What are you currently reading?

[bwv 1080]

Fascinating look at the transformation of economic life since 1870. 

the kind of rapid economic growth we still consider our due, and expect to continue forever, was in fact a one-time-only event. First came the Great Inventions, almost all dating from the late 19th century. Then came refinement and exploitation of those inventions — a process that took time, and exerted its peak effect on economic growth between 1920 and 1970. Everything since has at best been a faint echo of that great wave
Gordon suggests that the future is all too likely to be marked by stagnant living standards for most Americans, because the effects of slowing technological progress will be reinforced by a set of "headwinds": rising inequality, a plateau in education levels, an aging population and more...

It's a shocking prediction for a society whose self-image, arguably its very identity, is bound up with the expectation of constant progress. And you have to wonder about the social and political consequences of another generation of stagnation or decline in working-class incomes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/books/review/the-powers-that-were.html?mcubz=0

[Jaakko Keskinen]

So far King John has been great. I wonder why this is one of his lesser-known plays apart from the famous "Gild the lily" quote, which is a misquote anyway. In actual play, it doesn't go like that. I think I should nominate this one of his most underrated plays, among with Timon of Athens and Two Gentlemen of Verona. I am always on edge whether or not add The Winter's Tale in the list. It is a great play for sure in my opinion, but I cannot figure out what the general consensus about the play is.

Maybe it's a bit premature of me to add King John in the underrated plays-list before I've read it all the way through. But I'm almost done and I have hard time believing that a genius like Shakespeare could mess up that bad during almost the last moments of the work.

I never stated my opinion about Julius Caesar. I liked it but the last two acts were not nearly as good as the first three. My edition of Julius Caesar had an absolutely wonderful preface by Jotaarkka Pennanen which greatly influenced my reading of the actual play.

[Todd]

Fascinating look at the transformation of economic life since 1870. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/books/review/the-powers-that-were.html?mcubz=0

How is it overall?  The main thesis has gotten attention in a number of outlets, and the few times I've read Gordon outside of old textbooks has been enlightening. 

(Part of his thesis was driven home in the last couple years when I was reading on DACs and learned that some of the theoretical work that is relied on in today's digital electronics stretches back to at least WWI.)

[bwv 1080]

How is it overall?  The main thesis has gotten attention in a number of outlets, and the few times I've read Gordon outside of old textbooks has been enlightening. 

(Part of his thesis was driven home in the last couple years when I was reading on DACs and learned that some of the theoretical work that is relied on in today's digital electronics stretches back to at least WWI.)

So far, its a great read.  Well-written and its (at least for me) fascinating to read about the trans formative nature of things we take for granted like chain grocery stores.  When A&P and Kroger started in the late 19th century people whined about them putting small family-owned stores out of businesses just like people complain about Wal-Mart today.  Nevermind that working class people saw their food prices drop by more than 20%, a huge improvement for people who spent 40%+ of their income on food.  As to the thesis, I agree that it is hard to imagine anything new that could make a comparable improvement in my standard of living as having electricity, plumbing, vaccines and antibiotics

[Todd]

As to the thesis, I agree that it is hard to imagine anything new that could make a comparable improvement in my standard of living as having electricity, plumbing, vaccines and antibiotics

When I first read book reviews, I have to admit that I was struck by how profound it was not only in terms of implications for economics, but in everyday terms.  I also thought of my paternal grandmother.  She was born in 1910 in the Canadian plains and she literally lived in a dwelling carved into a hill with no running water, no electricity, no paved roads, etc.  She passed way in 2005, in the age of the internet.  While there have certainly been technological advances and social changes in my lifetime, there will be nothing like the changes she experienced in one long lifetime.  Oh, who am I kidding, I had it rough when all I had for entertainment was a black and white TV and crappy transistor radios while I ate my popsicles.

I think I'll have to get the book.

