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06-11-2004, 08:59 PM

Avete! 
 
Is there a generally agreed translation of "Marius' Mules" to Latin? I'm not sure if it's been mentioned here before...And I can't find any mention in any of my books...Unless I'm completely overlooking it... 
 
And what is the translation of "Miles Gregarii/arius"? Isn't it basically "Group of Soldiers"?...And is it pronounced "My-lays gregaaree/ous" or "millayes"? 
 
I was gonna ask for a few more...but I'm comepletly drawing a blank...So I'll maybe as more later. 
 
thanks 
-ANDY aka "Roman Dude" Svaviter in Modo, Fortiter in Re 
 
www.higgins.org

D B Campbell · 06-11-2004, 09:26 PM

The expression comes from Frontinus' Stratagems. 
In Book 4, he says that, because Marius made his legionaries carry everything they needed, rather than loading it on pack animals, they were knicknamed muli Mariani, "Marius's mules".

D B Campbell · 06-11-2004, 09:42 PM

As regards your other query, the miles gregalis or gregarius is the "common soldier". (Latin authors like Livy and Tacitus use the terms interchangeably.) 
gregalis / gregarius is an adjective derived from the Latin word for a herd or flock (grex). So it implies a soldier who is nothing special, just one of the herd. 
Spoken aloud, this phrase probably sounds like MEE-lays greg-Ah-rius / greg-Ah-lis. 
Hope that helps.

06-11-2004, 11:45 PM

Thanks, that does help a lot! I had a hunch...Just wanted another opinion. 
 
But I'm still a little confused...I've seen [Miles] Gregarius, Gregarii, and now Gregalis...I've also seen/heard Mille, Milite, Millites...are these all words that mean the same, just argued on who uses what spelling? 
 
Also, there was someone who asked me about a "famous Latin phrase" which supposedly came from the Legionaries...Something to the effect of "stone [pebble] in the shoe", meaning something really annoyng...Any clues? 
 
The term "miles", does this later become the measurement "Mile" (My-ill)? Since a Mile has 5280 Feet, and there are about 5500 soldiers in a Legion....A kid asked me this after a program...I wasn't sure what to tell him, cause it got me thinking, but I dunno if that's a legend more than fact? However, I do know that "Miles" as in LegionarySoldier, later becomes "Military" 
 
Also, the Route March...What is the distance and time that is agreed upon? I've heard, and have been saying, aproximately 20 miles in about 5 hours (25mi/5hr "fast pace"). I believe the Metric version is 30 kilometers? 
Does the "Route March" have a specific Latin phrase? And how do we know it was "5 hours"? I just want to make sure I have the most current information. 
 
(Sorry I don't have a copy of Vegetius...yet) 
 
Something in my head makes me think I know the answers but it just isn't clicking....But, thanks again!

06-13-2004, 01:16 AM

Well just remember that American English has "soldier," "grunt," "GI," "doughboy" and probably fifteen other colloquial terms for commone soldier, so it's no suprprise to me that we would have overlapping terms, here. As to which ones are actually attested in the sources... I'm out of my depth there and defer to the more learned Latin scholars out there... 
 
 
As to mile... I always thought it was more related to the term "mille" for thousand. The dictionary nearest at hand (The Oxford Concise Dictionary) says that it comes from the fact that it was considered 1000 paces. 
 
Aaron Edited by: <A HREF=http://p200.ezboard.com/bromanarmytalk.showUserPublicProfile?gid=aglarsen>AGLarsen</A> at: 6/13/04 11:19 am

L C Cinna · 06-13-2004, 09:23 AM

the pronounciation: not really sure how to describe it but I'll try. First of all the latin C is pronounced as a K, ae is pronounced kind of like the word "I". So the correct pronounciation of the word Caesar would be more or less like 
 
K-(I)-sar and not Seesaar. 
 
If you try to read anything forget any English and try to orientate using Romance languages (what a surprise). 
 
So it should be M-ee-l-e-s (the last e is like the e in "leg"). 
 
Sorry if this is a bit weird but it's kind of hard to transcribe this stuff into English without any linguistic alphabet.

D B Campbell · 06-13-2004, 03:39 PM

Basic Latin lesson (with apologies if this is too simplistic): 
Latin is an "inflected" language, which means that virtually every word is made up of a root (which you can look up in a dictionary) and an ending (which varies according to the word's role in a sentence). 
So there can be no ambiguity of meaning -- you can jumble a Latin sentence up, and it will still mean the same thing, because every word has a definite role. 
If your sentence has miles in it, then "a soldier" is the subject (i.e., a soldier did something/said something/etc.). 
If your sentence has milites in it, then there are several "soldiers" doing something/saying something/whatever. 
If your soldier is the object of the sentence (i.e., if he is having something done to him -- like "I stabbed the soldier"), he becomes militem. You can still find him in a dictionary, from his mil- root, but the ending has changed to indicate his place in the sentence. 
(Miles is a bad example, as it is one of the slightly more complex "third declension" nouns.) 
Your mille is a completely different word meaning "a thousand"; its plural, "thousands", is milia. The Romans measured things in "paces" (passÃƒÆ’Ã‚Â»s) of 5 Roman feet, so a thousand paces (mille passÃƒÆ’Ã‚Â»s) make a Roman mile. (5000 Roman feet is a little short of our 5,280-foot imperial mile, but close enough.) And that's where we get our word for a "mile". 
Confused? Sorry.

