I think Ms. Wilson chose a very poor analogy when she wrote, “The place of Spanish in modern America provides an interesting counterpart to Greek under Rome.”

I think she failed to truly grasp the place Greek culture had in the Roman world. There is of course no debate that Greece was thoroughly conquered militarily and economically by Rome, but it would be entirely reasonable to say that Greece, particularly Athens, conquered Rome culturally.

The Romans took the Greek religious system as their own (simply changed the names of the deities), architecture (just read Vitruvius), and art.

Most Patrician Romans chose to use Greek for private correspondence due to the fact that the Greek language offers more refined and precise expressions.

A stroll through the Capitoline Museum will reveal that many of the great Ancient Roman art works have a note that states “Reproduction of earlier Greek works” Examples:

The Dying Gaul

Capitoline Venus

Statue of Marsyas

Faun in Rouge Marble

Spinario

The list goes on and on.

But most telling is the fact that the great texts of Ancient Rome, particularly Virgil’s Aeneid and Livy’s Histories, claim that Rome was founded by exiled Greeks. So strong was the lure of Greek Culture that the educated men of Roman society strove to prove ancestral relationship with the Greeks.

To claim, even after a half dozen margaritas, that Spanish has the same position in American culture as Greek did in the Roman culture is ludicrous.

(The place of Spanish in modern America provides an interesting counterpart to Greek under Rome.)

The Spanish conquistadors virtually destroyed the Mayan, Incan, and Aztec cultures. Latin America has their language and little else to show for it. Spanish is now more popular in modern America (we presume the author means the United States) because it is used by waves of migrant workers who have no desire or motive to assimilate. I fail to see the analogy with the Greeks.

I agree with "ARE YOU PEOPLE CRAZY". Maybe the author had seven Margaritas.

7 Margaritas would be nice,though it's a little early for me. I agree that it's an inexact analogy -- though not an entirely useless one: as various people have pointed out on the other thread, there are at least pockets of American cultural hispano-philia, and certainly of Euro-philia, which have at least limited parallels in the 'Graeca-capta..' set of phenomena evoked by areyoucrazy. And there are issues about education and multi-culturalism and empire which arise in any bi-lingual culture, however diverse the value placed on the subsidiary language. But of course I know that the cultural value and long history of Greek under Rome was very different from Spanish in the U. S. I had originally thought of bringing in the place of French in nineteenth century Russia, which is again -- like all modern analogies -- not an exact parallel, but arguably closer. But I realised that it would take me off on a tangent, which is dumb to do if you only have a thousand words. The piece was not about the place of Greek in the Roman empire, much tho' I'd like to write a piece about that. It was about Latin in America, building on two specific books about Latin. So I couldn't expand or modify my analogy, without ruining the unity of the piece. Maybe I should have just cut it out. Still, it generated a nice discussion.

Well, no the Spanish did not destroy the native cultures of what is now Latin America. At this exact moment, I have in my class a little girl from Guatemala whose first language is one of several hundred Mayan dialects spoken as first languages in Southern Mexico and Guatemala. One of the men who recently worked on my apartment speaks a different dialect as a first l language. Both of these people speak Spanish as a second language, and the man learned to speak English from touists. Now he is working on his BA. My little girl will certainly also have English as a third. I just read in the LA Times that the ruins of some religious center in Guatemala are being used again to practice the native religions. Mexico honores both Cortez and Moctezuma. When was the last time you saw a statue of Sitting Bull or heard a Native American speak his/her national language as a first language? Here in Los Angeles, I would bet that nearly all the bilingual, bicultural people are Spanish speaking, and you can find good restaurants from all over Latin America within walking distance of my Koreatown apartment.

Let us not let the analogy question displace the clear comparison of the benefits to be derived from faciity in languages, especially when two (or more) thereof may be dominant in a culture/society at a given place and time.