[bwv 1080]

When I first read book reviews, I have to admit that I was struck by how profound it was not only in terms of implications for economics, but in everyday terms.  I also thought of my paternal grandmother.  She was born in 1910 in the Canadian plains and she literally lived in a dwelling carved into a hill with no running water, no electricity, no paved roads, etc.  She passed way in 2005, in the age of the internet.  While there have certainly been technological advances and social changes in my lifetime, there will be nothing like the changes she experienced in one long lifetime.  Oh, who am I kidding, I had it rough when all I had for entertainment was a black and white TV and crappy transistor radios while I ate my popsicles.

I think I'll have to get the book.

Yes, and what took 95 years for your grandmother has happened in a generation many Asian countries (and from a much lower starting point, 19th century American peasants were much better off than 20th century Chinese, Japanese or Korean ones)

[kishnevi]

Because this fits:
I am roughly in the middle of Vidal's novel "Julian" about Julianus Apostata. I did not check with independent sources but at that time (350s) there was already a marked linguistic gap. Julian speaks "soldier's Latin" so he might have been technically bilingual but he does not really feel at home in the language and reads older Roman authors (like Cicero) in Greek translation. And it is frequently mentioned that the (partly pagan, partly christian) Greek rhetoric professors and philosophers in the Eastern part despise Latin as "barbaric language". On the other hand "Asian" and "Greekling" are derogative names Julian is called in the West.

About a generation later, St. Augustine knew some Greek but apparently not very well. And later in the "Latin" middle ages there was the phrase "Graeca non leguntur" because Greek quotations were basically skipped in the lectures and only some specialists read and translated Greek authors, despite the high status of Plato and especially Aristotle; cf. The name of the Rose where as far as I recall only about two of the learned monks read Greek (that's why the mysterious book is both hard/easy to identify).

I really find it interesting that whereas the later Western middle ages were basically bilingual (Latin + local vernacular) and from the 16th century humanism on, "educated" persons were usually supposed to read Greek as well, the actual antiquity that caused the cultural importance of these languages was in practice mostly monolingual, Greek dominated until the first century AD (the classical Greeks basically ignored "barbaric tongues"), then somewhat bilingual for two or three centuries (with Greek being still more common as lingua franca, probably also because most of the commercial an intellectual centers were in the East: Athens, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria etc.) and divided into a Western Latin and an Eastern Greek half afterwards.

Warning about Vidal: he did sometimes play fast and loose with the sources, and some of the theories he accepted as fact are now known to be false.  Some of them were known to be false at the time he used them for his books.  A good illustration of this is his novel "Creation" which is premised on dating the life of Zoraoster to a period we know to be much too late (and which was known to be too late even when Vidal wrote the book).  Of course, this does not keep "Creation" from being one of the best historical novels ever written.  If you've never read it, put it on your to-do list.


Also, the earlier Empire could be thought of as trilingual.  Theoretically an upper class resident of Galilee, Samaria, Phoenicia and Syria would need three languages:  the local Aramaic dialect to speak with his neighbors, Greek to speak with residents of urban areas and trading partners from Greek speaking areas,  and Latin to communicate with the local agents of Rome when Greek would not work.   Similar usage of a local vernacular used in parallel with Greek and Latin probably occurred to throughout the eastern half of the Empire (Egypt, for example), but we know more about Aramaic because it was used over a large area that spread into the Persian/Parthian empire, and because of its importance in Christian history as the mother tongue of Jesus and the apostles.

[Florestan]

Also, the earlier Empire could be thought of as trilingual.  Theoretically an upper class resident of Galilee, Samaria, Phoenicia and Syria would need three languages:  the local Aramaic dialect to speak with his neighbors, Greek to speak with residents of urban areas and trading partners from Greek speaking areas,  and Latin to communicate with the local agents of Rome when Greek would not work.   Similar usage of a local vernacular used in parallel with Greek and Latin probably occurred to throughout the eastern half of the Empire (Egypt, for example), but we know more about Aramaic because it was used over a large area that spread into the Persian/Parthian empire, and because of its importance in Christian history as the mother tongue of Jesus and the apostles.

Precisely the reason why the linguistic marker is particularly misleading when it comes to define an Empire.

