Asterix and the game of words

When I was aged 13 or so, I received a rather well-used ex-library copy of Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques at Christmas. (Asterix, the indomitable warrior whose raison d’être is to foil Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in 50 BC, needs no introduction.)

I had already shown an interest in the Romans and the intention was perhaps to encourage me in my French studies. If so, I’m afraid it had an opposite effect, as Goscinny’s French witicisms were beyond my comprehension. (I did enjoy Uderzo’s pictures, though.)

The book, apparently the twelfth to appear in the Astérix series, was published in 1968 to tie in with the Mexico Olympics, and the English translation (which I only acquired many years later) appeared in 1972, on the occasion of the Munich Olympics.

Incidentally, one of the many topical gags that passed me by is the one concerning substance qui donne des forces supplémentaires (“artificial stimulants”), banned at the Olympic Games for the first time in 1968. This neatly ties in with the Gauls’ refusal to take their magic potion and the disqualification of the entire Roman team for trying to use it instead.

Is that name funny?

I remember, firstly, being completely flummoxed by the characters’ names. I realized that Astérix and Obélix were simply the typesetting characters of the same names — they do not change in the translated volumes. Panoramix the druid seemed straightforward (his English name Getafix always struck me as rather near the knuckle, although translator Anthea Bell claimed that it “did not necessarily imply an allusion to drugs”) and it didn’t take me long to decipher Idéfix the dog’s name (one of the few characters whose English name, Dogmatix, actually matches his French one and his canine character).

But I could make neither head nor tail of the chieftain Abraracourcix, which I thought must be something to do with Abracadabra (not, perhaps, part of the everyday French vocabulary) — it turns out to be the French phrase à bras raccourcis (literally “with shortened arms”), which means something like “with fists flying”. The English translators (the talented Anthea Bell along with Derek Hockridge) decided to highlight the chieftain’s physique rather wittily with the name Vitalstatistix. (The German version, Majestix, focuses on the first of the chieftain’s traits: “majestueux, courageux, ombrageux”.)

Nor could I understand the bard’s name Assurancetourix, which was a play on the phrase assurance tous risques, meaning comprehensive car insurance, and nothing to do with music or poetry. By contrast, the far wittier English version, Cacofonix, fits his character as a tone-deaf musician perfectly. (The German version, Troubadix, at least suggests his role as a troubadour.)

Do French puns translate?

Much of the humour was quite incomprehensible to me. The panel depicted here (from Jeux Olympiques p. 17) demonstrates one of Goscinny’s many idiomatic jokes that soared over my teenage head and left me none the wiser.

The bard has decided to compose une marche olympique (“an Olympic march”), setting up a joke based on the French phrase rater une marche (“miss a step”), so that, when the bad-tempered blacksmith (the bard’s usual foil) thumps him, Asterix presumes that he has actually tripped over. But the phrase il dû rater une marche literally means “he must have bungled the march” (i.e. the Olympic march that he was composing).

Bell and Hockridge, always excellent at finding a way to render Goscinny’s humour in English, had the bard deciding to compose “an Olympic hymn” instead, mindful of the fact that the French play on words would not work in English. The two bypassers then ask, “What’s the matter with hymn”, to which the reply is, “I think he’s singing flat”.

Many similar jokes sadly passed me by, such as the greeting Quel bon vent, les enfants?, a French idiom meaning “What brings you here, boys?” (though the literal translation, “What good wind?”, inspired Bell and Hockridge’s version, “What’s in the wind, boys?”).

Can we even understand French humour?

Likewise, when the galley transporting the Gauls to Greece (to take part in the Olympic Games) arrives at Piraeus, the Gauls, in party mood, sing À Lutèce on l’aime bien, Nini Peau d’sanglier! (“We like it in Paris, Nini Boar-skin”), parodying a well-known French bordello song about a prostitute (“Nini Peau d’chien”) in order to create the air of footloose unattached men on vacation.

The English version avoids the slightly unsavoury feel by having the Gauls sing “When father papered the Parthenon”, parodying the comedy music-hall song “When father papered the parlour”, during which all sorts of mishaps ensue, thus suggesting the amateurish unpreparedness of the Gauls.

Later in the volume, the disheartened Romans in charge of their depressed Olympic team sing Ah, le petit vin blanc, qu’on boit sous les colonnes (“Ah, the nice white wine that we drink beneath the columns” — the words of the popular 1940s song are actually sous les tonnelles, “beneath the arbours”), a reference that was naturally unknown to a British teenager. (Bell and Hockridge aptly substituted “There is a taberna in the town ...”.)

Near the start of the book, when the champion Roman athlete runs into Asterix and Obelix in the woods (p. 9), he insults Obelix by calling him Le gros (“fatty”). “Honestly, Asterix, once and for all, do you find me fat?” asks Obelix, to which Asterix replies Tu es un peu bas de poitrine, using an idiom (literally “low in the chest”) that — again, unknown to my teenage self — equates to our euphemism “big-boned”, commonly used to avoid offence. (Later on, the chieftain introduces Astérix and Obélix as le petit, et le grassouillet réjoui — “the little one, and the chubby cheerful one”.)

Equally, on p. 28, when the Roman centurion realizes that the Romans have no chance competing against the Gauls (whom he thinks will use magic potion), he uses the phrase Vous cassez pas la tête, les gars; c’est cuit pour nous (“Don’t break your head, lads; it’s cooked for us”), which, as any French reader would know, means “Don’t bother, guys; it’s over for us”. But I didn’t!

The champion Roman replies du balai (literally, “of the brush”), making a sweeping gesture with his hand that reminds us of the running gag throughout the book, that — as a legionary subject to military fatigues — he always carries a broom and sweeps up wherever he goes (see below). The phrase means something like “let’s clear off” (Bell and Hockridge go for a different pun, with “They’ll make a clean sweep of us!”). Incidentally, I can’t help wondering if Cornedurus wasn’t based on the young Arnold Schwarzenegger, who won the Mr Universe contest in London in 1968.

