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.

Buy Neo-Latin books on Amazon: https://amzn.to/40gFwqZ

Why Latin Should Revive

I am rather excited by various developments which seem to show that Latin may be making a comeback: the Living Latin movement, for example, and some recent publications of Medieval and Neo-Latin texts. It seems possible to me that some momentum may be accumulating.

"Latin is a language without  a country.  It is not the native language of any country.  That is why it is doomed." 

It was a language without a country when the Western Roman Empire fell in AD 476, and for well over a thousand years after that it remained the international language of western Europe. It was not a global language as English is today, and I don't happen to know whether or not the reach of Latin was greater than that of Arabic or Chinese, but within western Europe, it was universal.

 

In European universities, from Finland to Portugal, to Lima, Peru, where St Mark's University was officially established in 1551, lectures were given, discussions were held, and examinations, oral and written, in Latin. Latin was the language of mathematics and physics, of botany, chemistry, geography, medicine. Newton published his Principia, in 1728, in Latin. Spinoza published a few minor early works in Dutch, and then all of his major works were in Latin. 

Descartes and Leibniz each published about half in Latin and half in French. Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes wrote mostly in Latin. Milton wrote in English, Italian, Latin and Greek, the show-off! But these were all 17th- and 18th-century figures, coming at the end of the period of Latin's dominance in Europe. Before the year 1600, although there certainly was a large amount of vernacular literature, exactly none of it could have been considered academic. Latin had no country of its own, that's true, but it did have communities, including the academic community. Students and professors traveled all over Europe and employed the same language wherever they went. It was expected that a professor would teach in several countries over the course of his career, in part to ensure that ideas circulated internationally. 

Latin was the language of royalty and high aristocracy, and of international diplomacy. It was not always expected that every single king and queen could speak brilliantly and spontaneously in Latin, but the advantages of being able to do so were large and obvious.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, military generals, colonels and majors came from the aristocracy, and they traveled internationally, working sometimes for this country, sometimes for another. Although in this case it had less to do with the spread of ideas than with the mercenary officers seeking the most advantageous positions. And all over Europe, battlefield commands were shouted out in Latin.

Latin was the international European language of shipping and commerce. Christopher Columbus did not attend a university, but he did learn Latin, in order to be a ship's captain traveling internationally, and also in order to read works about the Earth's geography which were all either originally written in Latin or translated into Latin from Greek.

So you see, although Latin did not have a country, for over a thousand years it still had some very important uses. And I didn't even mention the Middle Ages, or theology! It may have been no-one's first language -- or very few people's first language -- but it was very many people's second language. The time in which Latin has declined is still a very short time compared to the time when it flourished.

Anyway, when I said yesterday that I was very excited because I thought Latin might be about to make a very big comeback, I was not thinking about it replacing English as the world language numero uno (see what I did there? never mind). I was merely expressing the hope, shared by some others, that Latin may be reviving somewhat from the low point in popularity it has recently reached. At the very least, perhaps more people will resume studying several thousand years' worth of the history of hundreds of millions of people in the language in which it was written.

Neo-Latin Texts from Bloomsbury

The British publisher Bloomsbury has published at least 3 volumes of Neo-Latin literature: 1 volume each of European and British texts, and 1 of texts in British Universities. 1 more volume, dealing with Latin plays written by Jesuits in Japan, may have already appeared. However, I have had only the first 3 volumes before my eyes, and so this post will concentrate mostly on those. Bloomsbury's website shows 6 further volumes scheduled for publication later in 2023 and 2024, with texts by Ermolao Barbaro, Roger Ascham, Robert Persons, SJ, Classical scholars, and Popes Urban VIII, Alexander VII and Leo XIII. Here is the page on this Neo-Latin series on Bloomsbury's website. 

The first 3 volumes in this series, An Anthology of European Neo-Latin Literature, An Anthology of British Neo-Latin Literature and An Anthology of Neo-Latin Literature in British Universities, present a selection of excerpts of items published between AD 1500 and 1800 in the first two volumes, and between AD 1500 and 1700 in the volume concerning British universities. 

 

Each Neo-Latin text -- 19 of them in the volume on European Latin, 18 in the volume on British Latin and 11 in the volume concerning Latin in British universities -- is preceded by an introduction and followed by a commentary, and furnished with a facing-page English translation, each text's apparatus provided by a different luminary from today's world of academic Latin and related fields. The introductions provide information about the authors and situations in which the texts were written, the commentaries help to explain passages which might otherwise be mysterious. They are simply splendid, with much useful information for both the layperson and the specialist. I'm sorry, but I have nothing to carp about here.

The selection of authors in the volumes on European and British Neo-Latin will cause no great surprise to those already familiar with the field: Erasmus, More, Elizabeth I, Buchanan, Milton, Barclay and the other stars of the period are all there. There is Bembo on Columbus' first voyage, Fracastoro on syphilis, an excerpt from John Barclay's novel Argenis -- the usual suspects.

The volume on Latin in British Universities stays true to its title, offering treatises on the correct teaching of Greek, on various power struggles between universities and politicians as well as panegyrics on statesmen with whom the universities happened to have more harmonious relations, and some student compositions which are more art for art's sake.

Neo-Latin Anthologies

Mark Riley first published his Neo-Latin Reader in 2016. The copy before me is from 2018, and on the copyright page it is noted that corrections were made in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Milena Minkova's Florilegium Recentioris Latinitatis was published in 2018.

Neither volume includes facing-pages translations of the Latin texts, indicating that they are intended for readers who actually intend to read them in Latin. 

Riley divides his book by genres, which range from poetry to fiction to history to science. There is even a section of jokes in Latin. I must confess that I cannot completely explain the division of the texts in Riley: it is not strictly chronological, and texts by one author sometimes appear in more than one section. But in the introductions to the texts, in English, Riley offers much of interest about the cultural backgrounds from which they arose. He also gives a lot of information about editions of the various authors, which I find good, as, presumably, readers intrigued by the selections in the anthology might want to read more by these Neo-Latin writers.

 

Petrarch is mentioned by name on the front cover of this paperback edition, where there is also a picture of his face. However, I couldn't find any works by Petrarch in the table of contents. This left me quite confused, until I saw a letter from Petrarch to Cicero in Riley's introduction to the book. 

Minkova's Florilegium, as you might already have guessed from its title, is written entirely in Latin, from the preface to the entire volume, to to the introductory remarks to each work, to the footnotes. The authors, representing a diversity of genres and subjects comparable to Riley, are presented in chronological order, from Petrarch (14th century) to Pascoli (19th-20th century). The only non-Latin material to be found between these covers, aside from the excerpted Neo-Latin authors' occasional use of phrases in Greek, is to be found in Minkova's lists of recent scholarly work pertaining to each and every author. These lists are most welcome. However, I was not able to find within them any reference to editions of the Neo-Latin authors. That's one point for Riley, imho. Like Riley's prefatory material in English, Minkova's prefaces in Latin contain a wealth of interesting and edifying information, historical, cultural and linguistic.