06-14-2004, 12:43 AM

L.C. Cinna's advice on pronunciation is good. Now here's probably the most important trick I've learned in my 4 years of teaching Latin to English-speaking kids: Get clear on the Latin vowel sounds FIRST. There are differences in some of the consonants, but they are secondary. You need to completely relearn the value of your vowels, and its all down-hill from there. If you would find it useful, I think I have a Latin pronunciation guide on my computer at my office that I could send you tomorow. The key is to master a different set of vowel sounds first, though, because that's the main thing that will throw you off initially. 
 
Aaron

06-14-2004, 09:05 PM

Thanks for clearing some of that up. 
 
One of the very first things I learned about Latin when I started getting into Roman stuff only about 5 years ago, was the correct pronouciations (C=K, V=W, G=Guh, et cetera), and in fact I learned more of that by just looking at and studying [Ancient] Greek (I have an Alphabetical interest btw) 
 
I love confusing the heck out of people when I say "Yooleeoos Kaisar" and "Kyoos Kaisar Augoustoos Germanikus" (Julius Caesar and Caligula ) And then telling them the "English" version...Yeah lots of wacky looks lemme tell ya 
 
But my question was trying to get a clarification...Take for instance "Pila", is it "Pee-lah" or "PIE-Luh"? So I was asking if there was a difference/correction with "MEE-Lay" and "MY-lay" for miles ~ so is it more of a person to person's pronouciation, or an actual, correct one...And I think DB Campbell's explanation helped me more understand what the details/problems are. 
 
Anways, so I got the idea of mile for measurement (passum), but does anyone know about how we know it's "20 miles in 5 hours" (or whichever it is, I may be wrong?) and what the term is for "Route March"? 
 
thanks as always -ANDY aka "Roman Dude" Svaviter in Modo, Fortiter in Re 
 
www.higgins.org

D B Campbell · 06-14-2004, 09:31 PM

Quote:<hr>Does anyone know about how we know it's "20 miles in 5 hours"?<hr> 
This statement comes from Vegetius, a late source for the Roman army who is thought to have lifted much of his information from late Republican/early imperial writers. 
He says that recruits should be able to march XX milia passuum ("20 miles") in 5 hours ad gradum militarem, "at the military step". He goes on to explain that, pleno gradu ("at the full step"), the recruit should cover 24 miles in the same time. And any faster than that is running!

Matthew Amt · 06-15-2004, 03:27 PM

Avete! 
 
I was looking at this passage in Vegetius just a week or so ago. He adds that these distances are for a mid-summer day, when the hours are longest. Every Roman day was divided into 12 hours, regardless of how long the day is (winter days are shorter than summer days, right?). So summer hours are longer, and you get your best milage in mid-summer. The distances won't be quite so great earlier in the spring or later in the fall. 
 
Also remember, as has been noted above, that Roman miles are a little shorter than modern miles. So 20 Roman miles is about 18 modern miles (I think!). That's still not a bad distance, especially considering that the whole army is moving that far. 
 
Valete, 
 
Matthew/Quintus

06-15-2004, 08:19 PM

Thanks again, DB and Matt! 
 
Ok, Speaking of Vegetius, is there a specific translation/version that I should attempt to look for that is preferred with you guys? I think the "Milner" (spelling?) translation was said to be the best and most available, of course I'm having difficulty finding it available on RA.com, Amazon and B&N. 
 
Whenever I give my presentations and I make mention of the Route March, I always say "About" or "Approximately" when dealing with the numbers, just to be safe. Cause you have conversions from Roman feet/miles to Metric to US/Imp. so there is a bunch of potential problems right there! 
 
That's fascinating how the day was 12 hours, and mid-summer hours were used as a basis... 
Thanks again -ANDY aka "Roman Dude" Svaviter in Modo, Fortiter in Re 
 
www.higgins.org

06-15-2004, 08:38 PM

One more thing about pronunciation: there isn't really any universally accepted pronunciation. The rules that folks on this thread gave hold true for the so-called "classical" pronunciation, which was really reconstructed by scholars in the 19th Century, and is considered the "accepted" pronunciation by most scholars today. But, for example, the regional dialect of Latin closest to Italian still survives as the so-called "ecclesiastical" pronunciation, which is the accepted pronunciation for sung and liturgical Latin, and which I'm sure the Pope probably speaks in the Vatican. (It's also the dialect used in the recent movie The Passion of the Christ. There was also at least one regional British version that I know of which still, I've heard, is the one used in legal contexts. So, from what I can recall, someone trained to the bar might very say "pIlum" instead of the classics scholar's "peelum." 
 
OK, now that I've just muddied the waters again, I'll fade quietly back into the background... 
 
Aaron

06-16-2004, 12:54 AM

Thanks Aaron, I had completely fludged on using "Classical" pronouciation, which I had been using. There are times when it does get confusing when looking up words to see how one goes about pronoucing it "Classically" - which BTW I do agree that is probably the closest we'll get to "actual" Latin IMHO - but anyways, I guess it comes down to diligent study and practice on [my] part. 
 
but, thanks again. Interesting responses either way. 
-ANDY aka "Roman Dude" Svaviter in Modo, Fortiter in Re 
 
www.higgins.org

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