More funny names

The Roman names in this volume — traditionally adjectives with -us endings — were quite unintelligible to me. I thought I must be missing something in the centurion’s name, Tullius Mordicus, but I was entirely ignorant of the French adverb mordicus, “stubbornly” (and, indeed, the Latin one, “by biting”). I must admit that neither seems a particular apt name for this character.

But the muscular champion athlete whom he looks after has an even more obscure name: Cornedurus, i.e. corne d’urus (“auroch’s horn”). In place of these rather unpromising names, Bell and Hockridge devised the wonderfully memorable Gaius Veriambitius and Gluteus Maximus for the odd couple.

However, I definitely had absolutely no chance with the Roman wrestling champion who appears on p. 30 (aptly named Pugnatius by Bell and Hockridge). His original name, Chaussetrus (i.e. chaussette russe), refers to a Soviet military foot-rag worn instead of a sock!

I also missed the subtle pun on p. 5, where a legionary who has never heard of their champion athlete is criticized: Tu es un bleu, Deprus! (literally, “You are a ‘blue’, Deprus”), using the French idiom for a ‘rookie’. But, of course, the homophonic bleu de Prusse is the colour “Prussian blue”. (This wouldn’t work in English, but Bell and Hockridge manage to retain the colour-based pun with “You’re pretty green, Bilius”, alluding to the phrase “bilious green”, a Dickensian favourite.)

By chance, this was the first Astérix volume to feature Agecanonix, 93-year old veteran of Gergovia and Alesia. I could see that his name had something to do with age, but I wasn’t sure what. It is, in fact, a play on the phrase âge canonique, meaning “venerable age” (perhaps implying the age of retirement?), which is neatly captured by the English version, Geriatrix. (I love the fact that, in the German version, he is Methusalix.) However, elsewhere, it seems that Goscinny simply made up amusing names that might apply to any Gaul.

Or to any Greek, for that matter. Once the Gauls are in Greece, their guide, Mixomatos (the French for myxomatosis, renamed Diabetes in the English version), shows them around Athens, recommending various establishments run by his cousins (a joke at the expense of Greek nepotism) — the chariot service of Scarfas (“Scarface”, renamed Kudos in English), the bureau de change of Calvados (which Bell and Hockridge changed to Makalos, with its punning financial overtones), the hotel of Plexiglas (whom Bell and Hockridge renamed Phallintodiseus, a comment on the condition of some holiday accommodation). Finally, (in the panel depicted below) he directs them to the restaurant of yet another cousin Fécarabos (an almost indecipherable reference to “fairy Carabosse”, the evil sprite from the ballet Sleeping Beauty, and better renamed Thermos in the English version).

There is some more witty repartee as one Gaul remarks (above) that his amphora is non-returnable; “keep it”, comes the reply, “it will make a nice souvenir”. This, at least, was recognizable to my teenaged brain. (Note, in passing, the decorated amphora, based on the well-known Munich example in which the man (Oedipus) is seated and the sphinx stands to address him.)

English puns work just as well

But I completely missed the puns about the rich diet of the Roman team versus the austere diet of the dedicated Greek athletes: their coach offers the excuse that the Romans are des décadents (“decadent”), so the Greek athletes threaten décader as well (perhaps “to become decadent”, a verb invented by Goscinny). In their 1972 version, Bell and Hockridge extend the pun by having the Romans “declining” (as in The Decline and Fall of Rome), so that the Greek athletes could “decline to eat this muck!”

The Greek athletes, who are supposed to be on a diet of figs, olives, raw meat, and water, demand increasingly inappropriate foodstuffs: Des brochettes! Du vin! (“kebabs, wine”) and finally un boeuf burdigalais — this is another tricky one: un boeuf is an ox, while the adjective Burdigalais refers to Bordeaux, so it may be a reference to the regional dish known as boeuf Bordelaise, a stew cooked in a rich red wine sauce. (Bell and Hockridge went with “How about a mammoth steak?”)

The French puns — all unrecognized by a barely Francophone teen — tumble over each other in their sheer quantity. When the Greek official visits the Roman team, who have given themselves over to licentious feasting, Tullius Mordicus announces, couchez-vous à table, mon vieux. Lá oú il y en a pour une trentaine (“Sit down at table, old chap! There’s space for 30”), alluding to the Sacha Distel hit song, Quand il y en a pour deux, il y en a pour trois (“If there’s space for two, there’s space for three”).

Most disappointingly, I missed the succession of clever puns that accompany the entry of the various Greek teams, none of which I understood at the time.

Le défilé des Thermopyles (literally “the procession of Thermopylae”, referring to the athletes from that town) is also a pun on the Pass (défilé) of Thermopylae, scene of the famous battle in 480 BC.

Ceux de Samothrace, sûrs de la victoire (“Those of Samothrace, certain of victory”) is only funny if you’ve heard of the Louvre’s famous winged statue known as La Victoire de Samothrace, while Goscinny shows pure genius with ceux de Milo sont venus aussi (“Those of Melos have come also”), a reference to the Louvre’s armless statue known as La Vénus de Milo. Next, Ceux de Cythère viennent de débarquer (“Those of Cythera have just disembarked”) surely alludes to the painting Embarquement pour Cythère by the French artist Watteau, while ceux de Marathon arrivent en courant (“Those of Marathon arrive running”) is an obvious reference to the race of the same name.

Ceux de Macédoine sont très mélangés (“Those of Macedonia are very mixed”) recalls “Macedoine”, the mix of finely diced vegetables that was standard fare in school dinners of the 1970s, and les Spartiates sont pieds nus (“The Spartans are barefoot”) must be poking fun at chaussures Spartiates, a type of French strappy sandal. Finally, the sole member of the Rhodian team, a giant boxer, is introduced as un colosse, alluding to one of the famous “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World”, the Colossus of Rhodes.

In their English-language version, Bell and Hockridge managed their own spin on two of these puns — “The men from Thermopylae are the first to pass by” and “The Marathon team has had to come a long distance” — and added some of their own (amongst which “the competitors from Attica are mysteriously eleusive” is particularly highbrow, in its reference to the Eleusynian Mysteries). Of course, they retained the Colossus from Rhodes!

Meet the authors

The book ends on a happy note, as always. Asterix wins the palm of victory but gratiously presents it to the Roman champion Cornedurus, so that he can save face at Rome.