Think of the "Holy Roman Empire" (which was actually neither Holy, nor Roman): it began as a Germanic-ruled entity, whose official language --- as in state documents --- was Latin but which incorporated a wide range of every-day-spoken languages, from various Germanic dialects to various Romance dialects to various Slavic dialects, out of which there eventually evolved, among others, the literary German and Italian and Czech. In its later days, when the Habsburg / Austrian (ie, Germanic) domination was firmly established and acknowledged, only a fraction of the population spoke German while the lingua franca of educated classes was French and in the realm of opera --- which back then was THE most popular and "democratic"form of art --- Italian reigned supreme.

[Jo498]

You are probably right about some regions. On the other hand, hellenized Jews like Philo in Egypt basically only knew Greek, that's why the LXX translation was made. My point was rather that apart from everyday transactions in the Levante the classical Greek *culture* was monolingual. Everything non-Greek was "barbarian" and usually uninteresting. Whereas Roman culture was for several centuries bilingual with the educated upper class using Greek somewhat like the Russian nobles in War and Peace preferring French to their mother tongue. But this bilinguality apparently was never so well established in the Eastern Mediterrean where Greek dominated (although laws and some official documents were in Latin) and it broke down rather quickly around 400 or so. Otherwise it would be really odd that a highly educated rhetorics professor like Augustine of Hippo was weak in Greek. And he was also a (neo)platonist, so one would expect him to have some motivation to study Greek.

[kishnevi]

Precisely the reason why the linguistic marker is particularly misleading when it comes to define an Empire.

Think of the "Holy Roman Empire" (which was actually neither Holy, nor Roman): it began as a Germanic-ruled entity, whose official language --- as in state documents --- was Latin but which incorporated a wide range of every-day-spoken languages, from various Germanic dialects to various Romance dialects to various Slavic dialects, out of which there eventually evolved, among others, the literary German and Italian and Czech. In its later days, when the Habsburg / Austrian (ie, Germanic) domination was firmly established and acknowledged, only a fraction of the population spoke German while the lingua franca of educated classes was French and in the realm of opera --- which back then was THE most popular and "democratic"form of art --- Italian reigned supreme.

All true.  But my original point was regarding use of the new language for official documents.  This seems to have happened gradually, but the process was finished in the early 7th century.  In 200 CE, the Emperor issued decrees which were in Latin, and then translated into Greek for the benefit of his subjects.  In 700 CE, the Emperor issued decrees in Greek.

Did Latin ever stop being used for state documents in the HRE?

An apposite case is England, where Norman French was the language of government from the time of the Conquest up to the middle Plantagenets, and then was purposely switched to the vernacular, except in the courts, where French continued to be used, via a jargon known as 'law French' for several centuries thereafter. 

(I don't recall the precise dates when the changes to English occurred.)

[Florestan]

Even today, Greek minorities in the Middle East are locally known as Romans, in Arabic, Turkish, and no doubt in Georgian and other languages as well. "Hellenes" is the nomer nationalists opted for, but it always had a strong connotation of "pagans". Even in the TV news I occasionally hear and see "Romans" being translated as Greeks, and correctly so.

Actually, even today there is a country called Romania and a people who identify themselves as Romanians. 

I will not go so far as to claim that we are indeed the last remnant of the Roman Empire (although the internationally-celebrated Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga came the closest one could get to making exactly this claim in his 1935  " Byzance après Byzance " (full text available here in the original French: http://www.unibuc.ro/CLASSICA/byzance/cuprins.htm --- even if you will not agree with his claims, it still makes for a fascinating reading) --- I will only say that the awareness of our essential Roman origins and identity has been always preserved in our collective memory and the works of all Romanian chroniclers and historians.

Now, of course the present-day Romanian people, just like any other European people, is a mixture; in our case, the three main ingredients are Romans, Dacians and (later on) Slavs. But the language, despite its irreplaceable Slavic  / Hungarian (although this is debatable, since there are Hungarian scholars who claim the other way around, namely that Hungarians loaned those words from Romanian) / Turkish loan-words (proportionally and functionally speaking, the Slavic ones far surpass the others), still preserves an essentially Latin grammatical structure (including cases long lost in all other Romance language, such as the vocative) and a mostly Latin every-day vocabulary.

