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298762/original/file-20191025-173548-1caw34k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298762/original/file-20191025-173548-1caw34k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298762/original/file-20191025-173548-1caw34k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298762/original/file-20191025-173548-1caw34k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298762/original/file-20191025-173548-1caw34k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luther95theses.jpg">Ferdinand Pauwels</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Erasmus also prepared the way for one of Luther’s most radical ideas: that the Bible belongs to everyone, including common people. Luther translated the Bible into German in 1534 so that everyone could read it for themselves.</p>
<p>This idea can be found in Erasmus’ guide to reading the Latin Bible, “Paraclesis,” which he published in 1516 in Latin. Here he <a href="https://utorontopress.com/ca/the-new-testament-scholarship-of-erasmus-2">vividly describes</a> his own dream of the future, that common people would use the Bible in their everyday lives. </p>
<p>“I would to God the plowman would sing a text of scripture at his plow and that the weaver at his loom would drive away the tediousness of time with it,” he wrote.</p>
<h2>Not a supporter of radical change</h2>
<p>Although Erasmus was sympathetic to Luther’s critique of church corruption, he wasn’t ready for the kind of radical changes that Luther demanded.</p>
<p>Erasmus wanted a broad audience for his books, but he wrote in Latin, the official language of the church. Latin was a language that only a small number of educated people, typically priests and the nobility, could read. </p>
<p>Erasmus had criticized the church for many of the same problems that Luther later attacked. In one of his most famous books, The “Praise of Folly,” he <a href="https://www.bartleby.com/library/prose/1914.html">mocked priests</a> who didn’t read the Bible. He also attacked the church’s use of indulgences – when the church took money from people, granting them relief from punishment for their sins in purgatory – as a sign of the church’s greed. </p>
<p>When Luther started getting into trouble with church authorities, Erasmus defended him and wrote him letters of support. <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Erasmus_Reader.html?id=kBaNBgAAQBAJ">He thought</a> Luther’s voice should be heard. </p>
<p>But he did not defend all of Luther’s teachings. Some, he felt, were too divisive. For example, Luther preached that <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/iustitia-dei/B793BE71FC1887876C09E73769B3AF98">people are saved</a> only by faith in God and not by good deeds. Erasmus did not agree, and he did not want the church to split over these debates. </p>
<p>Throughout his life, Erasmus forged his own approach to Christianity: knowing Christ by reading the Bible. He called his approach the “<a href="https://www-worldcat-org.colorado.idm.oclc.org/title/erasmus/oclc/614381485&referer=brief_results">Philosophia Christi</a>,” or the philosophy of Christ. He thought that learning about Jesus’ life and teachings would <a href="https://utorontopress.com/ca/literary-and-educational-writings-5-and-6-2">strengthen people’s Christian faith</a> and teach them how to be good.</p>
<p>Erasmus’ ability to defend different points of view, the church’s and Luther’s, seems to have been particular to him. He wanted concord and peace within the church. Scholar Christine Christ von-Wedel <a href="https://utorontopress.com/ca/erasmus-of-rotterdam-3">describes him</a>, therefore, as a “representative and messenger of a free and open-minded Christianity founded on scripture.”</p>
<p>After his death in 1536, his reconciliation of different views became impossible. The Reformation <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674088054">began a splintering</a> that persists today. </p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend.</a> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124861/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katherine Little does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Martin Luther is credited with initiating the split in Christianity that came to be called the Protestant Reformation. But don’t count out Erasmus, an early proponent of similarly radical ideas.
Katherine Little, Professor of English Literature, University of Colorado Boulder
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104441
2018-10-30T17:28:46Z
2018-10-30T17:28:46Z
From Ancient Rome to Hollywood: witches as figures of fun
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242501/original/file-20181026-7056-ryelj3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Roman mosaic from the Villa del Cicerone in Pompeii.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>For centuries, when people thought of witches, they were evil or possessed by evil demons: think of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/war-of-the-witches-woman-are-accused-while-men-claim-victim-status-105870">Salem witch trials</a> or the 16th and 17th-century woodcuts depicting sinister women conjuring demons or flying on broomsticks. These were the sort of women who morphed in fairy tales into the wicked stepmother in Snow White or the evil crone in Hansel and Gretel. </p>
<p>But recent generations of children are more likely to have come across witches as figures of fun: consider Sabrina the Teenage Witch or Hocus Pocus, in which Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy abduct children, resurrect dead lovers and brew potions with comic flair. With the reboot of Hocus Pocus (marking the film’s 25th anniversary) and a new scarier version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/sabrina-the-teenage-witch-is-back-with-a-darker-look-for-our-times-103915">Sabrina the Teenage Witch</a> now on the air, the witch as a figure of fun is once again coming to the fore.</p>
<p>This caricature of the witch predates the sinister medieval version and can be traced all the way back to Roman times. Many of the jokes levelled at witches in popular culture had already been made in <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195389661/obo-9780195389661-0286.xml">Horace’s Satires</a>, published in about 35 BC, and <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674990494">Apuleius’s Metamorphoses</a> from the 2nd century AD.</p>
<h2>From temptress to Hag</h2>
<p>Horace’s Satires introduces us to Canidia and Sagana as comic hags (<em>strigae</em>) “hideous to behold” – a far cry from the temptress witches of Greek literature such as the bewitchingly beautiful <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Circe-Greek-mythology">Circe</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Calypso-Greek-mythology">Calypso</a>. In his eighth satire, Horace assumes the poetic voice of a wooden statue of Priapus, a fertility god (with a huge phallus). Priapus witnesses Canidia and her crony Sagana burning wax images of their enemies in a ritual of sympathetic magic. But their nefarious spells are interrupted when <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14020/14020-h/14020-h.htm#THE_FIRST_BOOK_OF_THE_SATIRES_OF_HORACE">Priapus’s statue farts</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Away they ran into town. Then amid great laughter and mirth you might see Canidia’s teeth and Sagana’s high wig come tumbling down, and from their arms the herbs and enchanted love-knots.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Like the witchy Sanderson sisters in Hocus Pocus who are forced to fly on vacuum cleaners and are baffled by buses, Horace’s hideous witches are at odds with their environment. Fleeing, Horace’s witches leave behind their wigs and teeth and drop their erotic spells – they are generally depicted as laughable characters.</p>
