Why Study Latin?

Today, many people who study Latin describe it as a hobby. For others, it is much more.

As recently as few hundred years ago, anyone in Western Europe considering a career in academia, or diplomacy, or anything else which involved constant contact with an international group of people, had to have a good grasp of Latin. They had to be able to read it, write, and speak it at least a little, and preferably more than just a little.

And therefore, anyone today who wants to read about any of those people, about Elizabeth I of England, or Wallenstein, or John Milton, or Martin Luther, is only going to get so far without needing to be able to read Latin. 

Western philosophy from Lucretius to Decartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, and a not inconsiderable amount even more recently, is in Latin. Catholic theology until 1962, and a great deal of the earliest Protestant theology, is in Latin. Newton Wrote about physics in Latin, Gauss about mathematics, Linnaeus about biology. Francis Bacon, Galileo, Hobbes, all wrote in Latin.

You might object that all of the people I've named so far also wrote in other languages, and you'd be right, although just barely in the case of Spinoza. You can read works in their original form by all of the above without knowing any Latin, although only a very little work in Dutch by Spinoza. 

But go back another few hundred years, and many of the leading minds wrote only in Latin: Roger Bacon, William of Occam, Thomas Aquinas, Gerard of Cremona, Albertus Magnus.

As did the historians Gregory of Tours, Bede, Einhard, Nithard, William of Malmsbury, William of Tyre, Matthew Paris, Henry of Huntington, and many others, including many anonymous chroniclers, many of them good writers, many famously bad, but all of them writing in Latin.

Church records, baptisms, marriages and funerals, inscriptions on tombstones, public buildings and currency. Government archives. Compendiums of laws.

And then there is the ancient Latin which remains, relatively small in quantity but generally very high in quality, which we call the Latin Classics, read, quoted and emulated by all of the above. Especially in the Latin Renaissances of the 9th, 12th, 15th and 19th centuries. 

And I mustn't forget to mention all of the Latin poetry and plays and fiction written since the ancient era.

And is a 21st century Latin Renaissance already underway? Some seem to think so. The number of people going to the trouble of learning to speak Latin, not just to recite it but to engage in spontaneous Latin conversation, seems to be rising. 

As I said, for some, Latin is a wonderful hobby. It does nothing but make them happy. But given all of the above sorts of Latin available today to be read, it seems to me that a writer could make more than a hobby of it. A poet, an historian or a philosopher. Yes, for many different sorts of authors, the above-listed sorts of written Latin could offer more than just a hobby.

MSM Coverage of the Presidential Debate, June 2024

 Over and over, I'm seeing descriptions of the debate which go much like this:

"Donald Trump, former President and convicted felon awaiting sentencing, lied his ass off, as he always does -- but Joe had a cold and stuttered. A clear, crushing win for Trump!"

How about if you focus on those lies Trump told, go through them and refute them one by one, mainstream media -- you know: how about if you did your job for once? Remind people of what a disaster Trump's presidency was, and how another term under Trump would definitely be worse? 

You know: the way you did for about 12 hours on January 6, 2021, when Trump's lunacy finally hit home close enough to you that it scared you into actually talking about what had been going on under your noses for 5 years, instead of your endless, useless twaddle about polls and trends and images and perceptions? When the tide of Trumpian crap temporarily scared you into letting your actual opinions show, your opinions about what you study all day every day for a living, letting them show on actual TV, where they might benefit people who are busy with a lot of other things, but who would nevertheless care greatly about politics if you simply talked to them about it? If you would simply, finally do your jobs.

Trump tried to shut down the EPA, called climate change a hoax, he separated refugee children from their parents at the border, he waged a cold war against American Muslims, he let countless people die of COVID because those people simply weren't nearly as important to him as his delusional self-image -- and a second Trump term would be much worse, but it's more important to you to focus on every single time Joe stutters! You're so much worse than useless!

When You Have a Very Specific Question on Social Media...

 ...like say you have a very specific question about a certain sort of widget, so you go to the widgets sub on Reddit cause you figure at least some of the world's leading widget experts must hang out there, and you search first to see if someone else has already asked, but no, so you post with a very specific question, make it clear as day that you came there because you wondered about this very specific thing...

And -- of course -- someone leaves a very long comment about important things about widgets, all of which you already knew, and says nothing about what you asked. So you thank them, but repeat that why you came there was because of the question you already stated very clearly.

So of course they leave an even longer reply full of important things in the history of widgets, still haven't said a thing you didn't already know, still haven't answered your question -- OH! but at the end of this long comment they say something you already suspected: they've never heard of the kind of widget you asked about.

So you express a little mild annoyance. And so then a couple of his friends and admirers chime in, saying things like, "Oh, so you're saying you don't care about all these important things this important man has taken his important time to tell you, you ungrateful worm [...]"

When all you actually said was that Mr Important didn't answer your very specific question, the very specific reason you came to that sub, and no-one else has answered it either, even though you've repeated it four or five times by now and emphasized as clearly as you know how to that it -- your specific question -- is why you came there in the first place.

When you clearly have a specific question, people who don't know the answer DON'T NEED TO COMMENT. 

But they do, don't they. Sure as rain in Oregon. And now it seems very likely that no-one in the sub will ever answer your question, and you're going to be perma-banned from the sub.

Grad school can be like that, unfortunately. That's why I finally dropped out.

