any classicists on this board?

[susanmcgee48176]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> 
wrote:
>
> susanmcgee wrote:
> >
> > I recently have been trying to unravel an issue/answer a question
> and wonder if any of you have any insight into it.
> > 
> > In high school, I was taught a Latin phrase. I was told that it 
was
> an example of the Delphic oracle's ambiguity. The phrase was:
> > 
> > Ibis Redibis in Numquam Armis Peribis. As many of you many know, 
in
> Latin, word order is irrelevant. <snip> SO....the phrase EITHER 
means
> > "You will go, you will return, you will never perish in arms" OR 
it
> means "You will go, you will never return, you will perish in 
arms." 
> > <snip>
> > 
> > I was talking to my partner about this and she looked puzzled and 
> > asked if it were from the Delphic oracle why was it in Latin? 
> 
> > <snip>
> 
> > I found this explanation 
> > Delphi Oracle - Syntactic Ambiguity
> > A famous Latin translation of one of the prophecies of the oracle 
at
> Delphi reads "Ibis, redibis numquam peribis in bello." Two different
> translations and interpretations may be provided for this sentence. 
> 1. "You'll leave, and you shall never return as you will perish in 
> the war." 2. "You'll leave and return, and you shall not perish in 
> the war." Very close to what I had been taught.
> <snip>
> 
> Carol responds:
> The article that you cited (which I also found) gives you your 
answer.
> The often quoted words are a translation that preserves the 
ambiguity
> of the original.
> 
> I'm not a classicist, but I know a bit about English literature and
> history, as well as the background of particular English writers
> (especially Shelley) and their education.
> 
> Here's my take on why the prophecies made by the Delphic Oracle (the
> Pythia, obviously not the same person from generation to generation)
> are frequently given in Latin. (Please note that I'm speculating, 
not
> giving an authoritative answer and will happily accept correction.) 
In
> the nineteenth century and earlier, educated Englishmen were quite
> likely to know Latin but less likely to know Greek, or at least, to
> know it less well than they knew Latin. They might, for example, 
have
> read Sophocles's "Oidipos Tyrannos" (I don't read Greek and may have
> the transliteration wrong) in its Latin translation, "Oedipus Rex"
> (the title retained in most English translations but obviously not 
the
> original title). English writers of this period often referred to 
the
> Greek gods by their Roman names in translations from the original
> Greek, as if the Greeks worshipped Jupiter and Venus and Mercury
> rather than Zeus and Aphrodite and Hermes. I think they would expect
> their readers to be familiar with the Oracle's pronouncements in 
Latin
> rather than the original Greek (unless they were writing for fellow
> Oxford or Cambridge graduates).
> 
> At any rate, the Oracle at Delphi dates back to prehistoric times, 
and
> the prophecies that we have date from, IIRC, the seventh or eighth
> century B.C. to Roman times. (Croesus died in 546 B.C. and Pyrrhus 
in
> 272 B.C.) Until Greece was conquered by the Romans in 146 B.C., the
> prophecies (including those made to Croesus and Pyrrhus) would have
> been made in Greek. It's possible, even probable, that they 
continued
> to be made in Greek even after Greece was conquered. After all, the
> Romans respected and imitated Greek culture, and they were more 
likely
> to learn Greek than the Greeks were to learn Latin. (The language of
> Greece and the entire eastern half of the Roman Empire, as you
> probably know, was Koine Greek, not Latin.)
> 
> Carol, who agrees that a Google search on the topic is frustrating 
and
> finds that her own books aren't much help, either, unfortunately
>


So, I've finally unraveled some of this.

Greek was lost during the Middle Ages in Europe (was only read in the 
Eastern part of the former Roman Empire. Until the Renaissance, in 
the western part of Europe, almost all educated people read Latin but 
not Greek. All their access to Greek writings was through Latin 
translations.

Susan