Reading these two fine volumes, I kept thinking of other Neo-Latin authors who deserve to be anthologized. Riley and Minkova both include much that one would expect in volumes intended to introduce recent Latin: works by Petrarch, More, Erasmus, Landival and others are in both volumes. It is no real reproach to either of these editors that I missed, for example, Ficino, Poliziano, Luther, Calvin, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Milton, Kant, Marx and Nietzsche, to name a few. Rather, it indicates that this is a very wide field, with a very great deal of material suitable for introductory anthologies.

Latin After the Classics

I'm writing this post for very much the same reason I've written several earlier posts: because I encounter people who equate Latin with ancient Latin and seem unaware of how much Latin literature has survived which was written after the ancient era ended around AD 450, the date of the latest "pagan" Latin texts.

There are some other people, who seem to believe that ancient Latin is the only WORTHWHILE Latin ever written, the only Latin worth reading. On that subject, I would ask you to consider this: only a tiny fraction of what was written by pre-Christian Latin authors has survived to the present. What we have now, to a great extent, is what people considered to be most worth preserving. No doubt much was written in ancient Latin which was of much lower quality. Much more of the writing of lower quality has survived from the Medieval, Renaissance and more recent eras. If you compare ancient Latin to more recent Latin, it's only fair to compare the best to the best.

 

But --  must you compare? I doubt that I will be able to stop anyone who is so disposed from disparaging Latin from post-ancient eras. But perhaps I can encourage others to read what they like, without allowing snobs to ruin things for them.

So: I am not comparing the following Latin works to ancient Latin. Plenty of others do that full-time, and find the newer stuff wanting. Such comparisons don't interest me. 

Boethius wrote in the earliest post-"pagan" period. He lived from ca AD 480 to 524. His magnum opus de consolatione philosophiae is well-known. In addition to that, many of his writings on music and mathematics have survived.

Isidore of Seville, ca AD 560 to 636, is also known for one work above all, his Etymologiae. Many others of his work survive, some on physics, some theological, some historical.

Gregory of Tours, c538-594, wrote an Historia Francorum which is one of our few written sources of information about the Merovingian dynasty down to Gregory's time.

Alcuin of York, born around 735, died 804, was the chief architect of Charlemagne's massive program of educational reform. Like Charlemagne, Alcuin seems to have been very charismatic and persuasive. He would debate with Charlemagne over matters of policy, often daring to chide and contradict the Emperor. Many of his written works survive. His poems, while not always masterpieces, are very expressive and winning.

Matthew Paris, died 1259, an English Benedictine monk, besides being one of the very best of Medieval historians, was also a gifted drawers of pictures, as can be seen in some of the manuscripts of his works which he himself made, as well as in maps which are considered some of the finest of the Middle Ages. I would heartily recommend all of his historical writings, but above all the Chronica majora. 

The examples could be endless. Reading some Medieval or later Latin works will tend to lead you to others.

It seems that often, people these days read translations from the Latin without realizing that they are translations. Bacon and Hobbes wrote about as much in Latin as they did in English. As did John Milton. No, I'm not talking about Paradise Lost, that was written in English, but Milton's Defense of the English People, for example, was originally Defensio pro Populo Anglicano. Kant, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Romain Rolland all published works in Latin. Prefaces to works of classical Greek and Latin are routinely written in Latin to this day. And if you say you are studying Medieval history, and you don't read Latin, then I have to risk sounding like one of the snobs I began this essay by denouncing, and wonder exactly what you are studying.

Rafael Landivar and his Epic Poem Rusticatio Mexicana

Rafael Landivar was born in Guatemala in 1731, entered the Jesuit order and went to Mexico to study in 1750, and was ordained and returned to Guatemala in 1755. There he taught rhetoric and grammar until 1767, when upon the order of King Charles III of Spain, all Jesuits were expelled from the Western Hemisphere. After several years of wandering and hardship, Landivar found a home in Bologna among a group of exiled Jesuits in 1770. He remained in Italy until his death in 1793.

 

He is remembered above all for his poem Rusticatio Mexicana, first published in Modena in 1781. The poem deals with both Mexico and Guatemala; however, in Europe at the time few people had heard of Guatemala, and the term "Mexico" was often used to refer to a territory including Guatemala and much else of Central and South America.

Rusticatio Mexicana is often compared to Vergil's Georgics. Although both poems deal with rural life, the comparison is problematic. Landivar's poem is much longer than Vergil's. It deals with a much greater range of subjects. And while the Georgics harken back nostalgically to an imagined Roman Golden Age in an attempt to inspire Vergil's contemporaries to greater morality and better citizenship, the Rusticatio Mexicana celebrates the wonders of Guatemala and Mexicana in Landivar's own time.

And while Landivar certainly acknowledges following in Vergil footsteps, there are actually more homages to the Aeneid in his epic than to the Georgics, as well as references to many other authors, ancient, Renaissance and also contemporary with Landivar, including several of his Jesuit colleagues. These many references are the appreciative comments of a very well-read author, not the copying of an unimaginative hack.

Landivar is deservedly well-known in present-day Latin America, -- where, for example, a large university in Guatemala is named after him, and many editions of the Rusticatio Mexicana have appeared -- and undeservedly obscure elsewhere.

In writing this post I have referred to Andrew Laird's volume The Epic of America: An Introduction to Rafael Landivar and the Rusticatio Mexicana. In addition to the text of Rusticatio Mexicana alongside an English translation, the volume texts and translations of several shorter poems by Landivar, several very illuminating essays about the poem, the author and Latin American literature written in Latin.

In my opinion, Laird's volume has only one serious flaw. Sadly, it is a major flow, and utterly inexplicable: the text of the Rusticatio Mexicana and its English translation, presumably the biggest attraction of the entire work, are printed in a much smaller font than the rest of the work. The other way around would've made far more sense. 

Those who can read Spanish may prefer one of the Latin-Spanish editions. Not to mention those few and blessed who can actually read Latin with no help whatsoever from any translations.

My Latin Novel

I've completed 2 novels: the first one, short enough that perhaps I should call it a novella instead of a novel, is entitled Salvation and is about Pontius Pilate and Jesus. In my version of the story, Pilate and Jesus are friends, and a lot of other details are different from the traditional story.

My second novel is entitled The Independents. It's about the friendship which develops between a very successful Hollywood movie director, one of Amurrka's most highly-acclaimed poets, who at the beginning of the story is becoming homeless, not for the first time (this is my sarcastic comment on haw badly Amurrka treats its poets. Seriously, in a whole long list of other countries, poets have it better than they do in the US), and a former Mafioso who doesn't want to be a thug anymore, and is on the run from his former associates, and some other people.

I've started quite a few other novels, including 2 which I started writing on this blog: a novel about angels, and a novel about 2 autistic men in London in 1900.

And then, there's my Latin novel, the novel I want to write in Latin, but I'm not sure whether I'll ever be fluent enough in Latin to do it right. I've been thinking about this one since long before I first heard of Capti by Stephen Berard, published in 2011, still the only novel I know written originally in Latin which has been published more recently than the 18th century. (Berard has promised that Capti is just the 1st of 7 novels he will write in Latin -- how long must we wait for the next one?!)

