06-22-2014, 02:03 PM
Hello all
Back after a day or two sidetracked by this and that.
Gelu, you wrote:
"... books were hand copied, even language changed over 400 years ..."
It'd be probably reasonable to assume Roman scholars were sensitive to the problems of transmitting texts by manual copying and perhaps the more scrupulous among them would have checked other copies of a source if they were in doubt about a point in the copy nearest to hand. That's only speculation on my part, but it would stand to reason. The thing is, "scrupulous" as I use it here is a modern-day concept in the context of research. Even if Vegetius knew that copies of source "x" tended to contain errors generated by re-transcribing, would it have mattered to him? If his main interest was in creating a satisfying narrative, it may not. The thing is, whatever sources he did have at his disposal were at least "younger" than the earliest manuscripts available to us today (anything authored by Caesar being a mere 450 years old).
But as to the language changing, that mightn't have been a problem for Vegetius. The Latin of Cicero is essentially the Latin of Ammianus Marcellinus just as the Greek of Sophocles isn't that different to that of Constantine Porphyrogenitus (this I can attest to having translated passages of all four). That said, individual words acquire new meanings over time, sometimes abandoning their former meanings, and this might well introduce problems for an antique scholar reading older sources.
Our problem today is that antique writers often didn't acknowledge their sources and so we have to infer not only who they were consulting but, indeed, how well the later writer was understanding the earlier.
Mark, you wrote:
"... I think his legion-construct is a hypothetical and not based upon reality ..."
I'd certainly agree with that. Vegetius does seem to be saying: "Look, the ancients were great because they had this and this, and they did that and that, and we're in the rather sorry state we are today because we've let all that go. But, we could be great again if we revived all of these things". And all the things needing reviving have been cherry-picked, meaning that the army organization which would restore Rome's glory is, as you say, a construct rather than a reconstruction of an organization that actually existed at some historical point.
Which is why I'm steering clear of Vegetius for the present, because it seems (to me) very difficult to relate any of his descriptions to a precedent anchored in history. What I get excited about digging up are descriptions of legionary dispositions or organization at identifiable historical moments.
I wanted to add something about the nature of legions but it's gone and, like Shakespeare's Anthony, "I must pause till it come back to me".
Cheers
Howard / SPC
Back after a day or two sidetracked by this and that.
Gelu, you wrote:
"... books were hand copied, even language changed over 400 years ..."
It'd be probably reasonable to assume Roman scholars were sensitive to the problems of transmitting texts by manual copying and perhaps the more scrupulous among them would have checked other copies of a source if they were in doubt about a point in the copy nearest to hand. That's only speculation on my part, but it would stand to reason. The thing is, "scrupulous" as I use it here is a modern-day concept in the context of research. Even if Vegetius knew that copies of source "x" tended to contain errors generated by re-transcribing, would it have mattered to him? If his main interest was in creating a satisfying narrative, it may not. The thing is, whatever sources he did have at his disposal were at least "younger" than the earliest manuscripts available to us today (anything authored by Caesar being a mere 450 years old).
But as to the language changing, that mightn't have been a problem for Vegetius. The Latin of Cicero is essentially the Latin of Ammianus Marcellinus just as the Greek of Sophocles isn't that different to that of Constantine Porphyrogenitus (this I can attest to having translated passages of all four). That said, individual words acquire new meanings over time, sometimes abandoning their former meanings, and this might well introduce problems for an antique scholar reading older sources.
Our problem today is that antique writers often didn't acknowledge their sources and so we have to infer not only who they were consulting but, indeed, how well the later writer was understanding the earlier.
Mark, you wrote:
"... I think his legion-construct is a hypothetical and not based upon reality ..."
I'd certainly agree with that. Vegetius does seem to be saying: "Look, the ancients were great because they had this and this, and they did that and that, and we're in the rather sorry state we are today because we've let all that go. But, we could be great again if we revived all of these things". And all the things needing reviving have been cherry-picked, meaning that the army organization which would restore Rome's glory is, as you say, a construct rather than a reconstruction of an organization that actually existed at some historical point.
Which is why I'm steering clear of Vegetius for the present, because it seems (to me) very difficult to relate any of his descriptions to a precedent anchored in history. What I get excited about digging up are descriptions of legionary dispositions or organization at identifiable historical moments.
I wanted to add something about the nature of legions but it's gone and, like Shakespeare's Anthony, "I must pause till it come back to me".
Cheers
Howard / SPC
Spurius Papirius Cursor (Howard Russell)
"Life is still worthwhile if you just smile."
(Turner, Parsons, Chaplin)
"Life is still worthwhile if you just smile."
(Turner, Parsons, Chaplin)
