How does the Third Imperium compare to the Roman Empire in S

[Rick]

Greek, Tom, not Latin. The official written language of the Roman Empire may have been Latin, but the lingua franca of the Empire was Greek.

I'm not talking about the late Christian Greek Eastern Roman Empire called Byzantium, who's capital was called Constantinople. Most people are not as familiar with that Empire as the one popularized by Hollywood. The Roman Empire changed quite a bit, it evolved and became more medeaval as time progressed, I'm talking about the Early Empire, the one established by Augustus Caesar in the wake of the Assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. The Roman Empire evolved into something quite different before it went into decline. The Western Roman Empire fell first, that spoke Latin, the Greek Eastern Roman Empire lasted for another thousand years, before the Turks conquered it. The Late Roman Empire was more pathetic, less vigorous and its Emperors were more corrupt and frequently assassinated, or simply crippled because of a law that said a cripple could not be emperor as his disability showed that he did not have the favor of God. Deposed Emperors were frequently blinded when they were not killed in order to prevent the from becoming Emperor again. Also the late Emperors were hereditary, much like the Kings of later Europe, the Early Emperors were not, Each Emperor designated his successor, whether he was related or not, and groomed him for power, or in case there was no successor, the Senate chose an Emperor. The Early Empire was more succesful in conquering and expanding that the late Empire was. The Late Empire is more like the Third Imperium, the Early Empire is quite different.

Neither was I, Tom; the Western Empire had Latin as an official legal language - scholarly, legal and official books/letters were in Latin, but Greek was the universal language used in day-to-day communication. If a Gaulish citizen wanted to communicate with a Judean citizen, or Egyptian, etc. he would use Greek, not Latin, because Greek was more commonly known and used throughout the Empire.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Greek, Tom, not Latin. The official written language of the Roman Empire may have been Latin, but the lingua franca of the Empire was Greek.

I'm not talking about the late Christian Greek Eastern Roman Empire called Byzantium, who's capital was called Constantinople. Most people are not as familiar with that Empire as the one popularized by Hollywood. The Roman Empire changed quite a bit, it evolved and became more medeaval as time progressed, I'm talking about the Early Empire, the one established by Augustus Caesar in the wake of the Assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. The Roman Empire evolved into something quite different before it went into decline. The Western Roman Empire fell first, that spoke Latin, the Greek Eastern Roman Empire lasted for another thousand years, before the Turks conquered it. The Late Roman Empire was more pathetic, less vigorous and its Emperors were more corrupt and frequently assassinated, or simply crippled because of a law that said a cripple could not be emperor as his disability showed that he did not have the favor of God. Deposed Emperors were frequently blinded when they were not killed in order to prevent the from becoming Emperor again. Also the late Emperors were hereditary, much like the Kings of later Europe, the Early Emperors were not, Each Emperor designated his successor, whether he was related or not, and groomed him for power, or in case there was no successor, the Senate chose an Emperor. The Early Empire was more succesful in conquering and expanding that the late Empire was. The Late Empire is more like the Third Imperium, the Early Empire is quite different.

Neither was I, Tom; the Western Empire had Latin as an official legal language - scholarly, legal and official books/letters were in Latin, but Greek was the universal language used in day-to-day communication. If a Gaulish citizen wanted to communicate with a Judean citizen, or Egyptian, etc. he would use Greek, not Latin, because Greek was more commonly known and used throughout the Empire.

Well the Roman Catholic Church used latin, latin was the language used in Western Europe by the educated. Sir Isaac Newton and Galileo wrote in Latin and not Greek. Why do you suppose the Latin Alphabet is more widely used in Europe than Greek? The Romance Languages, French, Italian, and Spanish evolved from Latin. I think those areas in Europe that use the Latin Alphabet were areas where Latin was predominant over Greek. How many countries in Europe use the Greek Alphabet for their languages? There is Greece, I think Turkey once used it when it was part of the Byzantine Empire, but Turkish is not spelled in Greek letters.

During classical antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire and develop into Medieval Greek. In its modern form, the Greek language, today is the official language in two countries; Greece and Cyprus, recognized minority language in seven other countries, and is one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. The language is spoken by at least 13 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, some parts of the Balkans, and the Greek diaspora.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_language

Due to the influence of Roman governance and Roman technology on the less developed nations under Roman dominion, those nations adopted Latin phraseology in some specialized areas, such as science, technology, medicine, and law. For example, the Linnaean system of plant and animal classification was heavily influenced by Historia Naturalis, an encyclopedia of people, places, plants, animals, and things published by Pliny the Elder. Roman medicine, recorded in the works of such physicians as Galen, established that today's medical terminology would be primarily derived from Latin and Greek words, the Greek being filtered through the Latin. Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole. Latin law principles have survived partly in a long list of legal Latin terms.

A few international auxiliary languages have been heavily influenced by Latin. Interlingua is sometimes considered a simplified, modern version of the language. Latino sine Flexione, popular in the early 20th century, is Latin with its inflections stripped away, among other grammatical changes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin

 

[Rick]

Tom. We are talking past each other again. You say that educated men used Latin because early books were written in Latin (more to do with the church, but still) and I don't dispute that - I even imply it in my post! You say that Italy has it's own language which is the modern form of Latin and is similar to many Romance languages - I certainly don't dispute that. I agree with you on the points you make. BUT if a citizen of the early Roman Empire wanted to communicate with the most number of people across the breadth of the empire, he would use Greek, not Latin. There is a very good reason why the first biblical texts and letters were written in Greek, then only afterwards translated into Latin when the Church was settled in Rome. It was because the international language of the day was Greek.

 

[Condottiere]

Aramaic should be the lingua franca of the Middle East during the time of Christ.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Tom. We are talking past each other again. You say that educated men used Latin because early books were written in Latin (more to do with the church, but still) and I don't dispute that - I even imply it in my post! You say that Italy has it's own language which is the modern form of Latin and is similar to many Romance languages - I certainly don't dispute that. I agree with you on the points you make. BUT if a citizen of the early Roman Empire wanted to communicate with the most number of people across the breadth of the empire, he would use Greek, not Latin. There is a very good reason why the first biblical texts and letters were written in Greek, then only afterwards translated into Latin when the Church was settled in Rome. It was because the international language of the day was Greek.

I think you are saying because most of the people lived in the Greek areas of the Roman Empire, is that it? I don't believe the people who lived in Britain or Gaul spoke a lot of Greek, and I think the areas of the Western Roman Empire was considered poorer and less populated than the Eastern Roman Empire. that is why Constantine relocated the capitol to the East, and if you ask me, it was a bad bet on his part. What are the wealthier parts of Europe today? Is it the South and the East, or is it the North and the West? What I have the most trouble getting over was the fact that Rome imported a lot of its food from Egypt to feed its 1 million inhabitants in Rome! Egypt is a desert, maybe it has the Nile, but Italy and the rest of Europe has a lot more rain and it doesn't need rivers like the Nile for irrigation. Maybe the Nile replaces the soil on its banks and allows for sustained agriculture at a time that people didn't know about crop rotation perhaps. The northern Europeans were perhaps more nomadic, and relied more on hunting than settled agriculture because crop yields would not sustain them in a single field and they would have to move on if they wanted to grow more crops. I still find it funny that what the Romans called rich, we today call poor, it is much the same with the later British Empire calling India the crown jewel of their Empire, say what? I look at India today and see a third World country that is developing, but still with many people carrying buckets of water from a river or well because they don't even have plumbing, and that was the "Crown Jewel" of the British Empire? No wonder the Empire fell.