<h2>Suspending disbelief</h2>
<p>In Metamorphoses – which is the <a href="https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/products/83943">only complete Latin novel to survive</a> – Apuleius gives us the adventures of Lucius, a Greek traveller, who hears other stories from travellers about their encounters with witches before he himself is turned into an ass by the witch Meroe. The novel comically plays on hearsay and scepticism. So when Lucius’s companion Socrates warns him about the dangers of Meroe, he provides a list of impossibilities (known as <em>adynata</em>), claiming that “she can lower the sky and suspend the Earth …”.</p>
<p>This description of impossible happenings is a stock feature of witchcraft in non-comic literature. For example, in Ovid’s own Metamorphoses, the witch Medea claims to draw the moon from the sky and uproot trees when concocting a poison to kill the new wife of her lover Jason. But Lucius, aware of people’s habit of exaggeration when talking of witches, berates his friend:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Please,’ I said, ‘do remove the tragic curtain and fold up the stage drapery, and give it to me in ordinary language.’</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242504/original/file-20181026-7053-mphprh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242504/original/file-20181026-7053-mphprh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242504/original/file-20181026-7053-mphprh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242504/original/file-20181026-7053-mphprh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242504/original/file-20181026-7053-mphprh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242504/original/file-20181026-7053-mphprh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242504/original/file-20181026-7053-mphprh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eye of newt: detail from Pompeii showing the witch in close up.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Boyfriend trouble</h2>
<p>The most persistent plot device in both Apuleius and Hocus Pocus is the witch as the woman scorned. Just as Winnie Sanderson kills her unfaithful lover Billy Butcherson in Hocus Pocus, so witches in ancient literature also had to contend with bad boyfriends. In Metamorphoses, Apuleius tells us that the witch Meroe <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.38326/page/n45">transforms her unfaithful lover</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because one of her lovers had misbehaved himself with another woman, she changed him with one word into a beaver, because when that animal is afraid of being captured it escapes from its pursuers by cutting off its own genitals, and she wanted the same thing to happen to him since he had intercourse with another woman.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ever creative, Meroe’s punishment fits the crime and the episode emphasises the sexually predatory presentation of witches throughout the novel. In Apuleius, as in our current popular culture, the fearsome reputations of witches clash with comical representations of them – they are not powerful enough to change the landscape, but are easily able to conjure up a way of spiting an unfaithful lover. </p>
<p>Like the Sandersons, these Roman witches use their powers to seduce lovers, spite enemies and stay young. As in Hollywood productions, both Horace and Apuleius caricature the grotesqueness and pettiness of witches – in stark contrast to the power and influence of witches that was to develop in medieval times.</p>
<p>In Horace and Apuleius’s works, witches were figures of fun. Interestingly life imitated art for Apuleius when he himself was tried for witchcraft. Apuleius’ <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Apuleius/apol.1.1.html">Apologia</a> details his defence against charges that he bewitched his older, wealthier wife Pudentilla. This suggests that Roman audiences could laugh at witches as comic characters even as trials for witchcraft were still happening. </p>
<p>Ultimately, fictitious witches have always reflected transgressive women, whether they are threatening femme fatales such as Ovid’s Medea, or hilarious hags like Horaces’ Canidia. Both of these interpretations persist in popular culture to this day.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104441/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maria Haley received PhD funding from The University of Leeds Centenary Scholarship. </span></em></p>
How Romans overcame their fear of witches by finding them funny.
Maria Haley, Postgraduate Researcher and Education Outreach Fellow, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/98358
2018-06-27T10:45:33Z
2018-06-27T10:45:33Z
How we discovered three poisonous books in our university library
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225100/original/file-20180627-112620-14hp9vy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/old-books-green-cover-yellowed-pages-1048053595?src=7divbo7EJk1uZ9Tm-xdhCA-4-16">Raman Saurei/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some may remember the deadly book of Aristotle that plays a vital part in the plot of Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1983/07/21/murder-in-the-monastery/">The Name of the Rose</a>. Poisoned by a mad Benedictine monk, the book wreaks havoc in a 14th-century Italian monastery, killing all readers who happen to lick their fingers when turning the toxic pages. Could something like this happen in reality? Poisoning by books?</p>
<p>Our recent research indicates so. We found that three rare books on various historical topics in the University of Southern Denmark’s library collection contain large concentrations of arsenic on their covers. The books come from the 16th and 17th centuries.</p>
<p>The poisonous qualities of these books were detected by conducting a series of X-ray fluorescence analyses (micro-XRF). This technology displays the chemical spectrum of a material by analysing the characteristic “secondary” radiation that is emitted from the material during a high-energy X-ray bombardment. Micro-XRF technology is widely used within the fields of archaeology and art, when investigating the chemical elements of pottery and paintings, for example.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223318/original/file-20180615-85830-o9y0od.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223318/original/file-20180615-85830-o9y0od.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223318/original/file-20180615-85830-o9y0od.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223318/original/file-20180615-85830-o9y0od.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223318/original/file-20180615-85830-o9y0od.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223318/original/file-20180615-85830-o9y0od.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223318/original/file-20180615-85830-o9y0od.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of the poisonous books.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SDU</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Glaring green</h2>