This novel will start with a preface, in Latin, by a member of a Native American tribe from the southwestern US, which is noted for having produced many first-rate Classical scholars. The preface is written by the editor of the text which comprises the bulk of the novel. The editor notes that it's not surprising that his tribe is rather adept at the Latin language, because it has been their native language for 1000 years. Very few academics outside of the tribe believe that they have been reading, writing and speaking Latin for 1000 years, but it is the truth, and the text which comprises the bulk of this volume is further evidence that it is true: it is the text of a recently-re-discovered manuscript which had been lost for a very long time, which contains a copy of the journal of the man who taught the tribe to read, write and speak Latin 1000 years ago. In the late 10th century, the author of this journal was a restless young European nobleman. He was restless in great part because he had read the Latin Classics, which depicted an ancient Roman society in which people could follow any religion they liked, or any combination of religions, or no religion whatsoever; whereas, in 10th-century, the young nobleman and everyone he knew was either a Christian, or pretending to be, because otherwise, they would be tortured and killed quite horribly.

At the beginning of the journal, the nobleman writes about how he has heard that there are non-Christians far to the north in Europe. He packs up a trunk with manuscripts of all of the Latin Classics known to him and heads north. He has many colorful and dangerous adventures. Everywhere he goes, he tries to teach Latin to whomever he meets who isn't already fluent in the language, and he has copies made of the Classical texts and urges his students to make still more copies and spread knowledge of the wonderful literature of ancient Rome.

For the most part, he finds few people who are interested in the training he offers. At times it is very difficult for him to keep possession of his treasure, the trunk full of Classical manuscripts. But he keeps it.

After teaching Latin to a few pagan Vikings and not having much hope of further spreading interest in his cause, he hears about an upcoming voyage. The Vikings have discovered a strange, non-European land, far across the bitterly-cold ocean to the west. He manages to get himself aboard a ship going to those strange lands. When the Vikings abandon their settlement in the strange Western land and sail back to Scandanavia, our narrator stays, and travels west with his trunk full of treasure, full of manuscripts. After many further travels and many more adventures, managing to find an individual or 2 here and there who are interested in the teaching he is offering, finally, in the area which present-day Arizona, he finds an entire tribe who are eager to meet him, who have heard of him, and who want to learn to read and write and speak Latin. And there he spends a long happy time, among a people who copy all of the Classical manuscripts, and master Latin with a joyous eagerness, so much so that, while the European nobleman, although no longer young at all, is still alive, they have adopted Latin as their new first language.

And that's my Latin novel. Or should I swell with hubris and over-ambition at my advanced age and the not-very-advanced stage of my skills in Latin, and nevertheless refer to it as my first Latin novel?

Recent and Contemporary Latin Prose

Over the course of the past 30-odd years, I have taught myself a small amount of Latin. In 1989 I received a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in German and English and a minor in French, and I studied more German in graduate school, without obtaining any graduate degree.

Otherwise, all of my language acquisition has occurred outside of classrooms. My method of learning Latin may be unusual -- I don't actually know whether it is -- and perhaps it is not to be recommended: I have read little bits of Latin textbooks, but really not very much at all. Almost all of my attempt to learn Latin has consisted of looking at Latin texts, in editions by Teubner and Oxford Classical Texts and the Rolls Series and MGH, and Loeb, and some editions from the 19th century and earlier from publishers like Weidmann -- just looking at the texts and trying to read them, and occasionally going to a dictionary or textbook for help. And then looking at the Latin texts again, over and over, until I begin to understand them somewhat better. And then looking at them some more.

In the case of recent editions from Teubner and Oxford Classical Texts, in which the editors' prefaces have been in Latin in every case I've seen except one -- in such cases, often I'm much more familiar with the modern prefaces than with the actual ancient texts, which are after all the ostensible point of such endeavors. The modern editors often write in a much more accessible style.

Let me assure my readers that I am in no way accusing these editors of writing Latin in an unsophisticated way. On the contrary, an accessible writing style can the sign of the very greatest skill: look at Bellow in English, for example, or late Sartre in French, transmitting great depths of thought with exceptional clarity. A complex writing style, one which is a little more difficult to read, can also convey deep thinking, but it does not always do so: right now I'm thinking of great 18th century writers in English who wrote grand, long, convoluted sentences -- often because they had read a lot of Classical Latin -- writers such as Berkeley, Hume and Gibbon, and also of other 18th century English writers who wrote long, convoluted sentences which are not grand at all, and who are far too numerous for it to be necessary for me to name any of them.

Right now I'm struggling, not for the first time, with de aquaeductu urbis Romae by Frontinus.

It's not the first time that I've turned the pages of this text, in the 1998 Teubner edition by Kunderewicz, and yet, I could tell you much more about Kunderewicz' preface than about Frontinus' text. At first I had thought to copy here the first sentence of Kunderewicz's preface and of Frontinus' text, but on the copyright page of this edition is an exceptionally long and emphatic warning against using any part of its contents -- and I could hardly claim to be ignorant of this warning's contents just because it's written in German -- and so I will just give you word counts: the first sentence of Frontinus is 75 words long, and then first sentence of Kunderewicz is 12 words long.

I coincidentally also happen to have a copy of the 1990 Teubner edition of stratrgrmata by Frontinus, edited, by R I Ireland. The first sentence of Ireland's preface is 104 words long. It's a wonderful sentence, and I have nothing to say against Ireland as a Latin prose stylist, but, as a whole, I think Kunderewicz's style is closer to the contemporary norm. And I think that is a good thing. I take it as a sign of an authentic and living contemporary Latin (at least as far as writing is concerned). Most of those writing today in Latin do not seem to be trying to imitate the ancient authors whom they edit. (There may be many others writing in Latin today who are doing things other than editing ancient Latin and Greek authors, but I am not aware of the existence of many.)

In the Italian Renaissance, very many of the most prominent Latin authors, who were writing all sorts of things besides prefaces to editions of ancient authors, strove quite consciously to imitate Cicero's writing style in prose and Vergil's in verse -- two very bad ideas, in my opinion, which inadvertently did more to kill the Latin language than to vivify it.

Contemporary Latinists, as far as I can tell, rather than imitating the ancients, seem to be closer to sharing the attitude of Angelo Poliziano, one of the the relatively few non-Ciceronians among the Italian Renaissance authors, who said:

"Non exprimis, aliquis inquit, Ciceronem. Quid tum? Non enim sum Cicero; me tamen, ut opinor, exprimo." ("Some say I don't write like Cicero. So what? I'm not Cicero. But, I believe, I do write like myself.")

That's the only way to write, as far as I'm concerned. Here's to the living Latin language.

A Timeline of Giving Up on Latin

during the 13th century -- French replaces Latin as the official language of England.

ca 1302-1305 -- Dante defends writing in the vernacular in his (Latin) treatise De vulgari eloquentia.

between 1490 and 1539 -- French becomes the official language of France.

1773 -- Latin loses its status as one of the official languages of education in Poland-Lithuania.

1784 -- German replaces Latin as the official language of the Holy Roman Empire.

1794 -- Tom Paine publishes The Age of Reason, in which he states, "as there is now nothing new to be learned from the dead languages [Paine was referring to Latin and Greek -SB], all the useful books being already translated, the languages are become useless, and the time expended in teaching and in learning them is wasted."

1844 -- Hungarian replaces Latin as the official language of Hungary.

1847 -- Latin ceases to be the official language of the Sabor, the Croation parliament.

after 1920 -- In the Soviet Union, Latin is associated with the ancien regime and its study declines drastically at all levels of education.