It did immediately strike me, as it has apparently everyone else, that it was a poor analogy. A more apt analogy, historically, would be the place France and things French had for a long time in the 19th and early 20th Century world. (A trip to Paris still remains "de rigueur," for anyone claiming the title of man or woman of the world.)

Until quite recently, one was not deemed to be educated unless one could converse easily in French, or sophisticated, unless one could order a meal in the language. French still seems the most sophisticated of all the modern language to the ear of many. Of course, obviously, French was also the "lingua franca" of that period, consequently the language of diplomacy. This of course continued long after the decline of France as the dominant civilization of the time.

Similarly, the same fascination with civilizations in decline, because of their massive contribution to the lifestyles of all they dominated, continues long after the decline of the British Empire, as it did with Greece, Rome, France and now English, since English is now the new "lingua franca." The British "sang froid" though, which some see as a kind of awkwardness, has prevented a similar fascination with British Culture.

The dominance of our own, American civilization, (and it is already distinctly that,) coupled with the fact that we also share the same English Language, has overwhelmed worldwide interest in all other things British, except the affairs of the Royal Family of course, as the response to that family's debut on YouTube clearly demonstrates.

I am not sure that anything can be done about the "Ugly American" image at the moment, since that is the lot of all new civilizations. Of course, a President, grabbing the hem of some lady's skirt to clean his glasses, or laying hands on the shoulders of a female sitting head of state to give her a massage in front of the cameras doesn't help at all.

There must be some parallel lurking in my subconscious because suddenly I wish someone could fill in the blanks for me of the period of Russia's fairly brief dominance as a world power, not recently, but back in the days of Peter and Catherine the Great.

All I could remember from my schoolboy days was a mention by my history teacher that Peter the Great was viewed as somewhat rough around the edges during his tours of Europe, inclined to grab the luscious daughters of minor dignitaries at functions and hustle them into his ante-chamber, surrounded by his royal guards where he would have his way with them. I can't imagine why that bit of history stuck of all the other things! Of course no one would accuse a US president of behaving like Peter the Great did, so who was William the Great, we didn’t have a William did we? No, he was a figure in European history, not American.

"Amo, amas, I love a lass,

Her legs are long and slender,

Amas, amat, I lay her flat,

and tickle her feminine gender."

It was the history teacher, not our Latin teacher, who gave us that bit of rap, and for some reason it stuck, first take. Shows that the young would rather have rap than Latin any day or maybe, sex sells!

I think language is very personal to each culture,

So I think the analogy is fair insomuch as you can compare it culturaly and via a time line that is centuries old. If anything, the difference is the invading yet subservient culture speaks the soon to be dominant language, but the dominant culture or the ones who want to be relevant to the times are learning the new language out of economic neccessity and fear of being left behind in the marketplace. Despite what the racist fear-mongers say, the invading latin immigrants are in my view a huge plus to our economy, and are going to be paying through their SS taxes alot of the social security pensions of the white hierarchy that bemoans their presence here. The government is quietly happy that the folks that are working in the shadows are making up the slack for all of the baby boomers who are about to receive lifetime pensions from the governmemt. If those immigrants weren't here, there really would be a crisis in SS, but because many of those folks will never collect, they are paying into a system that would have otherwise been bankrupt or close to it by now. You see the dirty little secret your government isn't telling you is that the majority of those illegals get real paychecks that are taxed and go into the general fund. If they weren't there the shortfall would be insurmountable, and George Bush and the corporate fascists know that. That's why George wants to look the other way while those folks stream across the border. Real immigration reform would be a 3 part solution: first seal the borders asap. Then you need to increase by 10-fold the # of legal immigrants that come in from Mexico and Latin America at least (supply and demand baby), so that they have hope to come in legally in a timely manner and won't want to come in illegally. Finally and foremost you need another amnesty so that those already here can be accounted for and deemed viable for our system. Those that are criminals and trouble makers should be deported, but the ones who are productive and pay into the sysetm (the vast majority) should be given immediate status as long as they can show that they've been productive members of society. Then at least we'll know who they are and who really wants to be here, not encouraging Al Qauida to sneak across the border like all the rest of the masses. Jesus would say they are our brothers and sisters, and for the most part they are. We as white society need to get over our fear of the unknown (instinctual racism) and embrace what these fine folks bring to our country. Can you imagine how boring it would be here without los latinos? No good Mexican food, not enough gardeners and landscapers, not enough people buying real estate and opening businesses. It would be a boring, stagnant, white european culture with no future and no drive to compete locally or globally. If we document everybody who's already here, then they'll be forced to compete in the common marketplace without the advantages of the shadowy lower wages sin benefits.