<p>The reason why we took these three rare books to the X-ray lab was because the library had previously discovered that medieval manuscript fragments, such as copies of Roman law and canonical law, were used to make their covers. It is <a href="https://medievalbooks.nl/2015/12/18/x-rays-expose-a-hidden-medieval-library/">well documented</a> that European bookbinders in the 16th and 17th centuries used to recycle older parchments. </p>
<p>We tried to identify the Latin texts used, or at least read some of their content. But then we found that the Latin texts in the covers of the three volumes were hard to read because of an extensive layer of green paint which obscures the old handwritten letters. So we took them to the lab. The idea was to filter through the layer of paint using micro-XRF and focus on the chemical elements of the ink below, for example on iron and calcium, in the hope of making the letters more readable for the university’s researchers. </p>
<p>But XRF-analysis revealed that the green pigment layer was arsenic. This chemical element is among the most toxic substances in the world and exposure may lead to various symptoms of poisoning, the development of cancer and even death.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225105/original/file-20180627-112614-twgyc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225105/original/file-20180627-112614-twgyc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225105/original/file-20180627-112614-twgyc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225105/original/file-20180627-112614-twgyc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225105/original/file-20180627-112614-twgyc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225105/original/file-20180627-112614-twgyc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225105/original/file-20180627-112614-twgyc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225105/original/file-20180627-112614-twgyc6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Accidents caused by the use of green arsenic, 1859.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/bdgwyugs?query=arsenic&page=1">© Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Arsenic (As) is a ubiquitous naturally occurring metalloid. In nature, arsenic is typically combined with other elements such as carbon and hydrogen. This is known as organic arsenic. Inorganic arsenic, which may occur in a pure metallic form as well as in compounds, is the more harmful variant. The toxicity of arsenic does not diminish with time. </p>
<p>Depending on the type and duration of exposure, various symptoms of arsenic poisoning include an irritated stomach, irritated intestines, nausea, diarrhoea, skin changes and irritation of the lungs.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225102/original/file-20180627-112611-bjz8o6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225102/original/file-20180627-112611-bjz8o6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225102/original/file-20180627-112611-bjz8o6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225102/original/file-20180627-112611-bjz8o6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225102/original/file-20180627-112611-bjz8o6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225102/original/file-20180627-112611-bjz8o6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225102/original/file-20180627-112611-bjz8o6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paris Green.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paris_Green_(Schweinfurter_Gr%C3%BCn).JPG">Chris Goulet/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The green arsenic-containing pigment found on the book covers is thought to be Paris green, copper(II) acetate triarsenite or copper(II) acetoarsenite Cu(C₂H₃O₂)₂·3Cu(AsO₂)₂. This is also known as “emerald green”, because of its eye-catching green shades, similar to those of the popular gemstone. </p>
<p>The arsenic pigment – a crystalline powder – is easy to manufacture and has been commonly used for multiple purposes, especially in the 19th century. The size of the powder grains influence on the colour toning, as seen in oil paints and lacquers. Larger grains produce a distinct darker green – smaller grains a lighter green. The pigment is especially known for its colour intensity and resistance to fading.</p>
<h2>Pigment of the past</h2>
<p>Industrial production of Paris green was initiated in Europe in the early 19th century. Impressionist and post-impressionist painters used different versions of the pigment to create their vivid masterpieces. This means that many museum pieces today contain the poison. In its heyday, all types of materials, even book covers and clothes, could be coated in Paris green for aesthetic reasons. Of course, continuous skin contact with the substance would lead to symptoms of exposure. </p>
<p>But by the second half of the 19th century, the toxic effects of the substance were more commonly known, and the arsenic variant stopped being used as a pigment and was more frequently used as a pesticide on farmlands. Other pigments were found to replace Paris green in paintings and the textile industry etc. In the mid 20th century, the use on farmlands was phased out as well.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225107/original/file-20180627-112598-1iqk7ja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225107/original/file-20180627-112598-1iqk7ja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225107/original/file-20180627-112598-1iqk7ja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225107/original/file-20180627-112598-1iqk7ja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225107/original/file-20180627-112598-1iqk7ja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225107/original/file-20180627-112598-1iqk7ja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225107/original/file-20180627-112598-1iqk7ja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225107/original/file-20180627-112598-1iqk7ja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The Arsenic Waltz’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/V0042226.jpg/full/full/0/default.jpg">© Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the case of our books, the pigment wasn’t used for aesthetic purposes, making up a lower level of the cover. A plausible explanation for the application – possibly in the 19th century – of Paris green on old books could be to protect them against insects and vermin. </p>
<p>Under certain circumstances, arsenic compounds, such as arsenates and arsenites, may be transformed by microorganisms into arsine (AsH₃) – a highly poisonous gas with a distinct smell of garlic. <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/329747/death-by-wallpaper-alluring-arsenic-colors-poisoned-the-victorian-age/">Grim stories</a> of green Victorian wallpapers taking the lives of children in their bedrooms are known to be factual. </p>
<p>Now, the library stores our three poisonous volumes in separate cardboard boxes with safety labels in a ventilated cabinet. We also plan on digitising them to minimise physical handling. One wouldn’t expect a book to contain a poisonous substance. But it might.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Interdisciplinary research led to the discovery that three historic books were covered in a layer of arsenic.