1931 -- Yale drops its Latin requirement for admission. (The most I've been able to discover about Latin entrance requirements at other US universities is the frequent assertion that "many other universities later followed Yale's example.")

1960 -- Oxford drops its Latin requirement for admission.

1963 -- The Catholic mass is no longer celebrated exclusively in Latin.

1968 -- Latin courses are no longer required in middle school in France.

1972 -- Latin is no longer required for graduation from Gymnasiums in West Germany.

2012 -- The International Botanical Congress no longer requires that newly-discovered plants species be described in Latin.

The New Zealand Qualifications Authority is proposing to drop the scholarship exam in Latin (for final year pupils) in 2019.

The Titles Of Some 16th-Century Books

MARCI WELSERI, MATTHAEI F. ANT. N. REIP. AUGUSTANAE QUONDAM DUUMVIRI, OPERA HISTORICA ET PHILOLOGICA, SACRA ET PROFANA. In quibus Historia Boica, Res Augustanae, Conversio et Passio SS. Martyrum, Afrae, Hilariae, Dignae, Enomiae, Euptropiae, Vitae S. Udalrici, et S. Severini, Narratio eorum, quae contigerunt Apollonio Tyrio, Tabulae Peutingerianae integrae, Epistolae ad Viros Illustres Latinae Italicaeque, et Proteus satyra continentur. Accessit P. Optatiani Porphyrii Panegyricus, Constantino M. missus, ex optimo Codice a PAULLO VELSERO divulgatus, Praemissa his fuit Praefatio ad Lectorem, de singulis scriptis nunc recusis, juxta virorum eruditissimorum sententias: Nec non VITA, GENUS, ET MORS AUCTORIS NOBILISSIMI. Accurante CHRISTOPHORO ARNOLDO. NORIMBERGAE, Typis ac sumtibus WOLFGANGI MAURITII, et Filiorum JOHANNIS ANDREAE ENDTERORUM. ANNO CIC ICC LXXXII.

IOHANNIS SLEIDANI, DE STATV RELIGIONIS ET REIPVBLICAE, CAROLO QVINTO CAESARE, COMMENTARII VARIA AC MVLTIPLICI RERVM VTILISSIMARVM COGNITIONE REFERTI, NVNC RECENS ACCVRATA DILIGENTIA, SVMMAQVE FIDE RECOGNITI, ET NOVIS SVMMARIIS SINGVLORVM LIBRORVM, PRO FACILIORI RERVM COGNITIONE, ET INVENTIONE, AVCTI, ET ILLVSTRATI. Auctor Iohannes Sleidanus ad Lectorem. MVlti queruntur multa per hos libros, Occultarerum sparsa negotia, Ornata nusquam gratia, Omnia Vera, sed obticenda. Plures queruntur, plurima suscipi, Indigna, summo cum scelere et probro, Ad supprimendam Veritatem Religionis, et innocentes. Vtrisque causae sunt querimoniae: Sed iustiores, pars habet altera. Haec Lector, ut ne te laterent, Causam habet Autor, ut ista scribat. ADIECTA EST ETIAM APPENDIX, SEV CONTInuatio eorundem Commentariorum, Ab anno Christi M. D. LVI. quo Autor e Vita excessit, vsque ad praesentem M. D. LXVIII. Annum, ex fide dignissimis historijs ad publicam vtilitatem collecta. Auctore Viro Clarissimo D. Iustino Goblero, Goarino, V. I. Doctore. Cum Indice Rerum omnium locupletissimo. FRANCOFVRTI AD MOENVM, PER PETRVM Fabricium, impensis Hieronymi Feyrabend. ANNO M. D. LXVIII.

HENR. STEPHANI Orationes II. I. Adversus lib. Uberti Folietae De magnitudine et perpetua in bellis felicitate Imperii Turcici. II. Ad expeditionem in Turcas fortiter et constanter persequendam exhortatoria. Quae AUGUSTISS. CAESARI et universis Rom. imp. ordinibus, Ratisbonae conventum habentibus, ab eodem oblatae, et illis acceptissimae fuerunt. FRANCFORDII, TYPIS WECHELIANIS. M. D. LXXXXIIII.

De AFFLICTIONE, TAM CAPTIVORVM QVAM ETIAM SVB Turcae tributo uiuentium Christianorum, cum figuris res clare exprimentibus. Similiter de Ritu, deque Caeremoniis domi, militiaeque ab ea gente usurpatis. Additis nonnullis lectu dignis, linguarum Sclauonicae et Turcicae, cum interpretatione Latina, libellus. Autore Bartholomaeo Gyurgieuits, peregrino Hierosolymitano, qui per duos menses cathena collo uinctus, saepe uenundatus, XIII. annos apud eosdem seruitutem seruiens, omnia experientia uidit et didicit. Cum gratia et Priuilegio Caesareo, ad biennium, sub poena. C. Karol. et librorum confiscatione.

DISSERTATIO De RATIONE STATUS In Imperio nostro Romano-Germanico. In qua, Tum, qualisnam revera in eo Status sit; tum, quae Ratio Status observanda quidem, sed magno cum Patriae Libertatis detrimento, neglecta hucusque fuerit; tum denique quibusnam mediis antiquus Status restaurari ac firmari possit, dilucide explicatur: Auctore HIPPOLITHO à LAPIDE. Anno M DC XL

CAELII AVGVSTINI CVRIONIS SARRACENICAE historiae libri tres, ab autore innumeris locis emendati atque expoliti. IN QVIBUS Sarracenorum, Turcarum, aliarumque gentium origines et res per annos septingentos gestae, continentur. His accessere VOLFGANGI DRECHSLERI earundem rerum Chronicon, sive breviarium Item, CAEL. AVGVST. CVRIONIS Marochensis regni in Mauretania nobilissimi a Sarracenis conditi, descriptio, nunquam antea edita. CAELII SECVNDI CVRIONIS, de bello Melitensi a Turcis gesto, historia nova. Cum Rerum et verborum in hisce praecipue memorabilium copioso INDICE. Cum Caes. Maiest. gratia et privilegio ad annos sex. BASILEAE, EX OFFICIna Oporiniana, 1568.

DE EDVCANDIS ERVDIENDISQVE PRINCIPVM LIBERIS, REIPVBLICAE GVBERNANDAE DESTINATIS, DEQVE REPVBLICA Christiane administranda Epitome: LIBRI DVO. ACCESSIT DIARIVM, SEV QVOTIDIANAE preces hebdomadis accommodatae. Item Celeuma exhortatorium ad praeparationem Christiane moriendi. AVCTORE CONRADO HERESBACHIO Iureconsulto, Principis Iuliacensis, Cliuensis, etc. Consiliario. CVM INDICE NOVO ET LOCVPLETISS. SPARTAM NACTVS HANC ORNA. Erudimini qui iudicatis terram, Psal. 2. v. 10. [gap: illustration] Cum Gratia et Privilegio. FRANCOFVRTI AD MOENVM. M. D. XCII.

Juergen Leonhardt Is Alright

We can see that this kitten

is helping someone to study Latin -- possibly an Italian person.