After an interval of fifty years, I’m only sorry that I missed so much of Goscinny’s wit. I was even unaware that the volume includes a rare self-portrait, in the bas-relief frieze behind two Greek administrators (depicted here). At the time, I did not read Ancient Greek, so I had no idea that the characters are labelled Goscinny (on the left, saying “Despot!”) and Uderzo (on the right, saying “Tyrant!”).

The lava lamp of language

At a recent dinner party, the conversation turned to the evolution of language. Not in any profound philosophical sense, but simply observing that languages change slowly over time, sometimes quite radically, and expressing wonder and puzzlement that this should be so.

Most people are aware, even if only vaguely, that the English language has evolved over centuries from “Ye Olde Englishe” of the Anglo-Saxons, as found, for example, in the tenth-century Exeter Book (illustrated here).

Ye, of course, is an amusing misspelling of “Þe”, where the Old English letter Þ should be pronounced as a hard “th” (and note that the word “olde” has never been spelled thus, except in jest, while “English” only very occasionally attracted a final “e” and more often omitted the final “h”).

We can all agree that Old English is, to all intents and purposes, unintelligible to the non-cognoscenti. Consider the final four lines on the lefthand page, above (Exeter Book, folio 112v), relating the riddle of the bookworm, which begins “Moððe poρd fρæt”, meaning “A moth ate words”. Could you have guessed that?

Anglo-Norman-Scandinavian?

And even when the language evolves into what lexicographers call Middle English, around 1150 or thereabouts, it is still pretty difficult to decipher. We have seen this with the fourteenth-century Wycliffe Bible, even though it has at least developed a more modern-looking word order.

Try reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written around 1390 (the opening lines of the prologue are pictured here): “Whan that Aprílle with his shouris sote and the droughte of Marche hath percèd þe rote ...”. Peter Ackroyd, in his Retelling, renders this as “When the soft sweet showers of April reach the roots of all things ...” (he has decided to omit Chaucer’s “drought of March”).

Other modern languages experienced their own trajectories. Pictured here is the ninth-century Canticle of Saint Eulalia (“Cantilène de sainte Eulalie”), written in Old French, the Frankish equivalent of our Old English.

It is clear, from the opening line, that this is neither Latin nor French. It reads: “Buona pulcella fut eulalia” (“a good beautiful-girl was Eulalia”), “Bel auret corps bellezour anima” (“a beautiful body had she, and a more beautiful soul”). No modern French speaker could comfortably decipher this.

Like English, French passed through a Middle phase (the language of Rabelais and Montaigne), before becoming the Modern (or “classical”) French language that Cardinal Richelieu’s Académie française began to purify and preserve from the seventeenth century onwards.

Latin spoken by barbarians

We are probably all familiar, to some extent, with how this evolution occurred in the West, at least in its broad principles. Waves of migrating peoples — Germanic Saxons, Franks, and Goths, Scandinavian Normans — put their own stamp on an existing Latin-based language.

Italian had a similar transformation, via the late vernacular “Vulgar Latin”, into what is best described as Medieval Latin, as found (for example) in the Placiti Cassinesi (“Monte Cassino Decrees”), written in the 960s (one is pictured here).

“I know that these lands [kelle terre], which are contained by these boundaries [kelli fini], for thirty years have been possessed on the part of Saint Benedict”, it reads, in a language that cannot be described as either Latin or Italian.

As each city-state developed its own version of Italian, it was the Florentine of Dante Alighieri (a younger contemporary of Chaucer’s) that prevailed, after the foundation of the philological Accademia della Crusca in Florence in 1583.

Here is the opening page of the Divina Commedia from an edition published in 1472, thus closely comparable to the edition of The Canterbury Tales pictured above. This is the Italian equivalent of Middle English.

“Nel mezo del camin di nostra vita” (“Midway upon the journey of our life”, in Longfellow’s translation of 1867), “mi ritrovai per una selva oscura” (“I found myself within a forest dark”), “che la diricta via era smarrita” (“For the straightforward pathway had been lost”). A curious mix of Latin and proto-Italian.

What about Greek?

I still find it charming when — despite all of this evidence for the tortuous development of western languages — friends and colleagues learn, with surprise, that modern Greek-speakers are just as likely to be challenged by the Odyssey of Homer as we are. Surely they can simply read it?

The Greeks, of course, suffered no early influx of Franks, Saxons, or Normans to alter their language. And though the Byzantine empire of the seventh and eighth centuries was beset by Slavs and Bulgars in the west and Islamic Arabs in the east, their language was unaffected, continuing to hark back across the millennia to Classical Greek. The writings of Anna Komnena, for example, from around 1120, are perfectly intelligible to a classicist.

Ironically, having survived the medieval rise of Sunni Muslim power in the Levant, the death knell of the Byzantine Empire was sounded in the west, with the depredations of the unruly crusader armies in the thirteenth century. The Peloponnese fell into Frankish hands (becoming known as Morea) and the rising power of the Ottoman Turks finally consigned Byzantium to oblivion in 1453.

Tò Χρoνικòν τoû Moρéως (“The Chronicle of the Morea”) is a poem written in the 1300s in mainland Greece. It begins, “I am going to tell you a great tale; and if you are willing to listen to me, I hope it will please you” (in lines 1–2 of the Bern Burgerbibliothek manuscript pictured here).

It is difficult for the layman to appreciate, but scholars characterize the Chronicle’s Greek as plain and simple, based upon the oral vernacular rather than the Greek classics. But more than that, the writer (apparently a Frank who had settled in the Peloponnese) employs novel forms of words and erratic grammatical tense-switching — the Greek equivalent, perhaps, of the Canticle of Saint Eulalia.

Sadly, while Greece languished under Ottoman rule for centuries, her language deteriorated under Turkish influence and fragmented across highlands and islands. Local dialects diverged in disparate areas: Pontic, along the southern Black Sea coast, and Mariupolitan, along the northern; Cappadocian, in central Turkey; Cycladian, amongst the eastern islands; and Cretan, not to mention the mainland of Attica. Meanwhile, the western isles had fallen under the rule of the Venetians, who renamed Kerkyra as Corfu, for example, and it is interesting that the first standard grammar of Modern Greek to be attempted was written by the Corfu-born Rome-resident Nikolaus Sofianos in the 1540s, though it wasn’t published until 1874.