Jakob Povl Holck, Research Librarian, University of Southern Denmark
Kaare Lund Rasmussen, Associate Professor in Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy, University of Southern Denmark
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82874
2017-08-23T10:30:54Z
2017-08-23T10:30:54Z
Lost Latin commentary on the Gospels rediscovered after 1,500 years thanks to digital technology
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183112/original/file-20170823-13285-wzuwf2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">DmitryCh via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The earliest Latin commentary on the Gospels, lost for more than 1,500 years, has been rediscovered and made available in English for the first time. The extraordinary find, a work written by a bishop in northern Italy, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291941671_On_the_biography_of_Bishop_Fortunatianus_of_Aquileia?_sg=kVsHVCAJLgHMC-qSJUse8e9RmzQOX-Sd2bgyOqU7_8bqv7cGV1ZXXX3FCQBdMPw8iVOOwdmqMByTD-roREKfynL4lzWQysAlw_QPWtM9sM0">Fortunatianus of Aquileia</a>, dates back to the middle of the fourth century. </p>
<p>The biblical text of the manuscript is of particular significance, as it predates the standard Latin version known as <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/vul/">the Vulgate</a> and provides new evidence about the earliest form of the Gospels in Latin.</p>
<p>Despite references to this commentary in other ancient works, no copy was known to survive until <a href="https://csel.sbg.ac.at/en/team-en/dr-lukas-dorfbauer">Dr Lukas Dorfbauer</a>, a researcher from the <a href="https://www.uni-salzburg.at/index.php?id=45332&L=1">University of Salzburg</a>, identified Fortunatianus’ text in an anonymous manuscript copied around the year 800 and held in Cologne Cathedral Library. The manuscripts of Cologne Cathedral Library were made <a href="http://www.ceec.uni-koeln.de/">available online in 2002</a>.</p>
<p>Scholars had previously been interested in this ninth-century manuscript as the sole witness to a short letter which claimed to be from the Jewish high priest Annas to the Roman philosopher Seneca. They had dismissed the 100-page anonymous Gospel commentary as one of numerous similar works composed in the court of Charlemagne. But when he visited the library in 2012, Dorfbauer, a specialist in such writings, could see that the commentary was much older than the manuscript itself. </p>
<p>In fact, it was none other than the earliest Latin commentary on the Gospels.</p>
<h2>Pearls of wisdom</h2>
<p>In his De Viris Illustribus (Lives of Famous Men), written at the end of the fourth century, Saint Jerome, who was also responsible for the revision of the Gospels and the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures known as the Vulgate, included an entry for Fortunatianus – who had been bishop of the northern Italian diocese of Aquileia some 50 years earlier. This prominent cleric had written a Gospel commentary including a series of chapter titles, which Jerome described as “a pearl without price” and had consulted when writing his own commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183109/original/file-20170823-13316-16vu0o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183109/original/file-20170823-13316-16vu0o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183109/original/file-20170823-13316-16vu0o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183109/original/file-20170823-13316-16vu0o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183109/original/file-20170823-13316-16vu0o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183109/original/file-20170823-13316-16vu0o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183109/original/file-20170823-13316-16vu0o5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">San Gerolamo (Saint Jerome) by Caravaggio.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Galleria Borghese</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Later Christian authors, such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rabanus-Maurus">Rabanus Maurus</a> and <a href="http://archive.churchsociety.org/crossway/documents/Cway_091_Claudius.pdf">Claudius of Turin</a>, searched for it in vain. As with so many works from antiquity, it seemed to have been lost, the remaining copies destroyed in a Vandal raid or eaten by mice in a dusty library.</p>
<p>Among the features which attracted Dorfbauer’s attention was a long list of 160 chapter titles detailing the contents of the commentary, which corresponded to Jerome’s description of Fortunatianus’ work. In addition, the biblical text of the Cologne manuscript did not match the standard version of the Gospels produced by Jerome, but seemed to come from an earlier stage in the history of the Latin bible.</p>
<h2>Groundbreaking discovery</h2>
<p>This was where the University of Birmingham came in. The university’s Institute for <a href="http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/itsee/index.aspx">Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE)</a> is home to long-term projects working on new editions of the Bible in Greek and Latin. As a specialist in the Latin New Testament, I was able to compare the biblical quotations in the Cologne manuscript with our extensive databases. Parallels with texts circulating in northern Italy in the middle of the 4th century offered a perfect fit with the context of Fortunatianus. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183114/original/file-20170823-13316-1m7a71g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183114/original/file-20170823-13316-1m7a71g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183114/original/file-20170823-13316-1m7a71g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183114/original/file-20170823-13316-1m7a71g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183114/original/file-20170823-13316-1m7a71g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183114/original/file-20170823-13316-1m7a71g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183114/original/file-20170823-13316-1m7a71g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fortunatianus manuscript; by permission of Cologne Cathedral Library.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Astonishingly, despite being copied four centuries after the last reference to his Gospel commentary, this manuscript seemed to preserve the original form of Fortunatianus’ groundbreaking work.</p>
<p>Such a discovery is of considerable significance to our understanding of the development of Latin biblical interpretation, which went on to play such an important part in the development of Western thought and literature. In this substantial commentary, Fortunatianus is reliant on even earlier writings which formed the link between Greek and Latin Christianity. </p>
<p>This sheds new light on the way the Gospels were read and understood in the early Church, in particular the reading of the text known as “allegorical exegesis” in which elements in the stories are interpreted as symbols. So, for example, when Jesus climbs into a boat on the Sea of Galilee, Fortunatianus explains that the sea which is sometimes rough and dangerous stands for the world, while the boat corresponds to the Church in which Jesus is present and carries people to safety. </p>
<p>There are also moments of insight into the lives of fourth-century Italian Christians, as when the bishop uses a walnut as an image of the four Gospels or holds up a Roman coin as a symbol of the Trinity.</p>
<h2>English translation</h2>
<p>In the form of a single (no longer anonymous) manuscript, or even a scholarly edition of the Latin text, it will still be some time before this work becomes as widely known as the famous writings of later Christian teachers such as Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183113/original/file-20170823-13287-ayzh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183113/original/file-20170823-13287-ayzh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183113/original/file-20170823-13287-ayzh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183113/original/file-20170823-13287-ayzh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183113/original/file-20170823-13287-ayzh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183113/original/file-20170823-13287-ayzh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183113/original/file-20170823-13287-ayzh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183113/original/file-20170823-13287-ayzh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fortunatianus manuscript: now available online; by permission of Cologne Cathedral Library.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For that reason, I have worked closely with Dr Dorfbauer to prepare an English translation of his <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/469135">full Latin edition of the commentary</a>, the first ever to be produced.</p>
<p>This will enable a much wider audience to take account of this rediscovered work. In fact, <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/469498">this English version</a> may be the form in which most people will encounter Fortunatianus’ commentary – as studying languages is now a much smaller component in theological study and online translation tools are beginning to produce more satisfactory results. </p>
<p>But for the fullest appreciation of this work, it will still be necessary to put alternatives to one side and consult the original – which is how the commentary was rediscovered in the first place.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82874/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh Houghton's translation is published under contract by De Gruyter publishers, although he receives no royalties for sales of this book. The translation was completed as part of the European Research Council COMPAUL project (EU Seventh Framework Programme, grant agreement 283302) which also funded its publication in open access. Hugh Houghton has also received research funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.</span></em></p>
Textual analysis using the digitised text of this 4th-century manuscript has established its authenticity.