Juergen Leonhardt in not Italian, but German. He said this:

"Although Latin still had a presence [after 1800], the future belonged to the new national languages, and the proportion of Latin texts went into steady decline. It is understandable that scholars would be more interested in the waxing of literatures in the vernaculars than in the waning of Latin. The invention of the automobile in the late nineteenth century provides us with a similar example in that the horse and buggy continued to play an important role alongside the car for more than fifty years. Nevertheless, the wider public tends to be more interested in early automobiles than late horse-drawn carriages." -- Latin. Story of a World Language, 2013. p 6.

The comparison of recent Latin to recent horse-drawn carriages sort of blew my mind. It was the first thing I've read which helped me to understand the recent decline of Latin as a result of anything other than stupidity. Leonhardt mentions other causes which I would describe as straight-up stupidity, and which he also does not describe as unadulterated genius.

Maybe Latin is dead in some ways. Leonhardt describes it not as dead but as "dead," because some of the criteria which are generally thought to indicate that a language is dead apply to Latin, while others do not. Anyway: it's a really cool book, and at the end of it Leonhardt does not speak of Latin as "dead" even in quotation marks, but urges the reader to treat it "as if it were a living language", and does not seem devoid of hope that it will revive in some ways. (p 292) So: yay.

In between pages 6 and 292, Leonhardt agrees with me (and with many of his academic colleagues who are fans of the Latin language) that Charlemagne was really cool. It seems to me that it would be hard to be a fan of the language and not think that Charlemagne was cool. Leonhardt also has a lot to say about how Latin was used as a real live living language, spoken not just by priests and poets but also by lawyers and diplomats and others who traveled a lot in Western Europe, for a good thousand years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. (Christopher Columbus never had a lot of formal education, but was described as a good Latinist. He's not mentioned in Leonhardt's book but I'm just saying.) And when Leonhardt was making that comparison of Latin after 1800 and horse-drawn carriages made after cars had begun to be made, one point he was making is that there is an awful lot of Latin which was written after the Classical period. 10,000 times as much as what has survived from the Classical era, in fact (p 2), and that scholars have barely begun to scratch the surface when it comes to studying Neo-Latin, which is from about 1500 to now.

In conclusion, France is a land of many contrasts.

Latin's Not Dead

And I don't feel like debating it. If you say Latin is dead, you're dead. inside. Or maybe you jokers who've been saying for hundreds of years now that it's dead, maybe consciously or subconsciously you want to kill it. In some cases there's definitely no "maybe" about it. Why would you want to kill a language? What's wrong with you?

In the 3rd century BC Plautus wrote hilariously crude comedies, in the 2nd century BC Terence wrote much more polite comedies, in the 1st century BC Julius Caesar wrote about his exploits in Gaul, in the 1st century AD Pliny the Elder wrote a long work much like an encyclopaedia which is known as the Natural History, in the 2nd century his son wrote some famous letters, in the 3rd century Tertulian ranted and raved in a famous manner, in the 4th century Ausonius wrote beautiful poems, in the 5th century Augustine did his thing, in the 6th century Gregory of Tours wrote of appalling goings-on, in the 7th century Isidore of Spain wrote another celebrated encyclopaedia-like work; his is called the Etymology, in the 8th century the Venerable Bede wrote a history of England, in the 9th century Einhard wrote a biography of Charlemagne, in the 10th century Widukind wrote a history of the Saxons, in the 11th century Anselm of Canterbury wrote celebrated theology and philosophy, in the 12th century William of Tyre wrote a magnificent history of the Crusades up until his own time, in the 13th century Thomas Aquinas wrote a metric ton of theology, in the 14th century William of Occam wrote philosophy which didn't contain that now known as Occam's Razor, in the 15th century Enea Silvio de Piccolomini wrote a very great variety of things, in the 16th century Giordano Bruno wrote things which got him killed, in the 17th century Johannes Kepler wrote books which greatly advanced the science of astronomy, in the 18th century Giambattista Vico wrote a liber metaphysicus, in the 19th century Karl Marx wrote a dissertation on the Emperor Augustus, in the 20th century GP Goold published at least 2 papers on Manilius in the Rheinisches Museum, and in the 21st century Stephen Berard published Capti, a novel, the first volume in a planned 7-part series --

-- and what do all of those written works have in common with many thousands of others? Couple of things. They're all still read today. And they were all written in Latin.

Which is not dead. Between the 3rd century BC and now quite a few languages have been born and then died, while Latin has just kept on going. The only European language now alive which has been continuously alive in both written and spoken form for longer than Latin is Greek.

So just shut up, rather than trying to tell me that Latin is dead. Just shut up.

1841. And Latin. And Photography

Photography existed in 1841 -- but how long it had existed by then, is debated. Since the 1820's, or longer. As far as the use of the Latin language by photographers in the early 19th century, one might think that the term camera, from camera obscura, Latin for dark chamber, indicates a familiarity with Latin among early photographers, but no: knowledge of the camera obscura, which is not exactly the same thing as what we call a camera, is attested as early as the 5th century BC, in the works of the Chinese philosopher Mozi. Aristotle, Euclid, Roger Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci all were familiar with the camera obscura, and Kepler gave it its Latin name. When devices for making photographs were first named cameras in the 19th century, they were merely adopting Kepler's 17th-century term. The term photography -- from Greek, not Latin -- was used by John Herschel in 1839, and possibly by others before that. It is in the nature of Western learning that those familiar with Greek tend to be very familiar with Latin, and I think we may safely assume some knowledge of Latin on the part of Herschel, who attended Eton and Cambridge and translated the Iliad into English and was a founding member of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1820. But Herschel's Classical education does not necessarily say anything about the linguistic knowledge of other early photographers.

I have not been able to find any published works in Latin by John Herschel. And that seems strange for a man of his time, education and achievements. Of course, my not finding Latin works by Herschel should not be assumed to indicate that he published no such works. Perhaps he did not, or perhaps my trouble in finding such has more to do with lack of linguistic interests of those writing about Herschel today. Much the same can be said about my finding no Latin works by the early, traditionally-educated photographers Nicéphore Niépce and François Arago. William Henry Fox Talbot, another early-19th century photographer, went to Cambridge and won a prize in Classics there for crying out loud, and still, all actual Latin works by him have been cleverly, thoroughly hidden from me.

Louis Daguerre and Thomas Wedgwood came from less upper-crusty backgrounds and more therefore have had less occasion to learn Latin, although those backgrounds certainly don't make a knowledge of Latin on their part impossible.

The earliest confirmed date of a photograph of the Khyber Pass I could find: this one from 1878.

Of the Ottoman Empire, from 1864:

Baseball, 1862:

I'm flummuxed by my inability to find Latin works by such people as Herschel, Niépce, Arago and Talbot. Is this an indication of the beginnings of that notorious split and antagonism in Western culture between science and the humanities? It was as natural as could be that Kepler both experimented with optics and wrote in Latin. There was no reason why the one would have made the other less likely. And it would have been very strange indeed for Roger Bacon, probably the leading expert of his time on the subject of optics, to compose entire works in any other language than Latin, even though he was fluent in several other languages and was a pioneer and what we would recognize today as linguistics.

It's absurd and a disaster that today, tinkering with gadgets often makes a knowledge of Latin less likely, and vice versa.

