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18th c. understanding?
#16
Quote:It's my understanding from reading so far that most of the written sources we have now were known then, but there was little or no archaeological verification for the sources. Is that correct?
So far, people have helpfully steered you towards discussions of the "invention" of archaeology in the eighteenth century. But I'm not sure that this made any particularly profound impact on scholars' understanding of the written sources (which, I think, is your main concern).

From that point of view, the ongoing process of source criticism is perhaps more interesting. For some texts, this isn't really an issue. For example, Caesar's Gallic War (de bello Gallico) has only ever been known from around half-a-dozen manuscripts of the ninth, tenth, eleventh centuries, which all derived from one or other of two (lost) exemplars, so the Latin text known to your "educated gentleman of 1760" was pretty much the same text that we use today. (Successive editors have suggested emendations but no major changes.)

As another example, the situation with Tacitus' Agricola (de vita Iulii Agricolae) is even more stark, since only two copies of a single exemplar have ever been known. Interestingly, in 1902, the supposed ninth-century exemplar itself was found, which has enabled improved readings of various sections. So your gentleman of 1760 would have been using an inferior version of the Agricola.

As a third example, the text of Vegetius (Epitoma rei militaris) has experienced a very different history, because it has always been popular, and was used consistently throughout the middle ages. There are over two hundred different manuscripts, probably deriving from half-a-dozen exemplars which exhibit subtle differences. By chance, the various editions available in 1760 all chose one exemplar (a different one each time!) and ignored all the others. It was only with the "official" Teubner text of 1869 that we got a "scientific" approach, weighing up the evidence of the different exemplars and selecting the most likely text. Even now, it's possible for a less-than-vigilant editor to produce a ghastly version of the Latin text (Stelten's edition of 1990 has been lambasted by critics), and even the latest version of the Teubner (1995) received a cool reception in some quarters.

It's safe to say that your 1760 gentleman would be happy with our Caesar, intrigued by our Agricola, and completely surprised by the changes in our Vegetius!
posted by Duncan B Campbell
https://ninth-legion.blogspot.com/
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#17
A major difference between those times and today is that the educated gentleman of the 18th century would have been fluent in Latin, and probably Greek as well, practically from the time he first learned to read. Educated people of the 17th-early 19th centuries were comfortable with Classical languages in a way that seems foreign now. The ancient authors were old friends to them. They actually had party and barroom games involving Latin quotes. For instance, there was a round-robin game where with every round of drinks, one person would pronounce a Latin quote. The next person had to find a quote that began with the last word in the previous quote. The first one who couldn't think of a suitable quote had to pay for the drinks. Can you imagine a bunch of businessmen or military officers playing such a game now? Yet then it was unremarkable.

In the 18th century a military man of almost any nation could quote you Caesar or Arrian or Vegetius by the hour. A poet would know Vergil and Catullus by heart. Livy was more widely read than Stephen King now. It was a different world and it was infused with Classical learning.
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#18
Quote:A major difference between those times and today is that the educated gentleman of the 18th century would have been fluent in Latin, and probably Greek as well, practically from the time he first learned to read.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was common for Greek works to be translated into Latin, to reach a wider readership.

Quote:In the 18th century a military man of almost any nation could quote you Caesar or Arrian or Vegetius by the hour.
Agreed -- with the above-noted proviso, that the texts available in the eighteenth century were often not as authoritative as the ones we take for granted today.

See above for Caesar and Vegetius. Arrian is another interesting one. The History of Alexander (Anabasis Alexandrou) was known quite early on, particularly in French translations. And the simplicity of the manuscript tradition (all versions go back to a single twelfth/thirteenth century exemplar) means that the text has always been quite sound.

However, for the military man, Arrian's Tactics (Ars Tactica) is a different matter. Although the manuscript tradition is reasonably straightforward -- our knowledge of the main tactical writers goes back to a single tenth century exemplar which was then copied in various versions -- early editions were often inferior because they failed to give the exemplar its due weight, and often preferred variant readings. (Even the well-known Köchly-Rüstow edition (1855) fails on this score.) In addition, a problem peculiar to Arrian's Tactics is that the extra Roman section (not found in the other tactical writers) was routinely omitted until the 1960s.

Our educated gentleman of 1760 may have known about Guischardt's Mémoires militaires sur les Grecs et les Romains (published in that same year), but nobody nowadays would use that volume. Better editions of Arrian and Asklepiodotos are available (though we are still waiting for a critical edition of Aelian).
posted by Duncan B Campbell
https://ninth-legion.blogspot.com/
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#19
There's also a difference in the way we view history and its purposes today, I think, besides an altered social and political background to study. The hypothetical gentleman of 1760 reading the letters of Pliny, or even Cicero, would find the world described very similar in many ways to his own: the huge country estates, hunts, slaves and political intrigues would have been quite recognisable to him, whereas to us they appear often quite alien.

In a similar way, perhaps, it would be hard to imagine a political body today seeking practical tips on governance from classical antiquity, but in the 18th century admiration and emulation of the past was commonplace not only in architecture but in politics and military affairs. The study of history was (in part, at least) believed to be instructive to the present day - the early US veneration for the Roman Republic mentioned in the original post was merely a part of a larger Enlightenment urge to recover the presumed harmony and clarity of the ancient world.

Today we tend to see things differently, of course - history for us is not a matter of grand narratives and clear mechanisms, but a complex patterning of power and influence, corruption and violence that veers more towards chaos than order. The gentleman of 1760 might recognise the texts of the past in our hands, but be appalled at our lack of respect and admiration for their authors and the world that created them.