Hugh Houghton, Reader in New Testament Textual Scholarship; Deputy Director, Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing, University of Birmingham
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/62328
2016-07-13T11:26:16Z
2016-07-13T11:26:16Z
Why everyone should have to learn computer programming
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130217/original/image-20160712-9264-zt66ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'All Greek to me, mate.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&searchterm=python%20computer%20program&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=288042365">dencg</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/04/latin-revival-cathedral-courses-find-new-fans-of-dead-language">News that</a> numerous cathedrals are offering short courses in Latin is a reminder of the long decline of the language over the years. It was a core subject in the British education system until fairly recently – and not because anyone planned to speak it, of course. It was believed to offer valuable training for intellectual composition, as well as skills and thinking that were transferable to other fields. </p>
<p>It may have been the right decision, but when it was ultimately decided that these advantages were outweighed by Latin being a dead language we arguably lost that intellectual training in the process. This is why we want to make the case for moving another discipline to the centre of the curriculum that offers analogous benefits – computer programming. And unlike Latin, it is anything but dead. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130219/original/image-20160712-9274-wu6vhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130219/original/image-20160712-9274-wu6vhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130219/original/image-20160712-9274-wu6vhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130219/original/image-20160712-9274-wu6vhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130219/original/image-20160712-9274-wu6vhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=699&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130219/original/image-20160712-9274-wu6vhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130219/original/image-20160712-9274-wu6vhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130219/original/image-20160712-9274-wu6vhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=878&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Noam lore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/b-tal/65264349/in/photolist-6LuPp-64qbTH-9wPeCA-edtzz3-7fgXTV-9UoK6F-8rBQWn-cyix3N-8rBQUT-4b4jNJ-4aZiYa-r6dJW2-5ySUa-9CZGFw-9wPhWL-c9YyzQ-9UWHNi-9wPham-9wLhaZ-9A5VQ-9wPmCN-7WkAyC-aRMouc-aurdsy-8XAjhV-5LmwAx-7pCz9f-s7jJWw-rs66S8-9wPeWh-9CWKQe-9wLgLg-7xBniK-7xBn1D-9A5UX-9R1r37-9A59H-qDoZXq-9A4AE-9R1vhf-CKbWm-6fp3PF-7xFbDJ-7Whjsi-7Qg8Q4-9wLkGg-c2mMrL-6kBMSR-7xBn4n-bBqZGr">Brian Talbot</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are many computer languages for different purposes. C and C++ remain the fastest to execute and are used by the gaming industry, for instance. In the internet era, much of the page design is done with the likes of JavaScript or PHP. Meanwhile Python has been rapidly gaining a reputation as a general purpose code that is easy to learn. </p>
<p>There are many parallels between natural languages and programming languages like these. You must learn to express yourself within the rules of the language. There is a grammar to comprehend. And what you write must be interpretable by another human being. (Yes, it must be interpretable by a computer. But just as <a href="https://archive.org/stream/NoamChomskySyntcaticStructures/Noam%20Chomsky%20-%20Syntcatic%20structures_djvu.txt">Noam Chomsky’s example</a> of “colourless green ideas sleep furiously” is grammatically correct nonsense, you can write obfuscated computer code that no one else can decipher.)</p>
<p>People who program can communicate with computers, which is becoming more and more important now that computers have a hand in almost everything. In today’s IT-literate world, we are all expected to be fluent in word processing and spreadsheets. The next logical step is to be able to program. </p>
<p>The younger generation are already exposed to computers almost from the day they are born, which explains for example Barclays bank’s <a href="http://www.barclays.co.uk/DigitalEagles/BarclaysCodePlayground/P1242686640999">recent launch</a> of Code Playground, an initiative to engage young children in the basics of programming via a colourful website.</p>
<h2>Problematis solvendis</h2>
<p>There is a myth that only maths geniuses are suited to programming. It is more accurate to say you need a logical approach and an ability to problem solve. Just as Latin constructs reinforce communication, programming constructs reinforce problem solving. It teaches you to break a problem into achievable chunks and to think very precisely. And once you have mastered the basics, it opens up great potential for creative thinking. </p>
<p>Then there are specific workplace benefits, such as for businesses that are building a bespoke piece of software. Errors sometimes occur when documents outlining in English how a program should work are translated into computer code. Those who have an appreciation of a programming language can write these more clearly. Indeed, businesses usually have to employ specialist analysts as intermediaries to help with this translation process. </p>
<p>As computers become more dominant, those who don’t know how to think in this way risk being increasingly left behind. We can foresee a time when greater numbers of people become interested in learning to program for themselves, but in the meantime there is a great case for making the basics of computer programming a core skill at school. </p>
<p>One candidate language would be <a href="https://www.python.org/doc/essays/blurb/">Python</a>, it’s freely available and one of the easier programming languages to learn – compared, say, to C/C++. It has grown in popularity in recent years, initially for this simplicity but lately because it has been adopted by the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaarthur/2013/08/15/what-is-big-data/#58e893c33487">big data community</a>. It is likely to be around for a few years and not become a dead language any time soon. There are <a href="https://www.mooc-list.com/tags/python?static=true">plenty MOOCs</a> (online courses) to get you started.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130218/original/image-20160712-9274-p9gk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130218/original/image-20160712-9274-p9gk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130218/original/image-20160712-9274-p9gk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130218/original/image-20160712-9274-p9gk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130218/original/image-20160712-9274-p9gk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130218/original/image-20160712-9274-p9gk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130218/original/image-20160712-9274-p9gk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130218/original/image-20160712-9274-p9gk2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lighten your load with code …</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=c5sEOdYoDST5PCRuuIyzqg&searchterm=python%20code&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=236404216">Mclek</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If a teacher walked into a classroom and told today’s students they were going to study a dead language, you can imagine the reaction. Imagine instead introducing them to an easy-to-use programming language which is probably already installed on their laptops. It can allow them to automate many boring tasks such as checking email and sending out pre-written responses; or receive custom notifications by text; or download files or copy text from a website whenever it updates. </p>
<p>It’s time that those in charge of education policy recognised the shift in employability skills and the need for a new generation of problem solvers. We may have reached the point where the three Rs of education – reading, writing and ‘rithmetic – should become the four Rs, with the addition of programming. Or 'rogramming, as we would soon get used to calling it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
When we ditched high-school Latin we lost a great intellectual training. Here’s how to get it back without resorting to a dead language.
