Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

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Timothée
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Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by Timothée »

Intelligence² organised a public debate on the topic Greece versus Rome, featuring the Right Honourable Boris Johnson and Professor Mary Beard as the proponents. Various aspects of the respective cultures are treated of. It continues a tradition which has been especially strong in the UK, I think, but is hardly unheard-of elsewhere, either. What are your impressions of the discussion and its arrangement?

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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by jeidsath »

I haven't watched it yet, but I hope that Johnson spent five minutes quoting from the Iliad in Greek.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by Timothée »

I don't know if I'm obtuse, but I hadn't realised Johnson actually majored in the classics. I'd thought he merely had a traditional British education. :roll:

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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

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“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by daivid »

What pronunciation system is he using?
Which part of the Iliad is he reciting?
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Paul Derouda
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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by Paul Derouda »

He quotes right from the beginning, book 1 verse 1. I suppose the pronunciation system is just the "default" one used by the British?

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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by Hylander »

He certainly understands what he's reciting--he's not just spouting syllables.
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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by daivid »

Paul Derouda wrote:He quotes right from the beginning, book 1 verse 1.
Thanks.
Paul Derouda wrote:I suppose the pronunciation system is just the "default" one used by the British?
Which would be?
( I remember a whodunit where the murderer is exposed because he claimed to be from a specific public school which the GREATDETECTIVE knew to pronounce Greek in a different way from the one the murderer used, so I'm not sure that there even is one.)
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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by Paul Derouda »

daivid wrote:
Paul Derouda wrote:I suppose the pronunciation system is just the "default" one used by the British?
Which would be?
( I remember a whodunit where the murderer is exposed because he claimed to be from a specific public school which the GREATDETECTIVE knew to pronounce Greek in a different way from the one the murderer used, so I'm not sure that there even is one.)
Well, during the 35 years I have lived on this planet, I've spent only three nights in an English-speaking country, so I really can't analyze the niceties of British Greek pronunciation. That would probably require spending some time in an English Greek classroom. :) Johnson seems somewhat linguistically informed, in that he seems to distinguish (more or less) long and short vowels, but other than that, I can't say much except that it sounds horribly anglophonic to me...

It reminds me of the pun all French students of Greek know (I've posted this before): Οὐκ ἔλαϐον πόλιν ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἐλπὶς ἔφη κακά. This is supposed to sound exactly the same as "Où qu'est la bonne Pauline? À la gare, elle pisse et fait caca!" ("Where is the maid Pauline? At the railway station, she's peeing and pooping!") Pronounced like that, the "Greek" phrase is as incomprehensible to an English student of Greek as Johnson reciting would be to a French student of Greek (assuming that the English student doesn't know French and vice versa).

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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by mwh »

It’s not British pronunciation, it’s Eton and Balliol pronunciation, English ruling-class pronunciation.

It’s a perfectly coherent system—plummy English phonology, metrical longa stressed, accents ignored.

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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by Paul Derouda »

Eton, Cockney, Texan... They all sound same to me!

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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by Piekarski »

Thanks for posting the link to the debate Timothée!

If anyone is interested, Boris Johnson has host a BBC documentary about Rome, both parts of which are online.

As an American, I've been trying all evening to think of a politician in the US who is as knowledgeable about the ancient world as Johnson, but none come to mind. Does anyone know of some/one?

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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by jeidsath »

@Piekarski America goes in more for lawyers than classics majors. But there is this sort of thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVYfPKzZY9Y

The above video deserves comment on the fake lip service that gets payed to the classics by certain parts of the American political spectrum and why that lip service produces bizarre sights like the above. But I thought that I would let some actual classicist on this forum write that instead. I'll just say that in the U.K., as opposed to the U.S., what you get instead is class signaling, which is mostly what Boris Johnson is doing.

However, I am much more interested in Johnson for his Greek than his politics. I thought that his Homer was great. It was decent meter. He cut some boring bits and recited expressively. Fairly impressive for live television. He has replaced quantity with stress, but done so with a reasonable degree of consistency. It's fun to listen to, to my English-speaking ears at least.

EDIT: An unintentional nod to Cicero, from a different American politician here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu6_2hFTw74
(see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farmer_and_the_Viper)
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by Scribo »

Mwh is largely right, we refer to it as "Etonian Greek" (or Latin"), though we use the term for ALL of the great public schools, not just Eton. It's certainly not specific to Balliol (or any college for that matter, if I was going to pick on a college it would be bloody Christ Church). It's certainly "class signalling" as Jeidsath says, the public school set tend to be dual register in that regard, learning what they must of the reconstructed pronunciation when in highly specific, university, settings but falling back on the above whenever they're together. Working class lads like myself only have the latter I'm afraid (well, I suppose I have the mod Greek system too, but still).

I often find their pronunciation hard to follow when they use it in real time and there are all sorts of in-jokes furnished by the phonological quirks that I'm afraid are quite impossible to get unless you attended one of the great schools.

I'm afraid our politicians are hardly more informed about the ancient world than yours are: Classics is no longer the way into parliament (usually into banking, black letter law and consulting), that would be something like PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) or History. There is a variation of Literae Humaniores (or, Classics) taught at Oxford called Ancient History where one only has to be able to read sources in Greek and Latin and apart from some emphasis on things like epigraphy there is no requirement to pick up the full accouterments of the Classicist. I think I've seen an MP with that on their CV.

Meh, in the UK we have so many different little class signifiers that I could not tell them had I 10 tongues.

EDIT: I'd argue going to these debates counts as one! They were charging, I think, £50 a ticket! Also the question (Greece vs Rome) is commonly a debate topic here, I recall one a few years ago between Mary Beard (Rome) and Edith Hall (Greece - winner) which was being talked about a lot.
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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by daivid »

jeidsath wrote:@Piekarski America goes in more for lawyers than classics majors. But there is this sort of thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVYfPKzZY9Y
Cruz is comparing Obama to Cataline for giving some illegal immigrants a conditional right to stay?
It's just rather silly.
If politicians can't help themselves from distorting the classics in this way then the less they know of the classics the better.

See here for how Cruz has edited the speech. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... &tid=ss_fb.
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Re: Intelligence²: Greece vs. Rome

Post by mwh »

Scribo, I specified Balliol because it was Boris’s college. I also had Jasper Griffin in mind. :wink:

daivid, It’s not “just rather silly,” it’s an abuse in itself. How much did it cost taxpayers to have this absurd performance prepared and delivered and recorded? At least with Green Eggs and Ham he only had to read an unmodified text.

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