10.05.24: follow-up on the previous post

The history of Ancient Rome is massive and complex. When I started, my knowledge of Roman history was vague. But certain stories came up – again and again – in the old school textbooks. In an earlier post, an excerpt referred to Aeneas’ escape from Troy. Two posts back reference was made to Romulus.

Long before I could look at these stories in original Latin, I learned about early Roman history – and the characters who figure in them – by using books such as Julia, a Latin reader, because they tell the stories in simpler language.

In earlier posts I have used many excerpts from:

[i] Helen Chesnutt’s The Road to Latin; they give a lot of background to the lives of the Romans

[ii] Sonnenschein’s Ora Maritima; the author talks a lot about the history of Roman Britain, and you can review basic Latin while you're doing it.

https://archive.org/details/cu31924031202850

Slowly, I identified areas of Roman history that were of significance and, gradually, I began to read more detailed works, first in English and then in Latin. What were the major events – both historical and in legend? How do some of these narratives forge the Romans’ mindset? What was their ‘value system’, and who were the ‘major players’ – good and bad?

I think that Reading Latin by Jones and Sidwell [image #1] is a fabulous ‘step up’ into the world of Roman history and literature in Latin. Jones and Sidwell, starting from Plautus, choose parts of original texts – and they provide extensive notes and vocabulary. An example in the book is the trial against Gaius Verres for his gross mismanagement of Sicily. Cicero was the prosecutor. The entire trial is monumental in length, but Jones and Sidwell pick out significant parts of it in Latin, and give the historical background and some insight into how the Romans viewed provincial management.

In the way that I referred to Wiktionary as being the ‘middle man’ in terms of dictionaries, for me Jones and Sidwell are the ‘middle men’ in accessing the literature and the history in the original language.

Here is the link again to Julia – a Latin reader, the entire basic book that I’m using at the moment for these posts if you want to read more for yourself; there, among others, you'll find Romulus and Remus, the Sabines, Mars, and the Trojan horse.

https://www.fabulaefaciles.com/library/books/reed/julia

Although not mentioned by name in the first excerpt in the previous post, the incident being described concerns Horatius on the bridge.

The second text refers to an event in the legendary history of early Rome which is known by the ugly term ‘The rape of the Sabine Women’ although it is sometimes translated as ‘abudction’ or ‘kidnapping’. Personally, I think that, in the context of that event, ‘rape’ is too provocative, whereas in relation to the rape of Lucretia – another major story in the early history / legend of Rome - the word means precisely that. The rape / abduction / kidnapping (delete as applicable) of the Sabine women was a story known to all the Romans. More information is at the link below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women

More than that, they “commemorated” it on their coins [mages #2 and #3] And the coins too can be part of the ‘jigsaw’ of getting to know the Romans.

In an earlier post there was a discussion on the coin depicting Aeneas escaping from Troy, his father on his shoulder and the household god in his right hand, symbolic of Rome’s earliest history, bravery, duty to the gods and duty to the family.

Another post also looked at the Ides of March coin commemorating the murder of Julius Caesar in, for me, a blatant political manoeuvre, since it was minted on the order of Brutus, one of the men who had stabbed Caesar to death.

But why would a coin commemorating the abduction of women be minted? What was in the psyche of the Romans that a coin like that would "celebrate" such an event - whether true or legendary? I don’t know the “answer”, but I suspect that it embedded the idea that the Romans could take whatever they wanted. And, judging by the size of the Roman Empire at its height, they kept on doing it.