The eventual liberation of Greece from Turkish rule is an extraordinary story, but from the linguistics point of view, it is sufficient to observe that it was not until the 1850s that a Modern Greek language based on spoken Greek was proposed, and the debate over the katharévousa (“purefying”) was only brought to a conclusion in 1976.

It is unsurprising, then, that ancient Greek, though perfectly intelligible to Anna Komnena in 1120, is now as alien to a modern Athenian as Chaucer is to us.

The emperor’s new clothes

Everywhere people are falling over themselves to justify new and exciting uses for AI technology. Many of these are obviously trivial and contrived. Fake video abounds, students employ “content generators” to write their essays for them, and unscrupulous publishers create false scientific publications. Meanwhile, acres of creative writing are silently mined as raw material to train robots to emulate humans. All of this places a strain on existing data centres and boosts carbon emissions at a time when we are supposed to be conserving energy.

Of course, there are undoubtedly good uses of AI technology in the analysis of large scientific data sets, in the detection of patterns and potential correlations, and in the prediction of possible future data trends.

None of this, it seems to me, applies to the Arts and Humanities. Here, research is necessarily driven by human ingenuity.

There are no large scientific data sets that defy human comprehension. No raw statistics whose “crunching” requires machine assistance. Just, it seems, a fair number of researchers anxious to jump on a band wagon and draw upon whatever funding might briefly be available.

Earlier in the year, I became aware of a massively multi-authored paper (published in the journal Nature Vol. 645) entitled “Contextualizing ancient texts with generative neural networks”. I was immediately repelled by its jargon-heavy content, the kind of writing that I have usually found to be designed to exclude all but those with a vested interest. (I commented on this phenomenon back in June.)

Nevertheless, I was intrigued by the charm-offensive mounted on this paper’s behalf by Professor Dame Mary Beard, who pronounced that “it promises to be transformative!” And so, not one to admit defeat easily, I decided to have another go.

Robotic interpretations

The purpose of the paper is to announce a new computerized tool named Aeneas, a “multimodal generative neural network for contextualizing Latin inscriptions”. According to the authors, it is designed to solve the following epigraphic problems:
“letters, words or entire sections of an inscription may be lost over time, with the full extent of the missing text often being unknown. High levels of human mobility, absence of explicit dates and the frequent use of abbreviations, a hallmark of the Latin epigraphic habit, further complicate our interpretation of these inscribed artefacts”.

The writers are not particularly forthcoming about Aeneas’ method, but they cite an altar from Mainz (CIL XIII, 6667) as a successful example of its use. This I find confusing, since the altar (as can be seen here) is entirely undamaged and does not seem to suffer from any of the aforementioned “problems”.

It reads:
Deab(us) Aufan(is) / et Tutelae loci / pro salute et in/col(u)mitate sua / suorumq(ue) om/nium L(ucius) Maiori/us Cogitatus b(ene)f(iciarius) / co(n)s(ularis) vot(um) sol(vit) l(ibens) l(aetus) m(erito) / Idibus Iuli(i)s / Gentiano et / Basso co(n)s(ulibus)

“To the Aufanian goddesses and the guardian of this place, for the health and safety of himself and all his family, Lucius Majorius Cogitatus, beneficiarius of the legate, gladly, willingly, and deservedly paid his vow on the Ides of July when Gentianus and Bassus were consuls” (i.e. 15 July AD 211).

The writers correctly report that the altar is a well-attested type of military inscription, but more curiously they celebrate the fact that “Aeneas’ predictions successfully situate the inscription within this broader epigraphic habit, with a dating estimate (214 CE, within the expected range) and geographical attribution (correctly placing the stone in Germania Superior, with related alternatives in Germania Inferior and Pannonia) that align well with historical expectations”.

The writers divulge none of the actual “predictions” or “historical expectations” to which they obliquely allude. But later in the paper, they again emphasize that “Aeneas’ dating average for this altar is 214 CE, which is well within the 10-year range the model is trained on, and its top-3 geographical attributions are Germania superior (correct), Germania inferior and Pannonia superior”.

Remember, the text of the altar itself explicitly dates it to AD 211. There should be no confusion about this. Am I missing something here? To my mind, Aeneas has done significantly worse than any student who might simply search for this inscription in (for example) the online Heidelberg Epigraphic Database, which gives the correct date and provenance.

The writers praise Aeneas for “the historically enriched depth of the parallels it retrieves”. In the case of the Mainz altar, “even more striking”, claim the writers, “is Aeneas’ top parallel identification for this text: another votive altar, dedicated in 197 CE by beneficiarius Iulius Bellator and found near the same location in Mainz”. (They are alluding to AE 2017, 1072.)

It reads:
Deabus Aufan/is pro salute / et incolumitate / sua suorumq(ue) / omnium Iul(ius) / Bellator be(neficiarius) / co(n)s(ularis) libens posuit / Idibus Iuli(i)s / Laterano et / Rufino co(n)s(ulibus)

“To the Aufanian goddesses, for the health and safety of himself and all his family, Julius Bellator, beneficiarius of the legate, gladly set (this) up on the Ides of July when Lateranus and Rufinus were consuls” (i.e. 15 July AD 197).

Again, Aeneas’ modus operandi is not divulged, but I might guess that, like any moderately skilled epigraphy student, it searched for other dedications to the Deae Aufaniae, for example. Or perhaps it searched on the phrase pro salute et incolumitate. And maybe in conjunction with the donor’s rank of beneficiarius consularis. Certainly, the parallel texts reportedly offered by Aeneas would suggest this method (nine are listed, inconveniently by Heidelberg code, rather than the standard CIL or AE references used by generations of epigraphers). At any rate, it’s hard to know why we need AI technology for this.