Bottom line, we might not be Romans, but we surely are Romanians, which in itself is no small accomplishment, all things considered. 

[Karl Henning]

We're Romaniacs!

[Florestan]

Did Latin ever stop being used for state documents in the HRE?

That I really don't know. Maybe Jo can help.

An apposite case is England, where Norman French was the language of government from the time of the Conquest up to the middle Plantagenets, and then was purposely switched to the vernacular, except in the courts, where French continued to be used, via a jargon known as 'law French' for several centuries thereafter. 

Three comments.

1. England was not an empire (at least for the time frame you considered).

2. Norman French was itself an acculturation phenomenon since the Normans were originally Vikings who did not speak a iota of French.

3. French itself is a curious case: a Romance language which derives its name from a Germanic tribe which originally did not speak a iota of Latin.

The (unbiased and honest) study of the Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages is actually the best antidote for nationalism that I am aware of. 

[Florestan]

We're Romaniacs!

About the "Third Rome", perhaps?   

[Todd]

About the Third Rome perhaps?   

Tee-hee.

[kishnevi]

Actually, it is (or at least was) routine among historians to speaking of the "Angevin Empire" in speaking of the Plantagenet state in the last half of the 12th century. 

BTW

Nicolae Iorga came the closest one could get to making exactly this claim in his 1935  " Byzance après Byzance

Note which term he used...

[Jo498]

Did Latin ever stop being used for state documents in the HRE?

To my knowledge Latin remained the official document language in the HRE and even later in Poland and Hungary (I don't have a good source, only a German language wikipedia article that mentions this in passing).

Apart from legal documents Latin clearly dominates as lingua franca of science (and related stuff, simply anything vaguely scholarly) until the 18th century. During the 18th century French becomes also important, especially in diplomacy.
But even until about 1900 Latin was very important and many academic writings (such as dissertations) were (or had to be) written in Latin.
I think at some universities one is still allowed to turn in a Latin dissertation but I guess it is by now uncommon even in Classics. But prefaces and critical apparatus for editions of Latin and Greek texts are still done in Latin as are of course all official papal writings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Latin#Notable_works_.281500.E2.80.931900.29

[Christo]

Actually, even today there is a country called Romania and a people who identify themselves as Romanians. 
Bottom line, we might not be Romans, but we surely are Romanians, which in itself is no small accomplishment, all things considered. 

I read Nicolae Iorga's classic already in the 1990s and yes, am aware of Romania's Roman heritage. But the very name - Romania- is a 19th Century invention, isn't it?

Reading here and now, in a very Roman, but even hotter, Cyprus:

[kishnevi]

To my knowledge Latin remained the official document language in the HRE and even later in Poland and Hungary (I don't have a good source, only a German language wikipedia article that mentions this in passing).

Apart from legal documents Latin clearly dominates as lingua franca of science (and related stuff, simply anything vaguely scholarly) until the 18th century. During the 18th century French becomes also important, especially in diplomacy.
But even until about 1900 Latin was very important and many academic writings (such as dissertations) were (or had to be) written in Latin.
I think at some universities one is still allowed to turn in a Latin dissertation but I guess it is by now uncommon even in Classics. But prefaces and critical apparatus for editions of Latin and Greek texts are still done in Latin as are of course all official papal writings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Latin#Notable_works_.281500.E2.80.931900.29

Thanks.  I realize how long Latin survived in the professions and academia, just was not sure of its use in actual government.

My high school library had Latin translations of Lewis Carroll.

[Christo]

To my knowledge Latin remained the official document language in the HRE and even later in Poland and Hungary (I don't have a good source, only a German language wikipedia article that mentions this in passing).

Correct. And of course in Austria, where replacing Latin by German later in the 18th Century - as it happened- only managed to damage delicate internal relations.