Customer Reviews

A Natural History of Latin

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought this book because I am very interested in the Classics and the Latin language. I have taken Latin for many years, and can read it pretty well, but have learned almost nothing of its origins or development, and little of its influence on modern languages.

Some chapters, such as the ones about Latin's beginnings, its metamorphosis into the Romance languages, and the way it has affected English, I found interesting. Unfortunately, these only comprised a small portion of the book. The rest told me stuff I already know, like the basics of the language and the Roman Empire's history and literature, or went on and on about medieval philosophers who don't seem very important to Latin.

Also, the text sometimes seemed badly translated, and didn't flow very well overall.

If you have little or no education in Latin and are looking for a comprehensive review of its mechanics and history, then this is the book for you. Otherwise, I would recommend you look elsewhere.

Having ordered this book as a Christmas present to myself, I was eager to see a new treatment of the evolution, growth, and spread of the Latin language. Instead, I received a book that should have been titled "Latin Literature, A PC Summary for Women and Children." This may offend some of you more sensitive types, but you should not be upset with me. My new title for this book is not a joke reflecting any personal bias, but on the contrary, it is an accurate description of the arrogance and soft-bigotry of the author/translators in charge of this waste of foliage. The authors make repeated comparisons of ancient literature to "TV soap operas" and at one point they even absurdly compare Plautus' Menaechmi and Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors to our own Dallas! You remember, 'who shot J.R.?' and all that. This, not my politically incorrect title, should be offensive to your 'sensibilities.' The authors constantly insult the intelligence of their intended audience, all the while attempting to stretch similes and metaphors beyond their means. They repeatedly compare Stoic philosophy to Nazism, Lucretius as a forerunner to Marx, old Roman values as repugnant, and also display a blatant disregard for the value of lost literature in general. Here are two small samples of this reprehensible approach:

1. - p.26 - We do know that there were quite a few writers besides Cato and Plautus, whom we have already mentioned, and in particular we have many works by another writer of comedies, Terence. But, as far as we know, the works that have been lost are not terribly many and they were probably not of any great value.

2. - p. 36 - For the most part he [Caesar] marched his army around and fought pitched battles, which makes the narrative rather monotonous, as millions of schoolchildren have discovered, since his account of the Gallic war has quite undeservedly taken up a great deal of time in the traditional Latin syllabus.

It is not necessarily the particulars of the argument but rather the atmosphere of constant complaining and pessimism which I found to be too much to take. If you're one of those clever nay-sayers who would more than likely happily point out that this is hypocritical of me, then by all means pick up a copy of this book, it's perfect for you. If the selections I chose do not seem to fit with my general point, I will post others in the future. Yes, I read the whole book. Yes, I know that my examples come only from part 1. Which reminds me, the last 122 pages is essentially an extremely poor appendix of Latin grammar and Roman sayings. It would have been more useful to append a juice box so that your kid could have a refreshing drink and have something left over to throw at you for buying this. For those of you who made the difficult decision to stay in school past the tenth grade there is a plethora of good alternatives about Roman culture, history, literature, and language any of which would be better than this one.

I read Latin and Greek as an undergraduate (mainly with a view to Indo-European linguistics) and have long sought a book I could recommend to friends and family who want to know something about classical languages. I thought A NATURAL HISTORY OF LATIN would be just the thing, but I found the book rather problematic.

A NATURAL HISTORY OF LATIN is a translation and adaptation by Merethe Damsgaard Sorensen and Nigel Vincent of Tore Janson's original "Latin; Kulturn, historien, spraaket" published in Stockholm in 2002. The book is written at a high school level, avoiding jargon and explaining matters as clearly and simply as possibly. Janson starts at the very beginning, with Latin as a single descent of the Indo-European proto-language, a small language confined to Rome overshadowed by its strong neighbour Etruscan. He introduces the major writers of Latin literature, and even quotes passages from the major poets, giving the original Latin and a translation.

Since Latin is a remarkably tenacious language, holding on long after the disappearance of Roman society, and Janson discusses the use of Latin by the Roman Catholic Church, philosophers, and natural scientists. While Janson talks of the rise of new languages after the fall of the Roman Empire that were descended from Latin yet no longer Latin, I was baffled by his omission of the Strasbourg Oaths, which many readers find an entertaining example of language change.

Though Janson avoids discussion of morphology (the changes the endings of Latin words can go through) in the main of the book, the end of the book contains a 35-page appendix on Latin grammar so that the curious reader can learn more. There is also a basic vocabulary of the most common and influential Latin words, and a collection of common phrases and expressions.