Filling in the blanks

One of the features of Aeneas emphasized by the writers is that it allegedly “enables restoration of text sequences of unknown lengths”. Offhand, I can think of half-a-dozen inscriptions with significant gaps or lacunae that researchers have attempted to fill (such as this one). By contrast, neither of the altars cited by the writers has missing text, so they arbitrarily removed the words loci pro from the first one (leaving Tutelae ---/--- salute), in order to “test” Aeneas’ powers of restoration. They excitedly report that five “contextually and linguistically accurate” alternatives were proposed. This seems a rather poor result.

Our moderately skilled epigraphy student would surely predict, as Aeneas did (but only in four of its five attempts), that the word salute should be preceded by pro. (Out of 2,976 instances of the word salute in the Clauss-Slaby Database, it is preceded by pro in 2,920 cases.)

The same student would surely then realize, as the Aeneas program seems to have, that the careful layout of the inscription requires a three- or four-letter word after tutelae. There are not many options. The deity Tutela Augusta is occasionally encountered, which is presumably why Aeneas’ third choice is Aug. (I imagine it realized the four-letter maximum, as its fourth choice is sacr, which in football would be termed a “Hail, Mary” attempt, desperately relying on the stonemason’s incompetence over epigraphic precedence.) Sadly, its first choice, its best guess, is to leave a blank, which makes nonsense of the inscription.

Its second choice is the correct one. I’m not sure if that makes good odds or not. It perhaps falls into the same category as Dr Johnson’s dog walking upon its hind legs: “It is not done well, but you are surprized to find it done at all”.

New horizons?

Unfortunately, more is planned. I’m afraid I don’t agree with the writers when they claim that “Aeneas demonstrates the transformative potential of AI in augmenting historical research”. Nor with Dame Mary when she claims that “Aeneas opens up entirely new horizons”. Based on this paper, it doesn’t seem promising at all.

Incidentally, the Nature paper is not error-free. The plural of beneficiarius consularis is not beneficiarii consulares, since each man is still attached only to one legate, and it is not clear why the writers assume that such men were “usually close to retirement”. Nor is it clear why they think that tutelae pro salute is “the more commonly attested version of the formula”, since the Clauss-Slaby Database has precisely one inscription that matches this pattern (CIL XIII, 11015).

Also, some of the references have come unstuck. No. 71, “Elliott, T. in Epigraphy and Digital Resources (eds Bruun, C. & Edmondson, J.) 78–85 (Oxford Univ. Press, 2014)” — this is the title of Elliott’s paper, not the Bruun–Edmondson volume, which is The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy. No. 99, “Haensch, R. Steine sind. Benefiziarier, Matronae Aufaniae und die Topographie des Römischen Mainz. Z. Papyr. Epigr. 203, 293–296 (2017)” — the title is actually “Sag mir, wo die Steine sind”. Perhaps we might start with a proof-reading AI?

Caledonia, land of cold and rain (troisième et dernière partie)

It has been a busy twelve months and I find that I have managed to neglect Caledonia. Book One: The Ninth Legion, a wonderfully inventive bande dessinée by Corbeyran and Despujol — une chose impardonnable (see Caledonia, land of cold and rain (deuxième partie) from last December).

When we left the Ninth Legion, centurion Lucius was planning to track down the source of the Caledonians’ power on the Island of Death. “If we manage to unravel its mystery”, he explains, “we’ll undoubtedly gain the upper hand over our adversaries” (p. 32).

After a fierce mêlée (pp. 33–34), a scouting party manages to capture the warrior Cirig (p. 35), and seeing that he and his existing prisoner Leta share a fondness (p. 36), Lucius orders him to be hung on a cross to force Leta’s compliance in brokering a deal with her people (p. 37). Off she runs to the dark broch (p. 38) where she delivers the Roman message, but Cirig’s rival, the dark-haired Fel, shouts angrily, “Our people have no need of an invader to dictate their conduct” (p. 39).

The sacrifice

Despujol’s beautiful graphics depict the dim broch interior, with its drystone walls and intramural galleries and blazing central hearth. It is easy to miss the ominously large skull amongst the collection of antlers on the wall. What kind of creature does it belong to?

The old crone, Isla, reveals that Leta’s young brother, Mil, was sacrificed in order to summon the hell-hounds (p. 40) — the hell-hounds that we saw attacking the Roman fort by night in Part Two. Leta is furious and blames Fel, claiming that, unable to win her heart from Cirig, he has spitefully arranged for her brother’s death.

Worse than that, Mil has died in vain, since Leta was obliged to send the hell-hounds back in order to save her own life. She tells the old chieftain that she must return to the Romans with a deal to save Cirig’s life, but Galam replies, “Such a deal is impossible. You know that” (p. 42).

“But the Romans are here. They’ll never leave,” she says. “You have to negotiate. Or we’ll disappear” (p. 43). Meanwhile, centurion Lucius is apprehensive that his men have started to mistrust him (p. 44), when Leta returns with news that her father wishes to conclude an honorable treaty with the Romans (really?): “You will meet him at the new moon” (p. 45).

Legion on the march

Centurion Lucius arrives at the headquarters camp of the Ninth Legion, where the overweight, fur-clad legate Deodatus Faustus is having another cup of wine. He complains that, every time someone lifts the flap of his tent, they let the cold wind in, “And without fail, it never brings good news” (p. 46).

Lucius proposes that he can negotiate a treaty with Galam, and if Faustus entrusts him with the entire Ninth Legion, he can deter the Caledonians from any aggression (p. 47).

And so, Lucius sets off with his pessimistic optio beside him: “You’re rushing headlong into another trap”, he grumbles, “but this time, you’re dragging everyone along with you” (pp. 48–49). Lucius is undeterred. “This show of force is solely intended to ensure the meeting proceeds smoothly,” he explains (pp. 50–51).

The horror from the woods

The scene is a snowy plain bounded by dense forest. Lucius is convinced that his plan will work. The entire region seems quiet (p. 52).

Spotting Leta on a rock in the midst of the plain, Lucius rides over to her (p. 53). She seems defiant. “My father won’t appreciate you gathering so many soldiers for a simple meeting”, she scowls. “So many thousands of armoured men against a handful of naked warriors. Are you afraid, Roman?”