John R. Woodward, Lecturer in Computer Science, University of Stirling
Marwan Fayed, Lecturer in Computing, University of Stirling
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/59832
2016-05-27T09:08:18Z
2016-05-27T09:08:18Z
It’s Remain not Leave that captures the independent spirit of the Reformation
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123635/original/image-20160523-11025-rwt7ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>On May 5, my old friend Giles Fraser used his regular <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2016/may/05/brexit-recycles-the-defiant-spirit-of-the-reformation">column in The Guardian</a> to assert that “Brexit recycles the defiant spirit of the Reformation.” </p>
<p>“Here also we find the intellectual roots of Euroscepticism,” he argued, talking of “grassroots empowerment” and “a stubborn commitment to English independence” as being of the essence of what happened in the 16th century. </p>
<p>Oh dear, Giles, how wrong can you be, about both the English Reformation and the wider movement across Europe? After its first explosion in northern Germany in 1517, the European Reformation was a completely international movement, transcending and breaking down local boundaries. The lesser Reformations of England and Scotland – distinct from each other, remember, Giles – were just part of this greater whole. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124016/original/image-20160525-25231-134qruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124016/original/image-20160525-25231-134qruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124016/original/image-20160525-25231-134qruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124016/original/image-20160525-25231-134qruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124016/original/image-20160525-25231-134qruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124016/original/image-20160525-25231-134qruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124016/original/image-20160525-25231-134qruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124016/original/image-20160525-25231-134qruu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Thomas Cranmer, 1545.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There was no idea of little Englandism in such Protestant reformers as the main author of England’s Book of Common Prayer, Thomas Cranmer, who is absent from Giles’s argument. Cranmer, the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, was aiming for the English Reformation to resemble as closely as possible his favourite movement in Europe, that of a mainland European city called Strasbourg (though German Reformers, and Cranmer, the English Archbishop with a German wife, would have called it Strassburg). </p>
<p>Why did Cranmer admire Strassburg’s Reformation? Partly because he got on well with its chief reformer, a former friar from Alsace called Martin Bucer, but mainly because Bucer and his Strassburg colleagues were especially energetic in their efforts to stop Protestants across Europe quarrelling. They saw that all reformers needed to unite against the common Roman enemy if they were going to achieve their aim of founding a properly Catholic, universal Church.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124017/original/image-20160525-25209-1hacr6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124017/original/image-20160525-25209-1hacr6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124017/original/image-20160525-25209-1hacr6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124017/original/image-20160525-25209-1hacr6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124017/original/image-20160525-25209-1hacr6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124017/original/image-20160525-25209-1hacr6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124017/original/image-20160525-25209-1hacr6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124017/original/image-20160525-25209-1hacr6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Martin Bucer, 1560.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This unity is also seen in the language of the Reformation: Latin, an international language. It is a mistake to think of Latin simply as the language of Roman Catholicism and its liturgy. It was more truly a universal language, a genuinely effective Esperanto, than English is today. You needed to learn it, certainly, but learning Latin was the main point of schools at the time, and once you had it, you truly were a citizen of a single culture. Without Latin, Protestantism simply couldn’t have spread across local boundaries.</p>
<p>How else would such star Protestant refugees in King Edward VI’s England as Strassburg’s Martin Bucer or Poland’s Johannes à Lasco have talked to their English hosts or indeed to each other, if not in Latin? Latin was the secret weapon of Protestant reformers just as much as it was the language of the Pope. Indeed, it helped either side in the great quarrels of the Reformation understand each other properly when they were insulting each other (which they did, a lot).</p>
<h2>Remain and reform</h2>
<p>So it is the Remain camp which represents the European and British Reformations, not Brexiteers. Remainers are the people who resist breaking the natural, wider ties in our continent. True, they know the system needs radical reform – and that was the starting point for many Protestants attacking the old Church, including <a href="http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html">Luther himself in 1517</a> – but once the corruption and the mistakes have been remedied, the prospect then as now is to look to a new continent-wide unity, not a muddle of division and weakness. </p>
<p>Both the Church of England and the Church of Scotland were part of a continent-wide Protestant movement which had gone further than Martin Luther in its break with the past. Reformed (that is, non-Lutheran) Protestant churches, saw the reformed churches of Europe – in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Poland and as far east in Europe as Transylvania – as their partners in an international movement.</p>
<p>Giles: you might have a slight point in characterising King Henry VIII of England as a Brexiteer. He broke with the Pope in 1533. Through force of personality plus quite a lot of threats and bluster, he bullied his parliament into pretending that his Church’s independence had actually always been there in English history, just hidden from sight by Romish cunning.</p>
<p>But do remember that Henry VIII was emphatically not a Protestant; in fact, he burned some of them for heresy. The Reformation here flourished in spite of him, not because of him. Henry VIII is definitely not my idea of an acceptable leader, either for the Reformation, the Church of England or modern Britain in general. Giles, do you really want the image of Brexit to be that of Horrible Harry – Donald Trump with a bit more style and a Holbein bonnet?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59832/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diarmaid MacCulloch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Giles Fraser thinks that ‘Brexit recycles the defiant spirit of the Reformation’. How wrong can he be?
