Reading and Copying Latin Texts in a Greek-speaking Area PDF

Reading and Copying Latin Texts in a Greek-speaking Area ®e Ways of Diausion of Latin Literary Culture in Constantinople R -. Dans cet article, je tente d"identifier les canaux par lesquels la culture littéraire latine a pu se diffuser à Constantinople, spécialement durant le règne de Justinien (5

27-565), dont le latin était la langue maternelle.

J"explorerai quatre domaines

: I.oLes témoignages révélant une connaissance des textes latins che z les auteurs byzantins des is k

, sk, sik et même siik siècles. II.oLa place du latin dans le système éducatif de Constantinople.

III oL"activité d"écrivains d"origine grecque qui ont utilisé le latin. IV.oLa circulation de textes latins dans un environnement hellénophone. Je porterai mon attention sur ce dernier point, les trois autres servant seulement d"introduction à ce sujet. M c-ln-. Justinien, Constantinople, bilinguisme, enseignement (du latin), littérature latine Acplc

In this paper I will try to identify the ways of diffusion of Latin literary culture in Constantinople,

especially during Justinian"s reign (527-565), whose first language was Latin. I will explore four fields:

I oEvidence of the knowledge of Latin texts among Byzantine writers of the

4X?, 5X?, 6X?, and even 7X? centuries

II.oThe place of Latin in the learning system of Constantinople. III.oThe activity of writers of Greek origin

using Latin IV.oThe circulation of Latin texts in a Greek-speaking area. I will focus on this last point, the three other being only an introduction to this issue. K g -. Justinian, Constantinople, bilingualism, teaching (of Latin), Latin literature ®e early Byzantine Empire can be presented in some ways as the transl ation in Greek of the Roman Empire$*translation' in the etymological meaning of the word. ® e Byzantines called themselves *Romans' because they believed that they were the direct and legitimate heirs of the

Roman Empire.

e ®is awareness is like a *return into the homeland' because the Roman s were well acquainted with the Greek roots of their culture. d

It is a very specirc round trip: Greece

towards Rome and Rome towards Greece. Founded by Constantine in 324oAD as a Roman city, but achieved in the 6 X? century, during Justinian"s reign (527-565), Constantinople tried to emerge as a new Rome in the Greek world, and, a>er the fall of the Western Roma n Empire, as the only authoritative version of the . Rome was a bilingual city. x

Justinian as speaker

of Latin was one of the last emperors in this position. Constantinople h ad to be the same. Although the new city was only a copy, compared with the model, which remained un ique, the Roman nature of Byzantium was obvious for everyone. I remain indeed in favour of my t hesis: Latin represented (1)

Cpspnn

2006, p. 11.

(2) For a general overview, see Biltgn 1961, p. 244-249; Bpn iy 1976; H "pnn 1993; Cpg y 2009. (3) R iy 1993, p. 30-31.

84readi eingcooc

in the Greek East a reality more important that one generally believes. Joseph Geiger has the same opinion in his article Some Latin Authors from the Greek East. In this paper I will try to identify the ways of diausion of Latin literary culture in Constantinople, esp ecially during Justinian"s reign, whose rrst language was Latin. I will explore four relds: I. Evidence of the knowledge of Latin tex ts among Byzantine writers of the 4 , 5 , 6 , and even 7 centuries AD; II. ®e place of Latin in the learning system of Constantinople; III. ®e activity of writers of Gre ek origin using Latin; IV. ®e circulation of Latin texts in a Greek-speaking area. I will focus on thi s last point, the three other

being only an introduction to this issue. I will not take into account the alleged inuence of Latin

writers like Vergil or Ovid on Greek late authors like Nonnos of Panopol is and others because it is a too controversial topic. At the beginning of this paper, it is useful to mention the main factors that contributed to the diausion of Latin in Constantinople and to the circulation of Lat in texts in the

Pars Orientis

Scholars have emphasized the practical aspect of the use of Latin in the

Greek East.