1841. And Latin. And Slavery

In 1841, Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria signed a treaty agreeing to suppress slave trade. Opposition to slave trade was not always the same thing as abolishing slavery in one's own dominions: Britain, France, Prussia and Austria had already abolished slavery in their home states, although not in all of their colonies, while Russia would not free its serfs until 1861. The Ottoman Empire abolished slave trade from Africa in 1847, although it was not until 1882 that it abolished slavery throughout its territories, it having been already abolished in Egypt in 1877.

In the US South, railroad companies routinely owned slaves. Most of the Southern railways prior to the Civil War were built with slave labor. Much historical research remains to be done concerning the details of the relationship between slavery and railroads in the South.

South Carolina outlawed teaching slaves to read and write in 1740; Virginia did so in 1819. After the Civil War and emancipation, resistance to the education of blacks continued in the US and continues in some circles to this day, although today most no longer dare to express this opposition with complete frankness. If you doubt this, take a good look, in person, please, at a few inner-city public schools and public libraries in the US. While you're there, please take note of how much is being done with such appallingly meagre resources.

The earliest prominent African-American classical scholar of whom I know was William Sanders Scarborough (1852-1926), college president, author of a popular Greek grammar. Gradually, the Classics departments in the US have grown more diverse. Gradually. They cannot be said to have covered themselves with glory in this regard.

Although writing in the Latin language existed as early as the 7th century BC, the earliest writers of Latin to achieve enduring fame were Livius Andronicus (c284-c204 BC), Plautus (c251-c184), Ennius (239-169) and Terence (195-159), and both Livius Andronicus and Terence were born slaves and set free in recognition of their talents. There is some disagreement about who was the very greatest writer of Latin; some say Vergil, some say Cicero, some say Ovid, some say Sallust. Some say Horace, who like the other 4 lived and worked in the 1st century BC. Horace's father was born a slave. In ancient Rome, there most definitely were some major class barriers, and yes indeed, slavery was very widespread; but when it came to literature, the writing of slaves and former slaves and the sons of slaves was mentioned in the same breath as the writing of Emperors and Senators, and, with the exception of some Emperors known to be dangerous because of their vanity and need for flattery, was praised or criticized on its literary merit with no regard to its author's social position.

The Khyber Pass was an important part of the so-called "Silk Road," which was actually several land routes reaching from as far west as Europe to as far east as China, and the major land route between Asia and Europe for thousands of years. Columbus was looking for a passage to India -- and in 1492 until he died in 1506 he thought he had found it -- because in his time and until, well, until the rise of railroads, on long journeys sea travel was generally much quicker than land travel. Besides silk, popular items of trade on the Silk Road included gold, silver, ivory, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, jade, fur, lacquer, pomegranates, carrots, spices, porcelain, weapons, and, of course, human slaves.

1841. And Latin. And Germany

In 1841 there wasn't a single Germany as there is today. When someone said "Germany" back then, they may well have been referring to those people in central Europe who spoke German, who lived in a variety of different political entities.

Then again, it's not as if there is 1 political entity today in Central Europe where German-speakers live: besides Germany itself, German is the native language of Austria, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, about 2/3 of Switzerland; and about 1 million people in the French area of Alsace-Lorrain, which borders Germany and has passed back and forth between French and German control quite a few times; and about 1 million more in South Tyrol in northern Italy, bordering on Austria and Switzerland.

Also, there are millions of people who live in Germany whose 1st or 2nd language is Turkish. They've been there for decades, and gradually the German media and government have stopped ignoring their existence.

And of course today Germany is welcoming more refugees from Syria than any other country.

In 1841, the political make-up of Germany involved many different states. Here's a map of the German Bund, which existed from 1815 to 1866:

And it existed very uneasily, above all because of the rivalry between Prussia, the blue on this map in the north-east and again in the west, and Austria, the orange-brown... orange-tan... orange-yellow... I don't know how to describe the color of Austria on this map, but it's the large area predominating in the south-east on this map. In 1841 Prussia was busy annexing more and more of northern and western Germany, turning more and more of it blue on the map, while Austria was annexing more and more non-German territory east of the area which is colored and surrounded by the red line on this map: the German Bund. For example, the territory 3/5 of the way down the right-hand edge of this map, not colored in, labeled KGR UNGARN -- that's the so-called Kingdom of Hungary, which belonged just as entirely to Austria as the orange-brown-tan-yellow area. Hungary, despite its misleading name at this time, didn't have a monarch of its own: the King of Hungary was the Austrian Emperor. If you look close, you'll see that Prussia also has extensive territory east of the Bund. On this map it's colored very light blue.

There was a lot of discussion going on between 1815 and 1871 about whether Germany was going to adopt a "kleindeutsche Lösung" ("Lesser German solution") with Germany united without the Austrian lands, or a "grossdeutsche Lösung" ("Greater German solution"), including Austria-Hungary, and with the Prussian monarchy in Berlin sharing a lot of the power with the Habsburgs in Vienna. Sometimes such things were discussed with words and sometime they were discussed with guns.

"Lesser German solution" it was: in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian War -- and 2 wars against Denmark, the First War of Schleswig (1848–51) and the Second War of Schleswig (1864), and the Austro-Prussian War (1866) -- the map of this region suddenly became much less colorful: all of Prussia plus everything inside the red line which wasn't Austrian was now one solid color, and was Germany, and most of it was now dominated to some degree or other by Prussia -- the Prussian King became the German Emperor in 1871 -- "Kaiser" is the German word for "Emperor" -- while Austria now called itself and all of its territories Austria-Hungary, and usually didn't bother to use more than one color on maps to indicate all of itself, which extended much farther to the east than does this map. For example, at this time there was no Poland on the map. All of Poland was divided between Prussia, Austria and Russia. All of south-east Europe belonged either to the Austrian (or Austro-Hungarian) Empire, or the Russian Empire, or the Ottoman Empire.

Hey, Steve, what you're saying, it's all -- yawn -- this is all really, really interesting and all -- yawn. stretch. blink -- but what does it have to do with Latin?

Lots and lots, actually. In 1841, in Prussia and in areas about to be swallowed up by Prussia, prestigious universities in Berlin and Heidelberg and Leipzig and Bonn and elsewhere were international centers of Classical scholarship; while in Austria, the Emperor and his family, the Habsburgs, were very, very Catholic, and Latin was going to remain the official language of the Catholic Church until 1962. By 1962 Austria had become much smaller than it was in 1841, having shrunk down to, oh, about 1/5 of the brown-orange-tan-yellow area on the map. Much of that shrinkage had to do with non-German people in the Austrian Empire wanting to rule themselves. Much of it also had to do with people in the Empire being Protestant or Orthodox or Muslim.

So how much of that tension between the German Catholic Habsburg dynasty and non-German and non-Catholic people also ended up in opposition to the Latin language? That's a very interesting question, and I don't know the answer. But in the rest of Germany, the part which was eventually more or less conquered and swallowed up by predominantly-Protestant Prussia, the Latin language had always had more academic and less religious and political associations, and so I'm guessing that it was much less affected by all of the political upheaval and change.

1841. And Latin. And Constantin von Tischendorf

Unlike railroads, the Khyber Pass, the Ottoman Empire and baseball, I've had no difficulty whatsoever in linking Constantin von Tischendorf to the Latin language in 1841. It was as easy as could be, of course.