In spite of covering many of the basics of the use of Latin, I found the author injected his own personal biases into the text far too often. Some of my other reviews have complained about his comparison of Cato with Fascist party members, Epicurius with Karl Marx, his assertion that Julius Caesar commited genocide. Now, these are intriguing matters, but Janson makes the comparisons so flippantly that it just drags the level of the text down. Beyond these, there are other problematic passages. For example, after discussing Catullus' poems to the boy Juventius, Janson writes, "That a man might be in love with both women and men did not cause any great surprise in antiquity... It was not regarded as deviant behavior." Such a blanket statemetn is dishonest, for while the elites of Roman society condoned pederasty, grown men who took the passive role in homosexual acts were despised in the strongest sense. Just look at the character of the cinaedus in Petronius' "Satyricon", for example.

The author loves to get his digs in at Christianity as well, with a revisionist goal that goes against the long traditions of Oxford University Press' classicist publishing. Of Tertullian, whom classicists have long admired for his eloquent defence of his faith in front of Roman persecution, Janson writes, "[His books'] most striking characteristic is their spiteful attitude to everyone who thought differently from Tertullian himself." Later he writes, "It was not easy to know at the time who actually was a heretic. It depended on who was successful in having their view of original sin or the Trinity finally accepted as the true teaching of the Church." And of St Augustine, Janson writes, "His ideas are strange or even repugnant. This is especially true of the idea of original sin." The doctrine original sin hardly began with Augustine, nor is it a concept limited to Christianity among the world religions (Buddhism, for instance, has us stuck in cycles of samsara because of lusts and desires).

With his peculiar biases, Janson betrays the fine tradition of Oxford University Press' books on the classical world, and I find the book too enervating to recommend to others. Maybe I should look at Joseph Farrell's Latin Language and Latin Culture: From Ancient to Modern Times instead.

I was a little worried about how this book would be, after seeing so many negative views on the book, but I felt that it was an enjoyable read. I studied Latin in high school for four years, and although I eventually forgot most of my Latin studies, I had some fond times and eventually began studying German and Spanish, Latin's son. With that being the case, I thought that a concise history of the Latin language could be an interesting read, and I'm glad that I decided to read this book.

This book examines Latin through the ages, from its prominent usage in Rome to its usage today in animal classification. The book is written on an easy level, so that non-linguists can enjoy reading the book. I also enjoy how the book is broken down into sections, with headings. For instance, one such heading is "Latin in Britain" and in this brief section of the book, the usage of Latin is described in ancient Britain. Through the usage of these headings, the book is divided into easily-digestible sections for those who do not have the time to read large chapters of books in one sitting.

The short grammar and vocabulary list is also a nice inclusion in the back of the book for those who want to pursue Latin as a study.
Overall, I found this book to be a fun read, and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in a concise history of the Latin language.

First, I should mention that I read this in the original Swedish, so I cannot comment on the quality of translation into English. That said, a few issues should be addressed, as they have been expressed by oddly biased reviewers. This is a lovely little book, aimed primarily at beginners in Latin, or just people with a general interest; it is not meant to be a history of Latin covering all the interesting aspects of the language or its literature. It seems some people get off on pointing out how non-scholary certain works are, forgetting that the work in question was never meant to be scholarly. It's a book meant to give you a small oversight of the development of the language, and why it is worth studying.

Christopher complains about how Julius Caesar is portrayed as genocidal, how homosexuality was seen as basically immoral, and about Augustine inventing "original sin". Well, all of these are true. Julius Caesar is considered by psychologists and historians to be a textbook example of megalomania, and if you are a megalomaniacal warlord killing entire populations, then you are by definition genocidal. Caesar had his good sides as well, for one thing, he stood on the side of the common people ("plebeian"), as opposed to the aristocratic Brutus ("patrician"). But that does not make him any less genocidal.

As for homosexuality, not a day goes by that we don't hear about how tolerant they were in ancient Greece and Rome about it, which is patently false. It was forbidden in most places for all, and even when tolerated, it was so only between men (a few orgies excepted), and only in very special relations, namely that of an older man preparing a younger man for marriage, which is what pederasty was supposed to be about. The only ones that lived in a gay lifestyle were slaves, because no free man would consider living as gay, only "experimenting", as we call it today. If you read Cicero's court transcripts, you see accusations all the time of pederasty hurled from the prosecutor's mouth, because clearly, that helped establish someone's moral guilt and low character. So much for tolerance. At the best of times, it was merely overlooked; only when done by the gods could it be considered truly beautiful (they have always played by their own rules).