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/49987
2015-11-02T11:14:09Z
2015-11-02T11:14:09Z
‘Difficult’ Latin risks remaining a qualification for elite pupils
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100207/original/image-20151029-15365-15haap2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Stefano Pellicciari</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a recent column for The Telegraph, Angela Epstein <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11957216/Jeremy-Corbyn-is-too-thick-to-be-Prime-Minister.html">branded Jeremy Corbyn as “too thick to be prime minister”</a>. The basis of this accusation was the Labour leader’s two Es at A-level, among his other academic adventures. In a world where jobs are won on the basis of experience and networks, one might expect Corbyn’s A-levels – taken in the late 1960s – to be ancient history. Yet the fact this argument can be made in a national newspaper shows that school qualifications matter long into one’s life, and are expected to stand for something.</p>
<p>Indeed, qualifications matter so greatly that the Department for Education has for more than a year now been consulting teachers and other interested parties about <a href="https://theconversation.com/young-people-must-be-consulted-on-reforms-to-a-levels-and-gcses-47382">the reform of GCSEs</a>. The final stages of this reform are still underway, and the government <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/459669/Additional-reformed-GCSE-and-A-level-subject-content-consultation.pdf">is explicit about its intention</a> to make these qualifications “more academically demanding and knowledge-based”.</p>
<p>A key shift in policy is the move to measure schools’ performance or progress primarily on the basis of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-ebacc-effect-pushes-pupils-into-more-academic-subjects-thats-a-good-thing-29931">English Baccalaureate</a> (EBacc), the achievement of pupils in English, maths, science, a language and history or geography – rather than English, maths and three other subjects, as has been measured previously.</p>
<p>What this shift appears to acknowledge by focusing on “academically demanding” subjects, is that grades at GCSE mean different things between different subjects. Not all GCSEs are directly comparable – and those which do not make it into the EBacc are understood to be absolutely <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/preparing-children-for-a-successful-future-through-the-ebacc">“less demanding”</a> as courses.</p>
<p>Certainly, this is backed up by research. In a working paper from 2006, Robert Coe of Durham University <a href="http://www.wilsonsschool.sutton.sch.uk/community/dept/classics/latin/files/stacks_image_1374_1.pdf">undertook a study of GCSE subjects</a> using a statistical model developed by <a href="http://www.rasch.org/rasch.htm">Georg Rasch</a>, a Danish statistician of the mid-20th century who specialised in psychometry. It was a comparison of the likelihood for success in different GCSE examinations, based on a pupil’s ability. Coe’s findings are graphically represented below:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100208/original/image-20151029-15322-xsed70.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100208/original/image-20151029-15322-xsed70.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100208/original/image-20151029-15322-xsed70.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100208/original/image-20151029-15322-xsed70.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100208/original/image-20151029-15322-xsed70.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100208/original/image-20151029-15322-xsed70.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100208/original/image-20151029-15322-xsed70.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100208/original/image-20151029-15322-xsed70.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Relative difficulty of grades in 34 GCSE subjects ordered by difficulty of grade C.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robert Coe</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The general disparity between subjects is clear. But as Coe comments, one of the most striking things about this data is just how difficult Latin appears when compared to other subjects: it is about as difficult to get a grade C in Latin as it is to get a grade B in chemistry, or a grade A in sociology. One is further able to group subjects between those on the left-hand side of the median line – science, technology, maths and engineering subjects, languages and humanities – and those on the right-hand side, which are more vocational in character.</p>
<h2>Degree of difficulty</h2>
<p>It is important to remember that this is no reflection of any inherent easiness or difficulty in a subject: sociology would not exist as a degree or research specialism if one could not think about it on the same level as Latin or chemistry. What this data instead shows is that these GCSEs test different levels of skills, some of which may be more readily acquired in a lower number of contact hours and some of which take more time. </p>
<p>Pupil achievement appears to be measurable only in relation to the expectations for an individual exam, rather than across all GCSEs. As a result, these grade levels also reflect the typical profile of those taking these exams. In Latin, <a href="http://www.cambridgescp.com/downloads/KS4qualsresearch2015.pdf">data from the Cambridge Schools Classics Project suggests</a> that 97% of the candidates taking the examining body OCR’s Latin GCSE are in the top third of the national ability range. What this means is that a profile similar to the sociology GCSE would be useless for classing candidates.</p>
<p>What these profiles really reflect, however, are the groups one would have expected to take these subjects in the 1950s, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34535778">the peak of grammar school education</a>. Vocational subjects, which one might imagine transplanted back into secondary modern schools, could be taught with the expectations of 16-year-olds mastering skills at one level down from the average grammar school student, studying the subjects on the left-hand side of this chart. </p>
<p>While both grammar school pupils and secondary modern pupils would have studied maths, history and other subjects now on the EBacc, secondary modern pupils would typically not have learned Latin: the preserve of those at grammar or fee-paying schools. Those at the top of their sets in these schools, hoping to gain entry into Cambridge or Oxford, would be the ones for whom it was most important to be qualified in Latin, which was a requirement for entrance into both of these universities until 1959.</p>
<h2>Quod erat demonstrandum</h2>
<p>Today, in spite of this legacy, it can no longer be assumed that the average Latin learner is at the top of the ability range for their school. Since 2000, the numbers of schools offering Latin has increased dramatically, with reportedly <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/medianews/article4581933.ece?shareToken=cd4f4da6788a8cadd1e3ab4c17999646">50,000 pupils starting to learn the language each year</a>. For what must be the first time in Latin’s history in the UK, the majority of schools offering Latin right now <a href="http://www.cambridgescp.com/downloads/KS4qualsresearch2015.pdf">are non-selective state institutions</a>. Yet, despite this, the numbers of entrants into the OCR GCSE qualification have <a>declined steadily since 2000</a>. We have a situation where more and more young people are interested in Latin and the ancient world, but ever fewer have a qualification to show for it that will survive the current reforms.</p>
<p>Latin has long been <a href="http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2006/06/is_latin_too_ha.html">defended as a difficult GCSE</a> on the basis of the challenge it offers to the brightest 16-year-olds. But as long as qualifications matter, it should be a concern for us all that the middle-range of schoolchildren in this country are put into a situation whereby Latin is inaccessible to them if they want to achieve that “good” rating of A*-C on their CV and they don’t have the opportunity or time to join an after-school club. </p>
<p>If Latin continues to function as a badge of distinction for those at the very top – an A* more impressive than every other A* – then it is a subject that can never belong to everyone. It remains a tool for social elites, with resources of extra contact hours, study time and tutoring, to be classed on their own terms – to the detriment of those now interested in the subject who never had access to it at school before.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited version of a talk delivered by the author at the <a href="http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/">Cambridge Festival of Ideas</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49987/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francesca Middleton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The UK’s approach to classics in school is a hangover from the days of selective education.
Francesca Middleton, Lecturer in Classics (Greek), University of Cambridge
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/31327
2014-09-15T05:21:14Z
2014-09-15T05:21:14Z
Latin is dead? Long live Latin!