Meanwhile, the thin line of Caledonians along the forest edge doesn’t move. The crone Isla shakes her magical talisman and the forest starts to crack and groan (p. 54). Lucius’ eyes start from his head. His horse shies. “The shapes in the woods!” he cries. “Yes, Lucius”, laughs Leta. “Your eyes do not deceive you” (p. 55).

Too late, the Romans see the gigantic antlered figures with six-foot blades, lumbering from the forest (hinted at on the book cover — see Caledonia, land of cold and rain (première partie)). “I have betrayed you”, screams Leta. “This plain will soon be littered with corpses. Caledonia will be your grave!” (p. 56). Thus is the Ninth Legion doomed.

Kicking the pricks

I have been reading Blessings in Disguise, the 1985 memoir by actor Alec Guinness, who famously played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the movie Star Wars in return for 2.25% of profits. A shrewd deal when the movie, dismissed at the time by Guinness as “fairy-tale rubbish”, seemed destined to perform poorly.

Guinness later disingenuously claimed that Star Wars enabled him to “live for the rest of my life in the reasonably modest way I am now used to”. He earned an estimated $95 million from the film.

Many of the stories he recounts in the book are from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, about characters who are long forgotten. No one nowadays remembers theatre impresario Tyrone Guthrie (1900–1971), for example, or actress Martita Hunt (1900–1969). Few enough still recognize the names John Gielgud (1904–2000) or Ralph Richardson (1902–1983), both (like Guinness himself) knighted for their services to theatre. But Sir Alec writes in a refreshingly precise and lucid style, so that his stories are charming and readable.

In Chapter 4, concerning his early struggle with religious faith and Roman Catholicism, Guinness refers to “the naive strugglings of an adolescent English schoolboy kicking, so to speak, against the pricks”.

Spurs and pricks

Quite by chance, I had recently come across the same peculiar phrase in the Penguin edition of Cervantes’ Don Quixote (2000).

In Chapter 20, Sancho Pansa hobbles the Don’s horse, Rocinante, with his ass’s halter in order to thwart his master’s desire for continuous (usually disastrous) knightly adventure.

I have no idea what the original medieval Spanish reads, but John Rutherford’s translation (which elsewhere very cleverly brings out Cervantes’ humour by avoiding literality) has Sancho say, “The heavens have ordained that Rocinante can’t move, and if you keep on spurring him again and again, you’ll only annoy fortune and, as they say, kick against the pricks”.

Dictionary definition

Curious to find where this phrase came from, I turned to the Oxford English Dictionary, where I found this definition: “Phrase: to kick against the pricks (spur, goad): to strike the foot against such sharp-pointed or piercing objects; also figurative to be recalcitrant to one’s own hurt”. But where did it come from? The OED gives credit squarely to the fourteenth-century Christian scholar John Wycliffe for coming up with the phrase. But why?

As a student in the 1980s, my go-to dictionary was always Chambers 20th Century Dictionary (“New edition 1983”), beloved of Scrabble-players. It explains this phrase as “to hurt oneself by resisting someone or something, to no avail (Acts ix.5)”.

The biblical reference at the end turns out to be revealing, for these words do not occur in the Greek text of Acts 9:5 (the “road to Damascus” story), but are, in fact, found at Acts 26:14. What has caused the mistaken reference?

Both dictionaries are technically correct, for the phrase occurs in Wycliffe’s translations of Acts (or Deeds of Apostles, as he prefers) at 9:5 — “it is hard to thee to kike agens the pricke”, in Wycliffe’s Middle English. (The phrase occurs on the fourth line from the bottom of the left column of this manuscript page.)

The King James Version of 1611 — along with Webster’s revision of the KJV and one or two other nineteenth-century versions that took their text unacknowledged from the KJV — is the only bible to retain the phrase at Acts 9:5, for in the accepted Greek text, these words only appear at Acts 26:14, when Paul relates the story of his conversion to King Agrippa. Here is the original (translated further below):

Incidentally, the “pricks” in question, better rendered as “goads”, are the sharp wooden implements used by farmers to drive cattle. A goaded ox, for example, once stabbed by the goad, would only hurt itself further if it kicked back against it.

In the words of the King James Version of 1611 (which is easier to decipher than Wycliffe’s Middle English, pictured here), “And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”

With all due respect to the Oxford English Dictionary, it seems that the phrase should be credited not to Wycliffe, but to the writer of the Acts of the Apostles, usually taken to be Saint Luke. Or should it?

Doubt only arises because it seems that the same phrase was used half a millennium earlier by the Athenian playwright Aeschylus, in his Agamemnon (line 1624), as we can see here.

Perhaps the OED should be told?

A misunderstanding concerning Hyginus

The sources for the study of the Roman imperial army are many and varied. Snippets of information culled from unlikely places, facts unwittingly preserved by ancient historians, biographers, or even poets. The inscriptional evidence, of course, though it is patchy, increases in variety through the later first century to reach a peak during the time of the Severans and falls off sharply thereafter.

But two written texts stand out as indispensable. And I find it curious that they have attracted so little attention and discussion.

They are Arrian’s Ektaxis (a new edition and translation of which I published in 2022, accompanied by a lengthy commentary) and the Liber de munitionibus castrorum attributed to one Hyginus (a new edition and translation of which I published in 2018).

(As a side note, I am wryly amused to see that both books fall short of an Amazon 5-star rating because one disgruntled purchaser of Hyginus tetchily complained, laconically, that “Left-hand page is in Latin”, while a purchaser of Arrian whined that “the commentary is peppered with Greek, German, French, Italian and Latin, which really disrupted my reading and concentrating, although in almost every case the author gives an English translation” — which only goes to show that, even when we provide pearls, apparently not everyone likes pearls.)

A curt message

On a not entirely separate note, I recently received an unsolicited communication from a stranger, who began, rather abruptly, “Duncan Campbell ...”, as if to catch my attention in a noisy room. Rather than introducing himself or explaining his involvement with Roman studies, both of which certainly used to be standard forms of initiating polite conversation, he brusquely continued, “I have a question about two of your translations concerning Hyginus”. Fair enough.

