A quick question for the Roman experts out there

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Zelenka

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Just double checking something I read on a none-too-reliable source; Does anyone know if it is true that Roman officials in the Holy Land and thereabouts would have spoken Greek rather than Latin in their work and dealings? Particularly around the first century AD? I know later the Byzantine Empire tended to use Greek, but was it common earlier on?

I just wanted to be sure this is correct as one of my characters has a discussion related to this. Any help is much appreciated.
 

Claudia Gray

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I'm no expert, but I'm inclined to think that's probably accurate. Greek was very commonly spoken/written in among Romans of that era.
 

mscelina

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I don't believe that anything other than Latin was used for official purposes--at least in the documents and literature of the time. But spoken? The Latin of 1st century Rome wasn't the classical Latin that we learn today--it was 'vulgar' Latin--a hodgepodge of various languages and dialects from ancient people and tribes assimilated by the growing city-state. I don't find it difficult to believe that Greek would probably be spoken, particularly in business transactions or negotiations at the time. As I recollect, Romans of a particular station and educational level were expected to be fluent in Greek--as were merchants throughout the Mediterranean basin. So even as Latin was the language of diplomacy in the Middle Ages, Greek was the 'universal' language of commerce and diplomacy in the ancient world.
 

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The records are all in Latin, with bits of Greek for cultural references mixed in, but yeah, I expect they'd have been multi-lingual--pretty much anyone with power there had to be.
 

Zelenka

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Thanks everyone. I'm just trying to work out what language someone who had worked in the Holy Land for a long time in administration would have spoken, even though they themselves were a Romanised Gaul. Not so much in official documents but in day to day conversation where everyone was of a different nationality. My thinking was that if they were used to speaking Koine Greek for business matters or the likes, that'd be the natural one they'd fall back into. But I just wanted to confirm that before my characters have an argument about it. ;)
 

Willowmound

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I just know ("know") that to the Romans, the Greek language was what the Latin language would later be to Europeans -- one of culture and learing. If you spoke it, it meant you were educated.
 

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Yes. There is a reason the Eastern Roman Empire and later Byzantine Empire favored Greek. It was the "language on the ground", so to speak, and over time edged out the Latin used for official correspondence. Similar, sort of, to the way English edged out the French used at English court.

Romans - the wealthy and well-educated, at least - were studying Greek as far back as the 3rd century B.C. By Caesar and Cicero's time, it was expected that a man of certain standing be able to write and speak Greek.

Depending upon his social status and education, a Romanized Gaul serving in Jerusalem, Antioch, etc, during the 1st century A.D. would have certainly been fluent in Greek.
 

IceCreamEmpress

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The perception I have vis-a-vis Greek in the late Roman Empire was that it was used as French was in 19th-century Europe--a common language of diplomacy, commerce, and elegant society.

But I think Latin would have been more likely than Greek to be your character's second language. In Fergus Millar's book A Greek Roman Empire, he makes a big old fuss about the increasing prominence of Greek as the common language of the Roman Empire during the 4th century AD/CE. I'm pretty sure that that represented a significant break from earlier practice, and Millar may be more specific--it's been a while since I read the book, and I took it out of the library so can't refresh my memory.
 

Finni

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For day to day speaking it would be latin. If you are talking about a romanized gaul though you have to consider how much pride he had in being romanized. I say this because for a roman, latin was a source of pride. Most romans didn't appreciate the greek influence in their society, especially in Rome itself. If this character was roman I would say without a doubt he would have spoken latin whenever possible, but I do not know how 'romanized' your gaul is. Only you do.
 

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If he's a Romanized Gaul, and of some wealth/social status, he'd likely be a native speaker of Latin, at least one of the continental Celtic languages generally lumped together as Gualish, and some form of Greek; the Gauls used all three languages. Keep in mind that being multilingual was very very common.
 

Zelenka

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Just to clarify, this character is going to speak one or two lines in whichever language would be natural for him, whichever one he would naturally fall into when speaking, and from those few lines my other characters go - ah, he is from such and such. So although he has ties to Gaul both before and after going to the Holy Land, Greek or Latin is more helpful for my purposes at this point, and Greek, if it was indeed the lingua franca of that part of the Empire, would serve me quite well. Originally I was going to use Latin, but then I read that reference to Greek being more widely used in that area, so I wondered if I should use that instead. I think if I use Greek and just say that it was commonly used, that should cover me.

Thanks again for the help. I just don't like to rely on details without some form of confirmation, but I wasn't sure where to start looking in my books (as in what subject / chapter that kind of information would come under).
 

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Just to clarify, this character is going to speak one or two lines in whichever language would be natural for him, whichever one he would naturally fall into when speaking, and from those few lines my other characters go - ah, he is from such and such.

His Latin will tell them where he's from, right down to the province of Gaul.

Really!
 

Zelenka

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His Latin will tell them where he's from, right down to the province of Gaul.

Really!

It is literally going to be one or two sentences in whichever language. The people overhearing this wouldn't recognise one Latin accent from another but they would be able to recognise it as Latin, and therefore work out that the speaker is a Roman. If it was Greek, I was thinking that might throw them off the scent a bit, until one of them fathomed that Greek might have been spoken in the area he spent a fair bit of time in, so therefore would be of more use to the story. The Holy Land connection is far more important at that point than the Gaulish, which comes up much later. What I don't want though is for my character to explain out that reason for him speaking Greek, and for an expert to read it in the book and go 'but no one would've spoken Greek there', sort of thing.
 

IceCreamEmpress

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What I don't want though is for my character to explain out that reason for him speaking Greek, and for an expert to read it in the book and go 'but no one would've spoken Greek there', sort of thing.

He would absolutely have been able to speak passable Greek if he was an ambitious Imperial administrator of the first century. You're cool! ;)
 

SteveCordero

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As mentioned, the Romans in the Holy Land spoke and wrote Greek when communicating with the locals. That was the only common language for the two groups.

The predominant language in the eastern part of the Roman World is Greek. In Palastine, those whose native tongue was Aramaic still spoke Greek. It was a bilingual region for sure. What the locals did not speek was Latin.

Romans, like the inhabitants of Palastine, spoke Greek as well. Their native tongue was Latin of course. For the Romans living or stationed in Palastine, the only means of communicating with the the locals was through Greek. All official materials were written in Latin, but when speeking with the local population they did so in Greek.

That's why I always found it ridiculous how in "The Passion of Christ" Pontius Pilate is speaking to the Jewish mob in Latin while the mob responds to him in Aramaic. Neither would understand each other that way. Pilate would have had to address the mob in Greek so that they could understand.
 
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