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58909/original/bkdcgcjf-1410530558.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wilting away?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rosipaw/8719627723/sizes/l">rosipaw</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A little item buried on the inside pages of newspapers recently caused a small stir. Latin plant names, it was claimed, were “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/11068023/Could-Latin-species-names-die-out-Rules-change-to-allow-English-descriptions.html">in danger of dying out</a>”, following a decision by the <a href="http://www.iapt-taxon.org/nomen/main.php?page=pf">International Botanical Congress</a> to allow plants to be named in English. Cue a flurry of reports alternately lamenting and celebrating what seemed to be yet another nail in the coffin for this ancient language. </p>
<p>No matter that the decision was actually taken back in 2011, or that it says nothing about the names of plants. (It’s the short descriptions of new discoveries that can now be written in English, instead of the Latin previously required – though Latin is still acceptable.) What was really at stake here was the wider relevance and symbolic importance of Latin in the modern world, a subject which rarely fails to prompt passionate debate.</p>
<p>Swedish botanist <a href="http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/science-of-natural-history/biographies/linnaeus/">Carl Linnaeus</a>, who formalised the system of plant naming, may have belonged to a world in which Latin was the intellectual <em>lingua franca</em>, but that hardly holds true today. There is no sound argument for continuing to describe plants in Latin – though it remains sensible to use Latin for specific names. Just as in medicine and other scientific fields, botanical names still have much to gain from Latin’s “neutrality”. It enables clear communication regardless of mother tongue – and, of course, there is a huge weight of history behind them.</p>
<p>I didn’t lose any sleep over this particular news story, then. But I did feel disheartened by the way in which the debates played out, with the same old rhetoric and stereotypes about Latin’s deadness, and its elitism.</p>
<h2>Dead and done?</h2>
<p>The first is a powerful and broadly accurate one. Latin is scarcely used in daily speech today, unless you count <a href="http://ohjelmaopas.yle.fi/1-1931339">Nuntii Latini</a>, the Finnish news broadcast in Latin, or the Vatican, where the Pope has a <a href="https://twitter.com/Pontifex_ln">Latin Twitter</a> feed. </p>
<p>Journalist Harry Mount <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/11070488/Fools-Latin-isnt-dead-it-speaks-for-itself.html">claims </a>that “because Latin is a dead language, its definitions are set in stone”, thus ensuring its clarity and unambiguity when naming plants, for example. But this argument soon falters. Many plant names would be unrecognisable to Cicero or Virgil, since botanists regularly coin “new” Latin words by contorting modern vocabulary into Latin forms. However artificially, the language keeps evolving.</p>
<p>Labelling Latin as “dead” also misleads by making us think of something lifeless and inert, instead of a language and literature which can put colour in the cheeks and get blood pumping in the veins of our distant Roman forebears. We still have much to learn from Latin culture. The classicist Charlotte Higgins <a href="http://www.classicsforall.org.uk/supporters/">explains</a> nicely: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[It] gives us the keys to an intellectual playground of breathtaking beauty, wonder, and rigour; it gives us the tools to help us understand who we are. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2006/11/let_them_learn_.html">Mary Beard </a> agrees that this is foremost among the reasons why we need Latin, because it grants us access to the thoughts and deeds of the ancients, bringing antiquity to life. Translations are vital, and fascinating in their own right, but they can just as easily “deaden” the language. The 17th-century translation of <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/aeneid.html">Virgil’s Aeneid by John Dryden</a> is patently not a product of the 21st century. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58911/original/hb2btgpx-1410530906.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58911/original/hb2btgpx-1410530906.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58911/original/hb2btgpx-1410530906.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58911/original/hb2btgpx-1410530906.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58911/original/hb2btgpx-1410530906.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58911/original/hb2btgpx-1410530906.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58911/original/hb2btgpx-1410530906.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The head of Laocoon from Virgil’s Aeneid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/oxfordshirechurches/4595516663/sizes/o/">Oxfordshire Churches</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And yet, the timeworn cliches for “why learn Latin” too often focus on the moribund over the exciting. Claims for its usefulness in learning other languages, or its mental training, as valid as they often are, reduce Latin to an accessory to other pursuits.</p>
<h2>No longer the preserve of the elite</h2>
<p>Latin’s second stereotype also needs to be countered. Historically, learning and using Latin – and a classical education in general – has been a marker of privilege. But if anything about Latin should be killed off, it is the idea that it is (or should remain) the preserve of an elite, whether intellectual or social. </p>
<p>While that cliche keeps haunting the right-wing press and the lazy assumptions of TV producers, the real Latin success story of recent years has been the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/latin-makes-surprising-comeback-in-state-schools-9677092.html">huge growth</a> in the number of state schools offering the subject. This is far more significant than the smattering of free schools who ape the independent sector by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/sep/09/latin-toby-young-free-school-dream">making Latin compulsory</a>, or the letters-page gripes of those who think that only private schools can teach Latin “properly”. </p>
<p>Instead, the expertise, dedication, and enthusiasm of students and teachers alike is fuelling a whole raft of funding schemes and educational programmes. From <a href="http://www.classicsforall.org.uk/">Classics for All</a>, to the <a href="http://www.capitalclassics.org.uk/classics-centre/">East End Classics Centre</a>, to the <a href="http://www.eoccc.org.uk/">East Oxford Classics Community Centre</a>, access to antiquity is being democratised (even as teachers and lecturers struggle to ensure that this enthusiasm is recognised and supported by government policies on curriculum and qualifications). </p>
<p>Our understanding of Latin and its enduring presence in the modern world cannot be divorced from understanding its historical relationship to class – as the important work of a research project on <a href="http://www.classicsandclass.info/">Classics and Class in Britain </a> is demonstrating. But this need not mean that we let such outdated assumptions continue to shape its future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31327/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Paul does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A little item buried on the inside pages of newspapers recently caused a small stir. Latin plant names, it was claimed, were “in danger of dying out”, following a decision by the International Botanical…
Joanna Paul, Lecturer in Classical Studies, The Open University
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