In Response to a Long Comment, a Longer Post

In Response to a Long Comment, a Longer Post · Second Long Comment, Second Longer Post

Under my post Is Romanides accurate?, I found a comment by one greco roman knight. To reply belatedly to his greetings, I tried to post a long comment, longer than his, but alas the blogger comment field found it too long. Hence, I post it instead here as a post, extending it even a bit further,

"These are all just myths and legends, but based on history."

If you admit "based on history" you are a little inconsequential in saying not just "these are myths" but saying "these are all just myths and legends"

As far as I can say "legend" has two main meanings, namely:
a) a hagiography reading or collection of such, like the martyrologies or Legenda Aurea or Prologue from Ohrid, this is the primary but less usual meaning, since "legenda" means "things you ought to read"
b) orally recorded and transmitted ... guess what? ... history.

"To be Greek, Hellenic, or Hellenized implies culture, and not nationhood."

Romanides specifically spoke about language, when it came to Rome.
Also, the Luwian culture is a different one from the Mycenaean Greek one. They merged in the times leading up to Homer. His epic is in Greek, because by his time, all Luwians at least understood Greek there. It is balanced, because it is making compliments to all nobles, whether of Greek or Trojan descent.

"The Romans didn't become Greek "lovers" after the conquest of Greece proper, for why would Roman historians writing history of Rome centuries before the Greek "conquest" be writing in Greek and NOT Latin."

Where do you get this fake news from?

Polybius wrote in Greek because he was from Greece, he came to Rome as a guest or a hostage. He was also not centuries before the conquest of Macedonian / Hellenistic Arcadian League, but in that time, and he was also not centuries before but rather centuries after the conquest of Magna Graecia.

The last pieces of Magna Graecia to be conquered were Sicily, and that was in the First Punic War, Polybius arrived after the Second Punic War was over, if I recall correctly.

But perhaps you refer to Homer as the first Roman historian? Seven cities dispute the honour of being his birthplace, but Rome is not one of them. He mentions several cities that are part of the Roman Empire, like Athens and Corinth and Troy, but Rome isn't one of them.

"Emperor Claudius refers to Greek AND Latin as "our 2 languages", and he was fluent in Etruscan!"

Etruscan did not die in Rome until the death of the last augur. It is obvious why Greek was one of the two languages, namely in his time Romans had long since become bilingual.

In Romulus' time, bilingualism in Etruscan too could be expected, but hardly bilingualism in Greek. Like Helsingfors / Helsinki in the early Modern Ages would have been speaking Swedish, Finnish, to some degree Livonian and Estonian, but hardly English or French.

"The special thing about Greek is that it remained thus even after the full Latinization of Rome and the eradication of the other cultures like Etruscan and Punic, many centuries later."

Etruscan culture was never eradicated, only the language was replaced by Latin. Latin culture is basically a sub-branch of Etruscan culture, just with another language. Like Styrian culture in Austria is a sub-branch of Slovene culture, just speaking Austrian German instead of Slovene.

Rome itself never had Punic culture, as an indigenous feature.

And "Latinisation of Rome" is an oxymoron. The best I can say for Romanides is, Latin may have owed lots of traces of Greek grammar due to a Sprachbund in the Terramare culture c. 1200 BC the genetics show complete dominance by the immigrants. Castione Marchesi is 480 km by modern roads away from Rome, somewhat less as the bird flies.

"The mob were latin speaking, the plebs were latin speaking, but the patricians and ruling class almost ALL spoke Greek, handed down in their homes, parentally, educationally, or learned later out of necessity and station."

No trace of this in any writings prior to the conquest of Magna Graecia.

The first Greek city to be absorbed into the Roman Republic was Neapolis in 327 BC./blockquote>

Before 327 BC you don't find many full length texts from Rome. Inscriptions are in Latin, not Greek. Carmen Saliare is in Latin, not Greek. Twelve Tables?