To be precise, in 1841 he was still just Constantin -- or Konstantin, or Constantinus -- Tischendorf. The "von," or "of," or "de," was awarded to him in 1869 by the Russian Tsar. I don't know how the "of" of an aristocratic title is written in Russian. But most Russian aristocrats, and many German ones too, were perfectly comfortable with the French "de," which makes me a little less self-conscious about my ignorance of the Russian term. Today he's usually Constantin to those reading or writing in French, Konstantin in German and Constantinus in Latin; in his own time he was perfectly comfortable with all 3 spellings, one of many examples of why I oppose those who insist that there is such a thing as "correct" spelling.

But you're saying, "Yeah, yeah, Steve, whatevs, but who was this Tischendorf, and why was it 'of course' easy to link him to Latin?" And because you ask that, I can see that you're no New Testament scholar. He's the most prominent figure in the history of the field. He made the single most spectacular discovery, of all time so far, of 1 Biblical manuscript, the Codex Sinaiticus, which he found in several pieces and put back together during 3 visits to St Catherine's Monastery under Mt Sinai in 1844, 1853 and 1859.

(I think that Grenfell and Hunt's discovery of the manuscripts at Oxyrhynchus is more spectacular, but it's a discovery of many manuscripts, not just 1, and of many kinds, not just Biblical.)

Besides this world-famous discovery he also discovered several other manuscripts less well-known to the general public, but nearly comparable to Sinaiticus in the eyes of Biblical scholars.

He was a thoroughly professional academic Biblical scholar, fluent in Greek and Hebrew. And it just so happens that in Western civilization, almost all scholars who are fluent in Greek are fluent in Latin as well. It's a matter of course that ancient Greek texts are published in the West with prefaces and footnotes in Latin. And generally expected that those prefaces and notes will be more easily-understood by most readers than those Greek texts. In Tischendorf's case, there's no need to wonder whether he might have been a rare exception to the rule of mastery of Latin, because, like a typical mid-19th-century scholar in many a field, he wrote and published a great deal in Latin, perhaps more, if you count it all up page-by-page, than in his native German. Tischendorf published quite a lot before he turned 26 in 1841. Here's his 1837 dissertation, Doctrina Pauli apostoli de vi mortis Christi satisfactoria.

(It's ironic that among the ancient people who wrote and spoke Greek, knowledge of Latin was NOT assumed. The Latin-speaking Romans had a great admiration for Greek literature. Young Roman gentlemen were often sent to Athens to complete their educations. But the Greeks tended to underestimate the literary achievements made in Latin, and often they looked down their noses at Latin and refused to learn any of it at all, even after the Romans conquered the Greek-speaking regions, giving great practical benefit to a knowledge of Latin.)

All of the territory Tischendorf covered in Egypt, where he made all of his great manuscript discoveries, was a part of the Ottoman Empire at the time. It seems quite possible that he may have ridden the Cairo-to-Alexandria railway line, which opened in 1856. Given his quite busy professional life after the first discovery of parts of the Codex Sinaiticus in 1844, it seems that he only would have avoided riding European trains at some time during his life (1815-1874) if he had deliberately gone quite far out of his way to do so. It seems a very safe assumption that Tischendorf rode the rails at some point. Perhaps if I could find his diaries, it could go from an assumption to a certainty.

It seems unlikely, however, even though he traveled a bit around Germany and Switzerland before 1841, that he rode a train as early as 1841, simply because there weren't very many railways in that region yet.

As far as Tischendorf ever having been in the Khyber Pass -- I do not yet know enough to rule it out, but I believe that his travels beyond Europe were mostly or entirely confined to Egypt.

I have not yet found any evidence that Tischendorf ever heard of baseball, nor that during his lifetime any baseball players ever heard of him. But you never know. (I'm picturing some various tenuous possibility such as Mark Twain meeting Tischendorf during his travels in Germany and mentioning baseball. That's a pretty tenuous possibility, I think.)

1841. And Latin. And Baseball

Baseball was around by 1841, and, as many of you undoubtedly already know, Abner Doubleday didn't invent it. You may not be aware, however, that Doubleday never claimed to have invented it. I was not aware that he had never made any such claim, and I was getting set to denounce him as a lying self-promoter, but when doing research for this post I discovered that Abner Doubleday, who lived from 1819 to 1893 and was a US Army man from the time he entered West Point in 1838 until he retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1873, never mentioned baseball once in his letters, diaries or his two books, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie, published in 1876, and Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, published in 1882. The only time Doubleday can be shown to have mentioned baseball at all was in 1871 when he filed a request for baseball equipment for the men under his command.

It seems that no claim that Doubleday invented baseball can be found until the 20th century, years after his death. There are some signs that Doubleday was a cantankerous braggart at times, but absolutely no proof that he bragged about inventing baseball. Whoever made that up, it seems very unlikely that it was he.

James Naismith (a Canadian btw) invented basketball in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891, but no one invented baseball. It evolved over the course of centuries. Baseball and softball have many undeniable similarities to rounders. The earliest reliable report of a baseball game being played comes (like Naismith) from Canada in 1838. Overzealous American patriotism and a feeling that baseball was "America's game" probably account for why some felt the need to make up the story of Doubleday inventing the game in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. I don't think baseball was invented in Canada in 1838, I think it was played in the US and Canada before 1838, and quite possibly in other countries as well.

I know: some of you are saying, "Hey, Steve, this is all really fascinating and so forth, but were there any poems written in Latin about baseball in or before 1841?"

I don't know. I thought for sure I'd be able to find a slew -- a veritable slew -- of translations of "Casey at the Bat" into Latin, but that poem wasn't even written in English until 1888, and to my great surprise, the only translations of it I've been able to find are one into French, "Casey au bâton" by Paul Laurendeau (anOTHer Canadian!) and 2 into Hebrew: "Hator Shel Casey Lachbot" by Menachem Less and "Casey BaMachbayt" by Jason H Elbaum. I have yet to find anything written about baseball in Latin, original or translated from another language, verse or prose. Total failure on that front.

I've also found nothing at all about baseball being played in the Ottoman Empire. Surely that's just personal failure on my part, not a lack of anything to be found.

As far as baseball somewhere near the Khyber Pass: surely it will come as no surprise that an Afghani national baseball team has been formed since the arrival of US military personnel in that country in 2002. In 2013 they lost a game to their neighbor across the Pass, Pakistan, by a score of 34-0, which shouldn't come as a total surprise when you consider that the skills required in baseball and in cricket are similar in many ways, and that Pakistan won the Cricket World Cup in 1992 and was a close runner-up to Australia in 1999, while Afghanistan has had had only 1 appearance each in a World Cup and a World Twenty20. In fact, although cricket has been played in Afghanistan since the 19th century, Afghanistan's national cricket team is only a few years older than its national baseball team.

As far as baseball and railroads are concerned, connections are many and should be fairly obvious. Union Pacific claims that "By 1876, game times were being scheduled to coincide with train schedules," and the claim doesn't seem farfetched. Finding a connection between baseball and railroads as early as 1841 is proving more difficult.

