Benedict Lowe’s “Οὐδὲ τῆς διαλέκτου τῆς σφετέρας ἔτι μεμνημένοι: The disappearance of indigenous languages in Republican Iberia” (open access), Rhesis 7.1 (2016) 44-55, begins:
By the early Imperial period the indigenous languages of the Peninsula had disappeared from public use. The reasons for this remain the matter of considerable debate: according to Strabo the disappearance of the Turdetanian language was due to the Turdetanians’ adoption of a Roman lifestyle and their receipt of Latin status and Roman immigrants (3.2.15). Further factors may have fostered this process: the Turdetanians were the most civilized of the inhabitants of the Peninsula with as many as 200 cities (3.2.1) and sustained commercial ties with Rome (3.2.5; 3.2.15). The Roman conquest brought with it linguistic consequences: the replacement of a plethora of regional languages with a single common language of government – Latin – and the adaptation of pre-Roman epigraphic practices to serve the needs of this new language and government: developing epigraphy as a medium of public communication and for the dissemination of propaganda. It is not clear, however, if there was an official policy of Latinisation – in fact the last two centuries BC are the apogee of indigenous epigraphy in the Peninsula. How extensive the use of Latin was is unclear, nor is it clear how much the extant epigraphic material provides an accurate picture of the process of Latinisation: not only does the extant epigraphic material represent only part of a more diverse range of written material, but it is not clear if the written record accurately reflects the oral language.
Although nowhere explicitly stated it seems probable that Roman officials employed Latin in their exchanges with the indigenous population […] In contrast to the scarcity of inscriptions issued by Republican magistrates elsewhere in the west, several are known from the Spanish provinces that enable us to explore the use of Latin as a language of government and its diffusion amongst the indigenous population. […]
The conclusion:
Languages remain in use as long as it is beneficial for the language to be employed. Choice of language is not merely determined by expedience, however, but can symbolise the relationship of the speaker to the political forces behind the languages in question: thus one’s adherence to or rejection of the influence of Rome. By creating an environment in which the Roman government communicated with the provincial communities through the medium of the Latin language they ensured the gradual marginalisation of the indigenous languages of the Iberian Peninsula.
No surprises, but it’s always good to see a close-up look at the process. I confess I’d never heard of the Turdetanians; Strabo “considers them to have been the successors to the people of Tartessos and to have spoken a language closely related to the Tartessian.” (Via Laudator Temporis Acti, which provides a translation of the quote from Strabo [3.2.15] used in the title of the article: “The Turdetanians, however, and particularly those that live about the Baetis, have completely changed over to the Roman mode of life, not even remembering their own language any more.”)
Turdetanians: Once you give up your language and culture, you are lost to history. I doubt there is a single Spaniard in our time who gives a damn about the culture, pursuits, lifestyle, or anything else that was important to their great-great-great-great (add suitable number of ‘great’s) grandparents of Turdetanian times.
It’s not only about language, but also about national myth. The English have made Celtic heroes like Budicca and Arthur their own, as heroes trying to defend that sceptred isle from foreign invaders. Similarly, French national mythology has “nos ancêtres les Gaulois”. I don’t know whether there is any Spanish national mythology about their pre-Roman forebears, but I’d say the presence or absence of such a mythology is the defining factor. (And, just a guess, if you’d ask the average Spaniards who inhabited Spain before the Roman conquest, they’d probably say “Iberians”, if they have an opinion at all.)
Don’t forget the Vikings. Or the kings at Jelling, rather. Those guys are a big part of the traditional self image of Danes. (The other Nordic countries have different old kings).
It’s not like Iberia had a boring or static post-Roman history with no new rounds of conquerors. Do Spaniards have a thing about “Nuestros antepasados los visigodos”? (Obv. they got linguistically assimilated to the local Romance vernacular, just like the Franks in Gaul.)
And, just a guess, if you’d ask the average Spaniards who inhabited Spain before the Roman conquest, they’d probably say “Iberians”, if they have an opinion at all.
My guess as well, and it’s odd, because in the words of Wikipedia: “Strabo notes that the Turdetani were the most civilized people in Iberia, with the implication that their ordered, urbanized culture was most in accord with Greco-Roman models.”
“the most civilised … their ordered, urbanized culture was most in accord with Greco-Roman models”
Teh “List of the Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula” in WP says they formed “Proto-civilisation”, which makes me wonder how you tell a proto-civilisation from a civilisation. (My guess is that a proto-civilisation is something “in accord” with GR models, while a civilisation is GR models themselves (though personally I consider Romans barbarian imperialists… or imperialist barbarians?*). Or maybe to be a civilisation you need to conquer?)
* speaking seriously, it is indeed absolutely shocking how much linguistic diversity of the region once covered by the empire has been reduced.