Parts of the text of the Twelve Tables were preserved in the brief excerpts and quotations from the original laws in other ancient authors. All Roman sources quote the Twelve Tables in a modernised form of Latin. ... Cicero claimed that he learned them by heart as a boy in school but that no one did so any longer.

Crawford, Michael H., 1996,Roman Statutes, vol. 2, London: Institute of Classical Studies, 571.
Cic. Leg. 2.59

If the Patricians in 449 BC spoke Greek, why were the Twelve Tables so obviously in Latin?

Cicero could easily have learned them in Greek, he was from a time already bilingual, why did he learn them in Latin?

"And eventually, after Rome's fall, Constantinope New Rome would continue to be ROMAN,"

What do you mean by "Rome's fall"? Constantinople did not continue to be Roman after 1918, when West Rome lost Charles I to exile, when he left Hofburg, and East Rome lost Nicolas II to czaricide. If you meant after 476 instead of after 1918, that's ridiculous to speak of it as "Rome's fall" even if English historians have long had this bad habit. They are a bit allergic to principalities ruled by clergy, like Iona in Scotland or like Montenegro on the Balkans prior to 1826. Or, as in this case, Papally ruled Medieval Rome.

Or they can state that because they find Collosseum stately and Collosseum in ruins serving as shelter for the poor really too poor style. It was so much better when it served to martyr Catholics and was in well polished marbles, wasn't it? You know, aesthetics over morality or an anti-pauper type of morality. Also, like absence of Emperors and presence of spiritual rulers, definitely NOT an argument to speak of Rome as fallen in 476.

"Evander is a Roman cult hero from Arcadia, the Peloponnese, from where the Palatine hill was founded as a Greek colony, Pallation, BEFORE the arrival of Trojans, which means Greeks had already established colonies in Italy."

Evander would certainly have spoken Greek, in Arcadia. This does not mean he spoke so in Italy. Here is the notice in the Greek mythology section:

Evander of Pallantium, the wisest among the Arcadians, emigrated to Italy where he founded a city Pallantium. He was the son of Hermes and Carmentis, a nymph skilled in the art of divination.

Hermes being also called Mercury, as Paul the Deacon says "Gotan" would not have been there in the time of the Vinniles, since "Gotan" is Mercury, a Greek mage who lived 1000 years earlier. In fact, Hermes, Carmentis and Evander seem to have been a whole family of magicians and sibyls. Here is from a notice dedicated solely to him:

was a culture hero from Arcadia, Greece, who was said to have brought the Greek pantheon, laws, and alphabet to Italy, where he founded the city of Pallantium on the future site of Palatine Hill, Rome, sixty years before the Trojan War.

I have a suspicion, he could be an excuse the Greeks sought for not calling the Roman conquerors Barbarians. How so? Strabo and Dionysius disagree about who were his parents. Hermes and Carmentis being the version in Strabo, and Apollo and Themis are the names in Dionysius. However, there is some hope for the historicity of the person:

Dionysius of Halicarnassus also mentions that some writers, including Polybius of Megalopolis say that Lavinia was the daughter of Evander and had a son with Heracles who was named Pallas

Hercules was indeed a generation before the Trojan war ... however, the oldest mention of Evander in Polybius certainly makes him an inlaw of Aeneas via Lavinia, but even your Romanides (there are reasons not to call an Evolution believer "father"!) says Aeneas met Latinus, a more common version of Lavinia's father. And Latinus would be a descendant of the Cretan god-king Zeus' banished father, Saturn. Minoan Crete or more properly pre-Minoan Crete, had communications with Greece, but a distinct culture, slowly getting more Greek. Saturn would not have transmitted knowledge of Greek to Picus or to Latinus. If anything, knowledge of Plaeo-Cretan.

So, to return belatedly your greetings, I close here, on the Roman Catholic day of Pentecost, in Paris.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris, 28.V.2023