As to whether baseball came to Mexico as early as the Mexican American War of 1846 to 1848, let alone 1841, that is controversial, although a confluence of baseball and railroads in Mexico as early as that war can be ruled out. Plans for Mexican rail lines began in 1837; however, the first line, between Mexico City and Veracruz, did not open until 1873.

1841. And Latin. And The Ottoman Empire

I have not been able to find much information about the knowledge or use of the Latin language in the Ottoman Empire in 1841. This of course should by no means be understood as indicating that there is little or nothing to be found out. In the 1840's the Empire was in the midst of a massive program of reform, re-organization and modernization which involved some imitation of Western Europe in things such as legal codes, finance, modes of dress and also education. Whether the latter included the great emphasis on Classical scholarship to be found at the time in Western universities, I do not know.

Here is a report by an Englishman who inspected the Seraglio collection of Greek manuscripts in 1907; his report, disappointing, to say the least, to anyone who had imagined a vast store of such manuscripts, includes one 15th-century "Lexicon Latino-Graecum et Graeco-Latinum."

Every now and then a Westerner would publish an account in Latin of his sojourn to the exotic Ottoman east, from Pierre Gilles' De topographia Constantinopoleos: et de illivs antiqvitatibvs, published in 1561,



to Victor Guerin's thesis De Ora Palaestinae: A Promontorio Carmelo Usque Ad Urbem Joppen Pertinente, published in 1856, in which descriptions of what Guerin himself had experienced in Palastine in 1852 and 1854 only very seldom interrupt the flow of quotations from ancient Greeks and Romans, the Bible and Crusaders.



I have mentioned before on the blog how Lord Charlemont, on his visit to Constantinople in 1749, asked his guide, whom he described as a "sensible Turk," whether the Seraglio library had by any chance preserved the lost books of Livy. Such anecdotes make one very curious about what such "sensible Turks" might have had to say about the eccentric Westerners who occasionally popped up in their midst. Who knows how much more I could tell you about things like that if I were fluent in Turkish or Arabic.

There appear to have been no railroads anywhere within the Empire in 1841; the earliest I have been able to find is the Alexandria to Cairo line, in operation from 1856. It seems that large-scale building of railways in the Ottoman dominions did not get underway until the 1880's. The lines dynamited by Lawrence of Arabia and his followers during WWI would've been 30 years old or less at the time.

The borders of the Ottoman Empire never advanced further eastward than the western shores of the Euphrates river and the Caspian Sea, about 1000 miles away from the Khyber Pass in a straight line by air, somewhat more than that by train and/or car.

1841. And Latin. And The Khyber Pass.

By 1841 railroads were not yet anywhere near the Khyber Pass. The first railroad in India opened in 1853. I can find no information about commercially viable rail lines operating anywhere in Afghanistan earlier than the 20th century. The Khyber Pass railway was opened in 1925.

The Khyber Pass has been one of the world's most important routes for business and military exploits since before Alexander the Great.

In 1841 as in 1925, the Khyber Pass, which today connects Afghanistan and Pakistan, was on the border between the area under British rule and Afghanistan. The British East India Company ruled in 1841, the British monarchy in 1925.

I have not been able to find any evidence that the East India Company ever supported Classical scholarship to a great degree in the area under its control. I assume that in 1841 the young Queen Victoria knew some Latin. Latin seems to have thrived longer and stronger among European royalty and high aristocracy than in many other places, and mid-19th-century Oxford and Cambridge are reputed to have been great centers of Classical scholarship, the scene of a Renaissance of Latin and Greek.

And they were not the only such centers. In 1841 the Bibliotheca Scriptorium Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana was still 8 years away: it began in 1849 in Leipzig. The Oxford Classical Texts series, obviously created in respectful imitation of the Teubner series, didn't begin until 1896. Teubner and OCT are huge figures in Classical publishing, but we must remember that they didn't suddenly appear from out of nowhere.

What I'm saying is that in 1841, many books were published in Latin, by a great variety of publishers in Europe and the United States, including many newly-written texts as well as texts written in antiquity and the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

1841. And Latin. And Trains.

In 1841 Søren Kierkegaard had to write to the King of Denmark for permission to present his dissertation, for a Master of Arts in Theology from the department of Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, in Danish instead of Latin. I don't know how many dissertations presented there were written in Latin at the time, as opposed to Danish: whether they were almost all in Latin, and a request such as Kierkegaard's was unusual, or whether almost all were written in the vernacular, and the request was little more than a formality and a remnant of earlier times (the university was founded in 1479).

I would guess: neither. I would guess that a fair number of dissertations were written in each language at that time. In any case, Kierkegaard publicly (and successfully) defended the dissertation in Latin disputation on the 29th of September, 1841. Although the main text of the dissertation, Om Begrebet Ironi: Med Stadigt Hensyn Til Socrates, is in Danish, it begins with 12 theses written in Latin. And it contains many citations in Greek, Latin and German.

10 days before Kierkegaard publicly defended his dissertation, on the 19th of September, 1841, the world's first international railway line opened, between Strasbourg and Basel. Today most passenger trains take about 3 1/2 hours to get from Strasbourg to Basel. In 1841, presumably, it took a bit longer.

The first Danish railway would not open until 1844 if you consider Holstein to have been part of Denmark at the time, or 1847 if you do not. The Prussians considered Holstein to be part of Prussia, and after the Second Schleswig War in 1864, Denmark stopped contesting the matter.

In 1841 William Henry Harrison was inaugurated President of the United States on the 4th of March, and died of pneumonia on the 4th of April. Popular legend has it that Harrison contracted his fatal case on pneumonia while delivering an extraordinarily long Inaugural address on the 4th of March; actually, he did not fall ill until the 26th of March.

I do not know what state railroads were in in the USA in 1841. I cannot find any information of great events in the American railroad industry in that year. The first commercial American railroad opened in 1830, and between the 1830's and the 1860's American railways boomed, and replaced canals as the major method of transport. Plans for a great nationwide network of canals were abandoned.

I cannot tell what state the Latin language was in in the US in 1841, but I see signs to suspect that it was worse off there than in Europe. The Classics in America have had the bad luck that some very influential men have been anti-intellectual, and that some influential American intellectuals have been pretty stupid concerning the Classics they had been taught. As an example of the former, I have already in this blog pilloried Tom Paine: Part 1 Part 2

As an example of the latter, Benjamin H Latrobe, who was able to pass for a leading American intellectual at the time, writing in 1798 about the American curriculum, suggested that

"Terence, Phedrus, Ovid and other poets, from whom no one ever learned a single useful fact, should be rejected"

in favor of

"Justin's epitome of the history of Trogus Pompeius, as being an easy and entertaining writer,"

and also Nepos. After that shocking display, I think we can chalk up the fact that Latrobe also recommends some good writers, including Caesar, Livy, Tacitus, Horace and Vergil, to sheer dumb luck. Which Greek author does Latrobe praise above all others? Xenophon. What Greek work does he call the the worst of them all for schoolchildren, against which they must be protected at all costs? The Iliad.

And Paine and Latrobe, who may well have journeyed to America because they had to, because they were laughed out of the entire country of England for saying and writing such things, were and are counted among the best minds of the American Revolution and the early American republic.

That is how much of a chance Classical education had in the US.