And straight to the point: “Hyginus 30. Devito has MDC (1,600). Campbell has MD (1,500). Why have you arrived at 1,500 and Devito 1,600. It is because both of you are using different editions?”

Asked and answered, you might think.

Incidentally, the “Devito” to whom my charming interlocutor refers is J.G. DeVoto, a classics professor (I think) at Chicago’s Loyola University in the 1990s, who seems to have been behind the translation of Hyginus that appeared in 1994.

(Doubt only arises because the volume in question includes both Polybius and Hyginus, “Translated and Edited by M.C.J. Miller and J.G. DeVoto”, and the Polybius is explicitly credited to Miller, which only leaves the Hyginus.)

The Liber de munitionibus castrorum of Hyginus (or Pseudo-Hyginus, as some would prefer, to hammer home the point that he is not the Trajanic surveying author of the same name, as if that makes any difference) is a tricky text, known to us via a single manuscript, which inevitably requires careful handling. You can see a portion of the page containing chapter 30 illustrated here. It reads:

Legiones III vexilla|ri MDC. cohors prae|toria IIII. aequites | praetores .CCCC ae|quitatum in singuli | in ped CCCCL. alae mi|liariae .IIII. quingena|riae .V. ma^uri aequites | DC. pannoni beridari | etc.

It is quite clear that the manuscript reads vexillari(i) MDC, which means “1,600 vexillation-soldiers”, but the number is peculiar. Anyone using my edition of Hyginus will see, from the apparatus criticus (at the foot of p. 48), that I have accepted the suggestion of Radboud Schele (in his 1660 publication Hygini Gromatici, et Polybii Megalopolitani, De castris Romanis, Quae exstant, pictured here), who decided to change this to “vexillarii mille quingenti” (i.e. 1,500).

Although Schele gave no reason for his emendation, the first modern editor, Ludwig Lange, Professor of Classical Philology at Prague, made the case (a compelling one, in my opinion) in his edition of 1848. He explained that “we see that, in the army of Hyginus, 500 vexillation-soldiers were added to each legion”, since his model army (quoted above) contained three legions. Three times 500 equals 1,500. (The principle is demonstrated by the army of Vitellius in AD 69, which comprised four legions and vexillations from four others.) As for how the mistake occurred, the extra C could easily have crept into the manuscript on account of the fact that the subsequent word begins with the same letter, a phenomenon known as “dittography”, when the copyist has mistakenly repeated a letter.

Sadly, Lange’s version wasn’t even noted in the “official” Teubner edition of 1879. Nor was it adopted by Alfred von Domaszewski, in his well-known edition of 1887 (pictured here at pp. 48–49, where Domaszewski discusses the vexillarii), though he noted the other emendations required in this short passage: “cohors praetoria” should clearly be cohortes praetoriae, “aequites praetores” should be equites praetoriani, and “aequitatum in singuli in ped” are obviously the equites singulares imperatoris.

Somewhat surprisingly, given Domaszewski’s standing as a pre-eminent Roman scholar, he had misunderstood the significance of the vexillarii as “vexillation-soldiers”. To him, they were non-combatant baggage carriers, so 1,600 seemed a reasonable number and thus didn’t require emendation. It is worth noting that, even when the French scholar Maurice Lenoir produced his edition of the text in 1979, despite recognizing their combat role, he saw no problem with the peculiar figure of 1,600 vexillarii, although legionary vexillations are normally numbered in multiples of 500. In short, I stand by the figure of 1,500.

Be that as it may. It is perhaps worth noting here that DeVoto’s translation, mentioned earlier (and still apparently favoured by some English-speaking readers), is more than a little problematic. Firstly, it is not at all clear where DeVoto obtained his Latin text, though it seems mostly to be Lenoir’s. This may seem an airily esoteric point, but — where Hyginus is concerned — it is critical that the source text be identified. The short passage quoted above gives a flavour of the poor condition in which the text has been transmitted to us, and various editors (there have been at least five) have made their own corrections and rejected others.

And secondly, DeVoto’s translation doesn’t always match the Latin text. As an example, in the short passage mentioned above, where Hyginus enumerates his ideal army — it begins at the bottom of a lefthand column, pictured above, and continues at the top of the righthand column, pictured here —, the list includes, amongst the various military units, cohortes equitatae miliariae II, quingenariae IIII; cohortes peditatae miliariae III, quingenariae III.

Four different types of cohorts, twelve in total.

Here is DeVoto’s translation: “Two 1000-man mounted cohorts, three 500-man ones”. See if you can see where he went wrong.

The Roman army in turmoil

As an independent researcher, I am spared the burden of academic administration that seems to plague the current generation of university staff members. But I am also denied the many benefits that they enjoy, chiefly (to my mind) ready access to a research library. However, this is somewhat mitigated by the existence of the Internet Archive’s indispensable virtual lending library (as I mentioned in the preface to my book Phantom Horsemen).

An overlooked book

I recently came across a book that was uploaded to this library last year but had so far escaped my attention: it is entitled L’armée romaine dans la tourmente, written in 2009 by Yann Le Bohec, Emeritus Professor at the Paris Sorbonne.

No reviews ever appeared in the English-language journals, but maybe they received no review copies. As far as I can see, it seems that the book was noticed only in the German journal Bonner Jahrbücher (in 2010) and in the French-language journal Latomus (in September 2013), on both occasions in broadly congratulatory terms — in the former, we read, “Despite some redundancy, the book is clearly organized, its thesis firmly and confidently presented, in any case worth discussion”, and in the latter, “(Le Bohec) approaches a hackneyed subject with a fresh eye and a readable style”.

Le Bohec begins by promising a detective story (“une véritable enquête policière”) in which the Roman empire is the victim. “How could a body as solidly built as the Roman army”, he asks, “have received such violent blows, been shaken in such terrible difficulties?” Disasters of such magnitude, including emperors killed in combat or taken prisoner, legions routed or wiped out, these and a thousand other misfortunes require an explanation. (Such dramatic hyperbole, incidentally, also requires justification.)