On the subject of early archaeology, meanwhile, I would recommend Parslow's Rediscovering Antiquity, a study of the earliest excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum: not only a scholarly account of the subject, with lots of beautiful plans and diagrams, but also the story of the rivalries between different excavators working for the King of Naples. Karl Weber, a Swiss military engineer who conducted painstaking, meticulous and ultimately fatal tunnel surveys of Herculaneum in particular (his plan of the Villa of the Papyrii is still our only source on most of the structure) is the hero of the piece. Opposing him were various other and less scrupulous men, who preferred to use gunpowder to blast the treasures of the past out of the earth, destroying a great deal in the process. I've often though the subject would make an excellent movie...

- Nathan
Nathan Ross
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#20
"Some talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules,
Of Hector and Lysander, and such great names as these....."

The British Grenadiers
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#21
Quote:The British Grenadiers
http://youtu.be/UgVxRb6bOTc
Almost as well-drilled as Spartans. :wink:
posted by Duncan B Campbell
https://ninth-legion.blogspot.com/
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#22
Oh the change is massive, simply in the way we conceive of the ancient world, the wealth of new evidence and better worked out theories and methodologies. Though I dislike much German scholarship on the Greeks (but then, who doesn't?) the way we handle textual criticism and source criticism has completely changed things (quellenkritik, quellenforshung and all that). In the Classics the day of the dilettante is thankfully long past though admittedly we're still slow moving.

To get by on early Greek culture for example apart from the usual tools (i.e reading Greek) I'm required to avail myself of a large number of things: a good grasp of the history, the archaeological record, anthropological methods as well as a strong awareness of the Near East and, if linguistic reasoning is needed, things like PIE, Sanskrit/Old Persian and even a rudimentary grasp of the Anatolian branch. I really should learn Akkadian soon. Scholars like West and Burkert have changed things dramatically.

In many ways the world is MUCH wider than what the Victorians dealt with, yet in others significantly smaller: the days of writing about whatever the hell you wanted under the bland banner of "greco-roman" are pretty dead. I'm not sure how long, if ever, this kind of stuff will ever get down to the general public/re-enactors/people in other discipline but then I'm told Latacz's "Troy and Homer" does quite well in Germany, for example.

Also when we say that older generations had a fluent grasp of Greek/Latin. Well...this is debatable, they had a lot more exposure to the languages and some few could even write some what prettily but honestly if you look at their work from a philologically informed viewpoint...well...

Basically despite perceptions as an old, boring, subject Classics is pretty fast moving and pretty virile. Some of the myriad problems with methodology you see being brought up in such diverse places from say CQ to Livius.org are being addressed and in general we're in good shape.
Jass
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#23
Quote:In the Classics the day of the dilettante is thankfully long past ... the days of writing about whatever the hell you wanted under the bland banner of "greco-roman" are pretty dead.
Interesting. Would you say the same of ancient history?
posted by Duncan B Campbell
https://ninth-legion.blogspot.com/
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#24
:wink: :wink: What's new in history, friends? (where's the "nudge" smiley?)
M. Demetrius Abicio
(David Wills)

Saepe veritas est dura.
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#25
Quote:
Lyceum post=303049 Wrote:In the Classics the day of the dilettante is thankfully long past ... the days of writing about whatever the hell you wanted under the bland banner of "greco-roman" are pretty dead.
Interesting. Would you say the same of ancient history?

Honestly? No idea actually. One would think to a degree yes, I mean the things I point out that affect our perception of Greek culture, religion, literature etc also to some degree affect the way we view historical events. A prime example would be the burning of Persepolis, on one hand it looks like an act of vandalism but when you consider it in context it suddenly seems like a shrewd, religiously motivated, act by Alexander. Or simply realising the depth of Greece's integration with the near East might change things in general.

Obviously everyone benefits from new textual editions, better access to inscriptions and all that stuff. I think the gap between the amateur and the professional is pretty huge, yes, that doesn't mean you don't get good work done by the former and bad by the latter though. I've read things on this forum in the past that made a lot more sense than stuff I've seen in books by otherwise respective academics. Argument simply from authority is no argument at all, but obviously to some degree that authority has to be won somehow.

I do think that slowly the general perception of the ancient world is starting to change, not just the academic one.

hoc post edidit utor "Lyceum": Also I know this is RAT but I can't say much about Rome. I think we've came out of the habit of seeing ourselves in the Romans (and the Greeks) and that's helped a lot, plus there has been some attempt to put the Hellenic influence on Rome into context (i.e not omg copycats! which is retarded) and several notable advances on the Etruscans. We have a somewhat workable system for their inscriptions now, the archaeological work is getting very promising. Oxford is even trying to put together a chair on Etruscan studies. Even the treatment of "Barbarians" has changed dramatically, as seen on this very forum. It's a positive, obviously 100-200 years from now people will look back on the work we do now and laugh but Rome wasn't built in a 20 minute coffee break.
Jass
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#26
Quote:I think the gap between the amateur and the professional is pretty huge, yes, that doesn't mean you don't get good work done by the former and bad by the latter though.
Agreed. I was interested in your opinion that "the day of the dilettante" is over. As far as I can see, we are awash with books written by non-professionals (to use a neutral term). As you say, good work is often done by the dedicated amateur; but, in my experience, we more often get bad. Again, I agree that certain so-called professionals are more than capable of producing shoddy, ill-conceived work. But hopefully to a lesser extent, and generally tending not to impact upon the interested reader (imho).

Perhaps this has not been your experience. (And would you mind giving us a hint of a name, Lyceum? To dispel the unsettling illusion of addressing a garden! :wink: )
posted by Duncan B Campbell
https://ninth-legion.blogspot.com/
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