Festugiere on Hermes Trismegistus: The Most Puzzling Book I've Yet Attemtpted to Read

 La révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste: Edition Definitive, by AJ Festugière.

I've read Gravity's Rainbow, Finnegans Wake, everything by Gaddis, Eco in Italian+, Adorno in German, Cervantes in Spanish, Ovid and many others in Latin, and none of them gave me any particular problem.

But I can't even tell you yet what Festugiere's book is, what kind of book it is. Oh, I can tell you one thing for sure, one thing some will no doubt find helpful: it is not not the Corpus Hermeticum, the primary Greek and Latin texts of which were edited by Nock and published with facing-page translations into French by Festugiere. In addition to the volumes by Nock and Festugiere, the Coptic and Armenian parts of the corpus were published by JP Mahe, also with French facing-page translations. I Ramelli also published one very convenient, although large, volume of all of the above except for the Armenian text, with facing-page translation in Italian. Also, all of the above volumes contain thorough introductions and commentaries, in French or Italian as the case is.

Those Greek, Latin, Coptic and Armenian texts are the Corpus Hermeticum, the primary texts of the Hermetic religion or philosophy, however you wish to describe it.

Festugiere's Revelation -- is not that. It's often described as a collection of the primary Hermetic texts, but it isn't. Like Festugiere's and Nock's collection of the primary texts, it was first published in 4 volumes beginning in the 1940's -- but 4 different volumes. It contains many, many excerpts of texts written both before and after the Corpus Hermeticum, texts which, whether in agreement or opposition, inspired Hermeticism and in turn were inspired by it, mostly, but not all, translated into French, and with thorough introductions and commentaries. What is it exactly? Festugiere's description of Hermetic religion? That would be my best guess.

I have not spent much time studying theology, in fact I have spent a good portion of my life avoiding theology. That no doubt accounts for much of my difficulty here.

So why am I not avoiding theology as assiduously as I used to, like a good atheist? Because I have loved so many people to whom these things have been so important, that I cannot ignore them any more. My apologies to Johann Wolfgang von ("-- und leider auch Theologie --") Goethe, who I think would understand.

One of the very last parts of this enormous book, one of the very last appendices, contains a translated text by Proclus under a title saying that finding God is difficult and explaining God is impossible. Maybe I should have a long, good laugh at that, and not try to explain what this book is, besides brilliant.

Another good, long laugh for me personally: Hegel puzzles me profoundly, and recently I've come across the assertion the he was an Hermeticist. 

Ancient Manuscripts of Classical Latin

Sir Kenneth Clark, talking about the Italian Renaissance, put the number of surviving ancient manuscripts at no more than 3 or 4, and I naturally jumped right out of my skin, all the more so because Ken generally knew what he was talking about.

No, Texts and Transmission unfortunately does not give a total, although it naturally can be some help here.

If we take AD 500 as the cut-off point, Mynors' edition of Vergil lists 7 or 8 (7 or 8 because one is described as "saec. v/vi"), there are 7 or 8 ancient fragments of Cicero (once again because one is of the 5th or 6th century), the palimpsest of Fronto is of the 5th century, and the palimpsest of Gaius is 5th century, that of Gallus 1st century BC. There's a 4th-century palimpsest of Gellius, a 5th-century palimpsest of Granius, 6 ancient Livian manuscripts, 3 ancient fragments of Lucan, a 5th-century palimpsest of Plautus, 3 ancient fragments of the Elder Pliny and 1 of the Younger Pliny.

We have 7 ancient fragments of Sallust, 1 ancient manuscript of (the Younger) Seneca and 5 of Terence.

That makes a total of 46, or 47 or 48. No doubt I missed some and the actual total is higher.

On the other hand, of course, it is entirely possible that Sir Kenneth knew exactly what he was talking about and I don't -- few things could be less surprising than that. If he was referring to the number of ancient MSS known in the 15th century, the number would be smaller than 46, a number of pailmpsests and papyri having been discovered in the meantime. If he was referring to the number known in Italy in the 15th century, the number would naturally shrink again, and even more if he was referring to the number known to a particular individual 15th-century Italian Classicist.

And of course, it can be that Ken had an earlier cut-off date in mind than AD 500.

And of course, if anyone knows of any MSS that I missed, I'd be delighted to hear about it. 

Can We Please Stop Calling it "the Hush Money Trial"?

If Trump had paid Stormy Daniels hundreds of thousands of dollars out of his own pocket to perform intimate acts with him and then not to discuss it publicly, it would have been pathetic and disgusting, like most of the things Trump says and does, but he wouldn't have been put on trial for it, and he wouldn't have been found guilty of 34 felony counts. Non-disclosure agreements are pretty sleazy generally, but they're legal. Let's be clear about it: Trump was put on trial, and was found guilty of all of those felonies, because he paid for the non-disclosure agreement with misappropriated funds.

And let's be even more clear: "misappropriating funds" is one of those white-collar euphemisms for "stealing money." Trump stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from his 2016 Presidential campaign fund and used that money to pay for the non-disclosure agreement. 

I don't know whether I would have understood what Trump's recently-concluded criminal trial in New York City was about, if I hadn't seen a cartoon years ago, showing Mitch McConnell on Fox News, saying, while Paul Ryan stood next to him, nodding his head with tears in his eyes, something to the effect of "What two consenting adults do behind closed doors with big bags of campaign donations is nobody's business!" I can't find that cartoon now. I apologize to the cartoonist for not being able to give them proper credit.