John Fleisher - Santa Barbara California

"flysurf"

I think language is very personal to each culture,

"Despite what the racist fear-mongers say, the invading Latin immigrants are in my view a huge plus to our economy, and are going to be paying through their SS taxes a lot of the social security pensions of the white hierarchy that bemoans their presence here.. John Fleisher - Santa Barbara California"

The biggest most stupidly obvious canard I hear from the immigration opponents is that the immigrants are a net drain on the economy. No reputable economist could dare make that statement and maintain his reputation as such. Your enthusiasm makes your claims appear overstated at first glance, but every economist knows that you haven't even scratced the surface of the contribution of immigrant labor to the US economy. To put my own position in perspective, let me say, as Henry Kissinger once put it, "I was not born an American, but I've been a citizen for a longer time than most other Americans."

Let me illustrate why SS is not the biggest contribution. When I was working as a computer technician my gross salary was exactly one tenth of the maintenance contract I was servicing. If I was receiving $25,000 a year, (not too shabby for 1975) as a FE, my company was receiving $250,000 from the clients to promise that I would show up if they had a problem.

All the employess, and the company itself technically, who were earning the rest of that 90% I didn't get were also paying taxes, most in higher some in lower tax brackets. To say it differently, (since I'd need differential equations to be precisely correct), every hundred dollars I earned was part of a thousand dollar house of cards that could not have existed without my labor, and the IRS was collecting at least 25% of those cards, so that the Federal Government could do its work. Pull out my labor and that economic activity could not exist. By my linear calculations therefore, the government would have lost more than $62,000 dollars if those maintenance contracts I serviced were suddenly dropped, and that's not even counting the SS contribution you mentioned.

This is called the multiplier effect and it goes even beyond what I stated, since our services contributed directly to the efficiency of the companies we serviced, so they would be negatively impacted as well. In fairness I must admit that an economy is much more robust than that and would find all kinds of way to work around that kind of disruption. Ultimately, the source of a country's wealth lies in the minds of men who are infinitely resourceful, but "opportunity costs are opportunities lost." (clc king). If Germany had beat us to the A bomb we'd all be speaking German today. The paramountcy of the American economy already threatened as it is* could not survive the loss of 10 million workers even over the course of 4 years.

Our country's economic woes: a tip of the iceberg! Damn, our ships are still crashing into icebergs. Don't we ever learn.

*Morgan Stanley posted its first quarterly loss ever Wednesday after taking an additional $5.7 billion write-down related to subprime mortgages. The investment bank also said it would sell a $5 billion stake to China Investment Corp., a sovereign wealth fund, to shore up its capital.<link>

*Merrill Lynch & Co., facing steep losses from mortgage-related investments, said Monday it will receive a cash infusion of up to $6.2 billion from Singapore's Temasek Holdings. <link>

Meanwhile the more than 30% decline in the value of the dollar begins to explain that even though the local feds have been able to eliminate the wild local swings that used to accompany inflation, its impossible to fool the rest of the world that we’re not in trouble.

<link>

I am a graduate student in Classics, and I beg to differ with a few of your points (though I agree that the analogy is ludicrous):

The Romans took the Greek religious system as their own (simply changed the names of the deities) architecture (just read Vitruvius), and art.

