21.03.26: Describing objects; introduction; Whose Voices Do We Hear?

Before moving on to the next (lengthy) topic, it is worth pausing to reflect on whose voices we usually hear when we study the ancient world.

At university I read Bertolt Brecht’s poem Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters (Questions from a Worker Who Reads), a text that repeatedly challenges how history is written and remembered. The poem opens with a deceptively simple question:

Wer baute das siebentorige Theben?

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?

Brecht immediately contrasts the reality of labour with the way history is recorded:

In den Büchern stehen die Namen von Königen.

In the books stand the names of kings.

The poem presses the point further. Cities are destroyed and rebuilt, empires rise and fall, and yet the people who physically made this happen are absent from the narrative:

Und das mehrmals zerstörte Babylon –

Wer baute es so viele Male auf?

And Babylon — so many times destroyed —

Who rebuilt it so many times?

Triumphs are commemorated in stone, but the builders remain invisible:

Das große Rom

Ist voll von Triumphbögen. Wer errichtete sie?

Great Rome is full of triumphal arches. Who built them?

Brecht’s questions become increasingly pointed, even ironic:

Der junge Alexander eroberte Indien.

Er allein?

Young Alexander conquered India.

He alone?

Cäsar schlug die Gallier.

Hatte er nicht wenigstens einen Koch bei sich?

Caesar defeated the Gauls.

Did he not at least have a cook with him?

The poem ends with a relentless accumulation of victories — and questions:

Jede Seite ein Sieg.

Wer kochte den Siegesschmaus?

Every page a victory.

Who cooked the victory banquet?

There is no doubt where Brecht’s sympathies lie. He condemns a historical narrative that celebrates the “great and the good” while ignoring the labour that enabled their achievements. From a modern perspective we may feel that this is obvious, but the poem exposes how strongly historical writing — ancient and modern — directs our attention toward certain individuals and away from others.

At the same time, Brecht’s position is itself not without bias. Societies do require leaders, and ancient authors are capable of recognising more than just elite heroics. Caesar, for example, praises not only the bravery and endurance of his own soldiers, but also the determination of the enemy. Roman culture itself did not solely glorify gods and emperors; it also acknowledged the realities of daily life, work and production.

This tension is particularly relevant to the study of Latin. When we read Classical Latin literature, we overwhelmingly read the voices of senators, generals and intellectuals: Catullus, Cicero, Seneca, Tacitus — figures who dominate politics, war and philosophy. These authors are essential, but they do not represent the whole of Roman experience.

Beyond the battlefield and the senate lies another world: the world of cooking, shopping, farming, building, medicine and manufacturing — the world the Romans talked about every day. These voices are quieter, but they survive. They appear in Apicius’ cookbook, in Celsus’ medical writings, in Vitruvius’ detailed descriptions of building materials and techniques, in agricultural treatises, and in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, which attempts to catalogue almost everything.

The Romans were not only politicians and philosophers. They were stonemasons and shipbuilders, chefs and launderers; they sold meat and pillows; they built ships, aqueducts and roads. They worked with brick, marble, clay, lead and concrete. When we explore this area of language, we acquire not only a wide and practical vocabulary, but also a clearer understanding of ordinary Roman life — not just their victories.

The next topic therefore focuses on describing objects and materials: the many terms Latin uses to describe what things are made of, how they are constructed, and how they are used. In doing so, we move closer to the people who built Rome — even if their names were never written in the books.