The remainder of the book describes, first of all, the Roman army of the later second century, in which Le Bohec offers an apology for having drawn extensively on his 1989 book L’armée romaine sous le Haut-Empire (apparently in a third edition of 2002, which I have not seen). “To make amends”, he writes, “we shall try to update it and, which is more difficult, to identify the features specific to the end of the second century”. None of which is strictly relevant to the third-century army, but let us proceed.

The rise and fall of the Roman army?

Le Bohec emphasizes (in chapters 1 and 2) that the success of the army of the Antonine emperors (AD 138–192) was founded on high-quality recruiting (“le choix des meilleurs”). He also emphasizes that this excellent second-century army was stationed in a privileged frontier zone, a “golden belt” (“une ceinture dorée”) that “undoubtedly exerted a strong attraction on the barbarians, but also allowed them to be watched and repulsed”.

So far, so good. These points may well be true, but they do not necessarily imply that any disasters that occurred thereafter must have been caused by (a) a deterioration in recruiting standards from the Antonine ideal, and (b) the increased allure of the wealthy frontier zone, that “golden belt”, to the external peoples. But let’s see where Le Bohec is going with this.

In chapter 3, he describes the army of the Severan emperors, from Septimius himself (AD 193–211) through to the last notional “relative” Severus Alexander (AD 222–235). This was the period, Le Bohec claims, when the Roman army “probably reached the peak of its efficiency”. They could easily repulse German and Parthian enemies. And yet it was also the period during which the soldiers, by their inflationary greed, “dug their own graves” (“les soldats creusaient leur propres tombes”).

Le Bohec devotes chapters 4–8 to the main enemies of Rome: Franks, Alamanni, and Goths; the Persians; the northern Britons, the trans-Danubian peoples, and the north African peoples; and finally, the “invisible enemy” of the inflationary economy. This is his main bugbear.

He seeks to blame the soldiers for demanding a pay rise from Caracalla. “The emperors and the soldiers jointly committed this crime against the Empire”, resulting in a financial crisis that he locates squarely in the reign of Gallienus, largely based on the presumption that the loss of the eastern provinces compromised the imperial revenues. He also blames the need to pay “tribute” to victorious enemies, claiming that “the third century provides some examples of this practice”.

Paying off Rome’s enemies?

It is certainly true that, from time to time, the Romans resorted to paying subsidies, but there certainly doesn’t seem to have been a sudden torrent of payments depleting the third-century imperial treasury. Severus Alexander is said to have considered paying off the Germans in AD 234, but probably never did. The Persians claimed that Philippus paid them tribute in AD 244, though no western source records it, while in AD 251 Trebonianus Gallus probably did pay off the ‘Scythians’ who had killed the emperor Decius. The Juthungi certainly requested a subsidy from Aurelian in AD 270, but didn’t get it.

I have a nagging doubt about whether the problem can be diagnosed so simplistically, in any case. Evidence of price inflation, though sparse, seems to begin in the AD 270s, and not earlier. Furthermore, there had already been a debasement of the coinage under Marcus Aurelius, who faced a similar problem to the one that vexed Gallienus — namely, major military operations mounted at a time of rampant plague — and we certainly don’t talk about an “Antonine crisis”.

And yet Le Bohec writes of “a serious military crisis”; of “attacks carried out, more and more often, on two fronts at the same time”; of defeats, “often terrible”, and coups (his preferred term for usurpations); of “a worsening of difficulties in the years 249–258”; and of “a continuation of worsening” up to AD 275. “The inhabitants of the Empire”, he writes, “experienced all possible evils”.

Some of this really needs to be fact-checked.

In support of warfare on two fronts, Le Bohec claims that the Alamanni were threatening northern Italy at precisely the same time that the Goths invaded the Balkans. Unfortunately, the chronology is vague, and the two events may have been consecutive rather than simultaneous. (And they don’t seem to have occurred “more and more often”.) Gallienus certainly managed to visit both theatres. For his terrible defeats, Le Bohec is probably thinking of Valerian’s eastern débâcle (which was not, strictly speaking, a battlefield defeat but a foolish blunder).

I have no idea why he thinks that legions were routed and wiped out (unless he is, again, alluding to the eastern fiasco and the unknown fate of Valerian’s army), but he would like his readers to believe that “this situation encouraged minor peoples who had never troubled Rome to do some looting”. His evidence for this is limited to the case of Gaius Macrinius Decianus (governor of Numidia, probably around AD 254, as he alludes to joint emperors on his dedication, ILS 1194), who on three occasions, defeated a people known as Bavares, once in concert with a people known as Quinquegentanei. But this kind of raiding must have been common in all periods. It cannot, in any case, be used as evidence of a serious military crisis. (Decianus was, after all, successful.) Finally, the allegation that “coups d’état became commonplace” rests heavily on the spurious testimony of the Augustan History and its “Thirty Tyrants”, most of whom are fictitious.

The Roman army in crisis?

Le Bohec’s general conclusion is that three factors conspired to create the grave turmoil of AD 235–284.
1) Stronger barbarians. Really? It is true that, for a few years in the early AD 260s, invaders were able to penetrate much further into the empire before being repulsed, but repulsed they were. Le Bohec thinks that this “proves their strength and, at the same time, the weakness of the Romans”, but only at that precise moment. It is difficult to demonstrate either “a new and violent aggressiveness” or the composition of “leagues that allowed them to help each other” (for which he cites the Quinquegentanei, mentioned above, and the Picts, who first appear in AD 297).
2) Weaker Romans. It is also difficult to demonstrate Le Bohec’s “clear decline” in the Roman army and a “crisis of adaptation”, as the Romans failed to modify their tactics in the face of “barbarians (who) used new weapons and fought better than before”. No wonder “the Romans experienced defeat with the consequence of a weakening of morale and a drop in the quality of recruits”. Unfortunately, Le Bohec doesn’t back any of this up with evidence.
3) The crisis against Rome. Under this heading, Le Bohec cites the (alleged) economic failure, which he considers inevitable, after two centuries of continuous prosperity. Since the Roman army was “less well paid and more poorly fed, they had less and less desire to be killed”. Again, no evidence is adduced.

These are all very interesting ideas. But Le Bohec never comes close to proving any of them, and in the end, we are left wondering if there really was a third-century crisis after all.