Original sin? Nice try. Augustine was indeed the father of it. There is no mention of it, either in the Bible or in the other church fathers. Augustine invented it, just like he invented limbo (which has now been decreed never to have existed, curiously). It is true that all religions teach that humanity is stained with impurity, but that is not the same as original sin. Original sin is a very specific doctrine, teaching us that we are not only born with the desire to sin, but that we all inherit both the desire and the guilt from Adam, and that thus, even babies are born in debt to God.

Finally, a few words in response to the not-so-humble "Aristotle" here. He complains that this book indicates many works of Latin have been lost, but "Aristotle" claims there are only a few. My goodness, I can hardly believe my eyes...if you take up any detailed work of Latin literature, listing the works we know to have been written, it is a long list with only a tiny fragment that survived. Thanks largely to ignorant christians, we have lost most of these treasures. If anybody wants a detailed account, I suggest Gian Biagio Conte's "Latin Literature: A History", where you will see a fairly comprehensive list of the ancient latin works, and how many of them have been lost (and that is just the ones from Antiquity).

If you are a scholar, and you can't read anything where details are omitted or presented in a colourful way, don't buy this book. If, on the other hand, you would like an introduction to the Latin language that explains why it is so important to us, both historically and today, then go ahead and buy it.

I wonder if we all read the same book...I read as book as my introduction to things Latin and I am glad I did. The author packs a lot of information into a short book and I think he does it very gracefully. His approach is scholarly but he does not lose his sense of humor. I don't know very much about Rome and the Latin language. FOr me this book was time well spent.

I took this book with me where ever I went and read it off and on over several days. The writing is clear and fascinating. I had taken 2 years of Latin in high school, many decades ago and had just finished some reading on Greek which I had never studied.

I particularly liked his discussion of how Latin was used by various parties (church, state, science).

John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX

Of several books published in 2007 about lingua latina, this paperbook has the right balance of history, quotations as examples with literal and modern translation. Carpe diem (Mount) is a nice appetizer while Ad infinitum has too many seconds and thirds (Ostler). If you don't have the time to read all three, start with this. For those who did major in the classics.

As the title indicates, which derives from Pliny's Naturalis Historia, the book is firstly concerned with "a suitable blend of useful information and entertaining anecdote". It details what we know about Latin's early origins, its usage, and lasting influence. These aspects take up the majority of the text in the first two sections entitled "Latin and the Romans", and "Latin and Europe". These were my favorite sections of the book and while I haven't read his other book, I suspect I may also enjoy his Speak: A Short History of Languages.

Throughout, a variety of words, phrases and passages are introduced along with one or more translations (literal versus interpretive). I enjoyed the bits on textual criticism and sourcing issues that are sprinkled throughout. The author provides just the right level of detail about not only what the history of the language is, but also why source material is often limited or unavailable. I would have enjoyed more references to sources of the history for what we do know. The Suggested Reading section at the end of the book appears to provide a limited bibliography for researching the "history" of the language and more appropriate for students interested in learning the language itself.

The latter sections of the book deal with grammar rules, a vocabulary list and common expressions. These sections, which are essentially your introduction to the language itself, didn't seem to gel all that well with the earlier "natural history" for me. These sections are perhaps better labeled appendixes to what would then be a very short book, which is why I think I might prefer the author's more general book on the history of languages.

In summation, I found this book to be a useful introduction to the language and it's history, especially why we know what we do about the language and how it had come to influence so many other languages to follow.

This book is supposed to explain things like how the language grew and how it spread. It does that and it does talk about why it proved to be as useful as it became. What makes this book great, is that it doesn't start there. It barely begins there.

He then spends a lot of time explaining how words moved from Latin to other languages such as English how we still have Latin names for our months and our days of the week. March was the first month originally, so October was 8th (think Octogon) and September was 9th. July for Julius. and August for Augustus. Again, what would be expected.

What goes beyond what I expected was the analsis he provides of the development of Latin poetry both from the perspective of having been mere translation of, the imitations of, the Greek works, and then forming and following rules of its own. Read this book and you'll know more than the history of Latin. You'll have a good overview of the development of Latin literature and a synopsis of some of the major works. You'll also get a basic understanding of how the Roman government worked and the strange way years were names in antiquity.

He even has a small chapter (2 or 3 pages) on Latin terms in Harry Potter. The Hogwarts motto means "A Sleeping Dragon Shouldn't be Tickled".

He's an interesting author. Not many writers would pause in a discussion of linguistic history to denounce the military career of Julius Ceaser. He's intelligent and assumes his reader is as well. It makes for a wonderful book. I can't praise it highly enough.