This is not accurate. The Romans had very little mythology of their own (mostly local legends) and so, upon making contact with Greek culture, they adopted the mythology as their own, and accepted the Greek gods as being the same as the ones they already had. The exception is Mars, who, unlike the sniveling coward that is Ares, is incredibly intelligent and masculine. Their actual religious system is based on that of the earlier Etruscan tribes of Italy.

And Vitruvius? His descriptions of Greek dwellings to not AT ALL resemble the archaeological finds we have.

But most telling is the fact that the great texts of Ancient Rome, particularly Virgil’s Aeneid and Livy’s Histories, claim that Rome was founded by exiled Greeks.

This is a bit misleading. First, these texts DO say that Rome was founded by the descendants of Aeneas, but the majority of the first citizens of Roma were actually exiled members of the Latin tribes, under the leadership of two descendants of Aeneas. Secondly, Aeneas was from Asia Minor (Troy), not Greece. His city was DESTROYED by the Greeks, which is why he was an exile.

Don't get me wrong, textual evidence from the late Republic shows a growing anxiety concerning the infulence of the Greek East on Roman culture. However, your individual points of evidence are not accurate.

Of course the Pax Romana wasn't very peaceful at all, and the Pax Americana remains even more challenged to date. Yet, apart from our borrowed language, American civilization has in fact already contributed hugely to world culture, changed the world dramatically, more than many of us realize from this close. In the arts, we've contributed the Hollywood culture, good and bad, and all the technology that made it possible, thanks to Edison; literature not so much, but the movie script, of course. In music, jazz man, jazz!

In haute couture the ubiquitous denim jean tipped me off that Communism was on the way out when I read that the children of the Russian ruling class, (yes, there was such a thing), then reaching young adulthood, were so fascinated by the culture of the West that they had aquired a huge for denim jeans of all things , (these spoilt darlings and a few performers were the only ones who had access to Western culture at all.) The more I read of the fascination these young adults had for things Western, the more I realized that the command culture of Russia was losing its legs and that “decadence” was winning out as it always has. Apparently the same process is underway in Iran. The irony is that had we not isolated Cuba, the same would have happened there in a decade or two rather than lingering on as it has.

Of course, there’s no doubt, that Morse started the communication revolution. Ultimately however, Morse, Edison, Bell and the adopted Einstein vie with Ford’s affordable automobile for the most dramatic contribution America has made to world culture. Even if we eventually price ourselves out of world dominance on the economic front, and our productive output, therefore wealth, becomes overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of educated brains in formerly less developed nations, we can reassure ourselves that in a relatively short three centuries we have already assured our place in the chain of all the great civilizations that have placed homo sapiens on the road to where it needs to be if we are to survive the coming holocaust.

Greekgeek,

There are several points of your post to which I take exception.

First, as a graduate student in the classics you should be familiar with the fact Troy was portrayed as a Greek City-State in Greek mythology. Therefore when the Roman sought to portray them selves as Trojan descendants, they understood that to be Greek. Furthmore, the Trojan War took place sometime between the 12th-14th centuries, a full 500-700 years before the founding of Rome. The concept (and geography) of "what is Greek" evolved many times before the works of the great Roman writers. The Greece that the late Republicans, such as Virgil and Livy, would have known would have most certainly included the entire Asia-Minor coast.

As to Vitruvius, the issue is not whether he accurately described the architecture, but rather his reliance on the Greek influence. Within his text he refers to most every technical detail in both its Latin and Greek name (over 125 times). This is a very strong indication as to the cultural influence that the Greeks held over the Roman educated class.

Lastly, as to the Roman Mythology. While your points are valid when discussing the Kingdon/Early Republican Periods of Roman Mythology, these does not hold true in the later Republic/Empire Periods. As Rome began to mature the great Roman poets began to assimilate the GreekMythology into the Roman literature. Then trough the Civil Wars and Imperial period this heavily Hellenistic infused religion became the status quo.