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Abstract
This article explores the cultural and social background of oral and textual translation in Rome to discuss the profound effects that oral forms of translation, along with oral performance, had on ancient Roman translation. It examines the significance of speaking and writing “proper” Greek among the Roman elite, the anxieties that provoked in Rome, and the reasons why Roman texts elide the help of Greeks in their translations, even though the lack of dictionaries and other aids meant that their help was necessary. It also discusses the role of orality in Cicero's translations and, in particular, in his On the Best Type of Orator, and in Pliny the Younger's and Catullus' writings on translation.
Note on contributor
Siobhán McElduff is associate professor of Latin language and literature. Her work focuses on issues of translation in the ancient Mediterranean, with an emphasis on Roman translation of Greek. Her most recent publication is Roman Theories of Translation (2013); she has also translated a selection of Cicero's speeches for Penguin Classics, In Defense of the Republic (2011) and co-edited a collection of essays on translation in the ancient Mediterranean, Complicating the History of Western Translation (2011).
Notes
1. See, for example, the innovative collection edited by Pym, Shlesinger, and Jettmarová (Citation2003).
2. We know most about military interpreters, on which see Peretz (1996) and Kurz (Citation1986). A range of ancient sources discuss different uses of interpreters, though not on a frequent or consistent basis. Some examples: on interpreters in the Senate, see Cicero, On Divination 2.131.6; on military and diplomatic interpreters, see Sallust, Jugurthine War 109.4; Julius Caesar, Gallic War 1.19, 1.46, 1.52; and Josephus, Jewish War 5.360–75, 6.96-8; on bad interpreters, see Ovid, Letters from Pontus 4.14.39–43. For further discussion (with more references) of the many roles that interpreters might play in Rome, see McElduff (Citation2013, 24–30).
3. I am not talking about the oft-repeated canard that the Romans could or did not read silently, a myth long since put to rest, but rather the complex intersection between the spheres of orality, reading and writing, a subject too large to be more than touched on here. On reading in Rome, see especially Valette-Cagnac (Citation1997); on writing as social performance and texts as embodiment of the author, see Habinek (Citation1998, 103–121); for a wide range of perspectives on ancient literacies, see Johnson and Parker (Citation2009).
4. So, for example, at Epistles 1.41–44 the Roman poet Horace refers to his audience and says he is ashamed to present his trifles in the recital hall. A critic then responds by insisting that Horace is keeping his poetry for Jupiter's (Augustus’) ear, instead of that of the public. Tacitus discusses the influence of the audience in shaping contemporary oratory (Dialogue On Oratory 20); Juvenal talks about the misery of having patrons who would not pay for the cost of hiring a recital hall (Satires 7.39–47).
5. On the importance of oral performance in Catullus, see Skinner (Citation1993); on oral elements in Catullus, see Clark (Citation2008); on the language of social performance in Cicero and Catullus, see Krostenko (Citation2001). Regarding reworked oratorical texts: Cicero's In Defense of Milo was a vastly revised version of his initial and unsuccessful speech; nearly all of his Verrines and Philippics were never given orally, circulating only in written form.
6. I should, however, point out that Roman translators also saw translation from Greek as a strategy to raise the status of Latin (see, for example, Cicero Tusculan Disputations 2.5–6; Copeland [Citation1991, 11–13]; and McElduff [Citation2013, 101–105]).
7. Sed de nobis satis. Aliquando enim Aeschinem ipsum Latine dicentem audiamus.
8. This was a particular problem after his suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy in 63 BCE. According to Seneca the Younger, it was not that he talked of this feat without reason, but without end (On the Shortness of Life 5.1).
9. I speak here of literary translations; translations of official documents into Greek, which were posted in the Greek East, were usually anonymous.
10. Other genres like lyric poetry were more problematic; Cicero said that even if he had two lifetimes, he would not have time to read lyric poetry (Seneca the Younger, Letters 49.5); he did not seem to regret this.
11. Responsa is the term used for replies by jurists and magistrates, to be distinguished from the edicta and the consulta of the Senate. The relevant consulta were translated into Greek and posted around the Greek East.
12. A Greek cloak: just as Romans were marked by wearing the toga, so Greeks were marked by the pallium.
13. On this passage, see Rochette (Citation2011, 550) and Wallace-Hadrill (Citation2011).
14. In particular, Valerius may be projecting backwards anxieties about the roles of Greek and Latin prevalent in the era of Tiberius.