Latin was the

language of law, civil bureaucracy, and army, whereas Greek was the lang uage of business and culture, a lingua franca of ordinary life. ®e populace also knew local languages, such as demotic in Egypt. ®e knowledge of Latin was a condition of progress to a high er social level, especially a>er Diocletian"s *Latinization' of the imperial public administratio n.

Scholars doubt today that

there was an aggressive linguistic imperialism from Diocletian"s reig n. However, there is no reason to deny that the prestige of Latin increased during the 4 century, but it"s dicult to say why. ®e importance of Latin for career advancement in the administration led to the appearance of new didactic tools, because the traditional Greek schools were unable to dev elop a teaching of Latin and in Latin. In Roman Egypt, e we have a lot of didactic papyrus fragments containing tools for the study of Latin: tables of declensions and conjugations, bilingual editio ns of Latin authors such as Virgil and Cicero. As Rafaela Cribiore has pointed out, ee the same tools (alphabet writing, literary passages, glossaries, grammatical treatises, ...) were used to learn b oth Greek and Latin, but the hands of papyri containing Latin exercises demonstrate that Latin was st udied at a more advanced level. ®e

Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana

were the climax of those methods: they oaered to the Greek-speaking students the possibility to study Latin quickly and ea ectively. ed

A>er Diocletian

there seems to have been a re-hellenization of the Greek East. ®e arc hives of Flavius Abinnaeus, praefectus alae at Dionysias in the Fayum in Egypt between 342 and 351oAD, show how powerful the Greek language was as a formal or ocial" language: they contain only two documents in

Latin.

ex As James Adams points out in his book Bilingualism and the Latin language, *Latin was available as a sort of super-high" language which could be employ ed either to make obvious the location of supreme power, or in appeal to a supreme authority". e

However, the presence of Latin

in the Greek-speaking East has been too much reduced to the practical aspects. ®e interest in Latin (4)

Ggig 1999.

(5)

Pglgg 1990; Cpspnn

2013, p. 376-379.

(6) About the knowledge and use of Latin models by Greek poets of the 3 to the 6 centuries AD, A ci 2019. See

2008, p. 23, 26, 51, 90, 95; Cpg

y 2016, p. 24. (7) About the linguistic Latinization of the East, characterized by continui ties, interruptions, and role reveals, Gplgp

2019, who identifies an evolution with six steps: imperfect bilingualism

, Constantin"s linguistic nationalism", cases of multilingualism, duallingualism" under Theodosius II, constitution of an interlang uage under Justinian, unilingualism. (8)

Minnp 2006, p. 97-107.

(9) Cpg y 2016, p. 23. (10)

About the practice of Latin in Late Egypt, see F

ygc 2019. (11) Cii g 2007. (12) Diltg, 2016, p. 178-182 (*overview of the ancient Latin-learning materials') (13) A p 2003, p. 555-558; F ygc 2019, p. 75-76. (14) A p 2003, p. 555.

85reading and copying l

atin texts in a greek -speaking area language and literature also had a less ignoble purpose. "Latin languaged of power, Greek language of culture": the expression comes from Gilbert Dagron.

It is a right opinion, but probably too

restrictive. Latin was also a language of culture in Constantinople. As dwe will see, even texts which

were not a part of the school canon were read and commented in Constantinople. Furthermore, Latin texts which were very widespread in schools, such as Vergil and Tedrence, could also be read

with a literary aim, not only as purely didactic exercises. ?erefore, Latin can also be regarded as a

literary language in Constantinople. ?e phenomenon of copying and readding Latin texts outside the didactic environment was boosted by the ruling classes of Late Antiqduity: they took into account the establishment of a link (which we can call a "class-link")d between the old Rome and the new one. A way to reach this aim was the di?usion in the Greek Eadst of texts regarded by the members of the aristocratic families as the vehicles of common values whdich formed the bedrock of society. In this Vergil was of course the ?rst author, but he was dnot alone.

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[PDF] Reading and Copying Latin Texts in a Greek-speaking Area

KTÈMA 46 / 2021