15. See, for example, Suetonius, Tiberius 71. This was not an absolute rule, however, and exceptions could be made (Suetonius, Claudius 42; Cassius Dio 60.17.4; see further McElduff [Citation2013, 30–32]).
16. Praetors were Roman officials, elected on a yearly basis. The praetorship was the second highest rank in the cursus honorum, the course of offices that Roman elites tried to complete by holding the office above this, the consulship. Most interpreters were not of this status; in this situation the importance of the situation and the status of the king required the use of someone of high rank.
17. This verb can be used as a translation verb (see, for example, Terence Andria 3; McElduff [Citation2013, 89, 129]), so Horace may be suggesting that Lucilius engaged in translation.
18. As a result, when Brutus fled to Greece after the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, one of the places he went to recruit officers for his army was Athens – Horace was recruited to fight for the Republican cause during this visit.
19. These were not tears of joy: Molon was crying because now the Greeks had nothing, as Cicero had stripped them of their pre-eminence in rhetoric. Valerius Maximus tells us that Molon was the first Greek to address the Senate without an interpreter, an honour granted to him because of his status as Cicero's teacher (2.2.3).
20. The poet Archias, defended by Cicero in Defence of Archias against charges of illegally claiming Roman citizenship, was one such Greek who came to Rome voluntarily and lived in a number of elite households; he was given Roman citizenship as a reward for his writings (in Greek) praising elite Romans.
21. Valette-Cagnac (Citation2005) is an excellent discussion of precisely what type of Greek the Roman elite may have spoken. Horrocks (Citation2010, 79–122) is a good introduction to the rise of koiné and its distribution throughout the Greek East and under the Roman Empire. We are not sure what ancient Greek actually sounded like or the precise sound difference between Attic and koiné, so we cannot be sure of just how different an elite Roman's Greek would have sounded to a contemporary Greek.
22. Cicero had a Greek draw one up for Posidonius’ On Duty while he was getting ready to write his own On Duties (Letters to Atticus 2.6.1).
23. We do not know if our collection of Catullus’ poetry is as Catullus arranged it or if it reflects the arrangement of a later editor or editors. Poem 50 is followed by Catullus’ translation of Sappho 31; Catullus precedes another translation (poem 66) with a translation preface (poem 65; it is explicitly a preface to the following translation). Both 50 and 51 are also connected by the situation of the narrator and the language used by Catullus (see further Wray [Citation2001, 98–99]; Clark [Citation2008], 261–263, and McElduff [Citation2013, 129–131] for further discussion on the connections between poems 50 and 51).
24. On Paid Positions in Great Houses. Greeks might also be kept as living aides-memoire. Calvisius Sabinus, a Roman with a notoriously bad memory, kept learned slaves because he could not remember any Greek poetry: one knew all of Homer; one all of Hesiod; another the nine canonical Greek lyric poets. He felt that their knowledge was automatically his (Seneca, Epistles 27.6–7).
25. For a complication of this model, see Parker (Citation2011), who is more sceptical about the orality of Roman literary life.
26. The historian Tacitus talks of poets having to beg people to turn up to be members of their audience (Dialogue on Oratory 9), while Pliny speaks of audience members coming in late, slipping out early, and boldly walking out whenever they got bored (Epistles 1.13).
27. Like all Latin terms for translation, it is not exclusively used for that activity and can be used for other forms of interpretation, such as the interpretation of dreams, etc.
28. Even those of emperors. Suetonius talks of the difficulties the Emperor Claudius had when he performed, some of which were due to external issues over which he had no control, as when a bench collapsed under the weight of a fat man in the middle of one of his readings (Suetonius, Claudius 41).
29. On this, see especially Gleeson (Citation1995).
30. Faced with the crisis in the Roman Republic brought about by Julius Caesar's total domination of the political scene after his defeat of Pompey the Great and the Senatorial cause in 49 BCE, Cicero turned to producing philosophical works which were intended to ensure that his vision of the ideal state was left as a legacy to future Romans. This occurred at the same time as he produced much of his oratorical theory.
31. Calvus called Cicero's oratory “loose and floppy” (solutum et enervem), while Brutus termed it “effeminate and wonky” (fractum atque elumbem; Tacitus, Dialogue on Oratory 18.5). In response, Cicero called Calvus “bloodless and dried out” (exsanguem et aridum) and Brutus “sluggish and disjointed” (otiosum atque diiunctum, ibid.).
32. Although many elite Roman women were familiar with and learned in Greek literature and Greek, there was no social expectation that they be so.