@Lars: yes, but with the Vikings and the kings at Jelling, you can at least claim linguistic continuity, which isn’t true for Celts and English or French.
The Kusaasi just claim to be the original inhabitants of their area. We don’t need no stinking kings.
For all anybody knows, they could even be right.
Not so much kings as heroes, I think, we just happen to conflate them a little in Denmark. (cf Volodomir “Victory”). Fedrar ossir danirnir.
Lars M.: Don’t forget the Vikings. Or the kings at Jelling, rather. Those guys are a big part of the traditional self image of Danes. (The other Nordic countries have different old kings).
Yes. The Norwegian kings traditionally start with Harald’s victory in the batlle of Hafrsfjord in 872 or 890, but (1) there’s little evidence that Hárfagri ruled more than a part of what we call Norway, (2) there’s actually good evidence of kingship both in the west (Avaldsnes) and the east (Borre) long before Hárfagri, and (3) the continuity between Hárfagri and the foundation of a medieval kingdom in the 11th century is pretty awkward. I’ll argue that Hárfagri’s campaign disrupted the ancient system and initiated a century of direct Danish involvement north of the Skagerrak.
(Well, I’ll rather argue that the booty from the previous century of Viking raids made a lot of local lords rich, which meant that they had no choice but to hire a professional army to guard the treasure, which meant that their expenses would empty the chest unless they sent the army out to empty some other chest, which meant nothing but raids and warfare until all chests eventually were empty, which meant that the Jelling kings had to try to bring some order up here in order to avoid being targeted themselves.
The Danish managed to avoid internal dissolution by adopting the more constructive strategy of sending all warlords to England.)
but with the Vikings and the kings at Jelling, you can at least claim linguistic continuity, which isn’t true for Celts and English or French.
I don’t think linguistic continuity matters that much. Most Irish no longer share linguistic continuity with their ancestors nor do most Welsh. Your average English or French person probably probably does have more genetic continuity with the Britains/Gauls than with the Saxons or Franks.
It may simply be though that in the Middle Ages Spanish were too obsessed with the Reconquista to develop myths about resistance to earlier invasions of outsiders.
But this dicontinuity is recent.
I doubt there is a single Spaniard in our time who gives a damn about the culture, pursuits, lifestyle, or anything else that was important… of Turdetanian times.
A news item from just earlier this year, the discovery of a Turdetanian whistle… The words of the mayor of Huelva at the end: tendremos la oportunidad de ver otra pieza más que nos descubre nuestro pasado tan importantísimo que hemos tenido. (For LH readers who do not understand Spanish, subtitles and automatic translation to English can be turned on in the YouTube control panel.)
I don’t think linguistic continuity matters that much
That was basically my point – Bathrobe commented that losing the language would destroy the significance of a people for their descendants, and I gave English and French modern mythology as a counter-example; my remark towards Lars’s comment was just to indicate that the Vikings are a bad counter-example because there is linguistic continuity.
(It’s possible that Lars’s comment wasn’t meant as counter-example, but just à-propos the existence of national methodology. Thread drift here at LH? Unthinkable!)
This is just intuition:
the demographic state of things in Iberia as Roman influence declined and before Muslim Al Andalus consolidated is little known. Later, as northern visigoths advanced, the notion of a “Reconquista” was created, implication being that a preexisting “Spain” was being recovered. My conjecture is that this required discarding or forgetting the diverse peoples that populated pre Roman Iberia
Of the earlier Roman administrative units, Lusitania is remembered but not Baetica or Tarracona (i.e., the latter is applied to a city only). Tarracona was already broken up by the Romans, the new name for part of it is preserved as Galicia.
In part that’s a coincidence: people looking for a suitably fancy Latin name for Portugal (which nowadays bears, after all, simply the name of the city of Porto: Portus Cale) pored over ancient geographers, found the province of Lusitania, and figured that was close enough. No country has tried to be identified with Baetica or the whole of Tarracona.
>Lusitania is remembered but not Baetica
Maybe not entirely forgotten. This seems a little different than Tarragona in that they actually revived the Latin name, and though not directly related to the old region, it does seem like an effort to sustain a (sports) loyalty larger than Seville.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Betis
Baetica doesn’t sound so much as a native landscape name as a descriptive administrative term imposed by the empire. Like Seine-et-Marne or Merseyside.
@Hans, then it is not clear whether “thickness/substantiality” of this connection matters to us (I think it does) and how do we measure it.
Say, Tunisians can mention Carthage often but only in specific contexts, also I don’t know if they take any interest in history and archaeology of the period (I think not much but I’m not sure) and likely have very little in common with Phoenicians in terms of culture (if we don’t count the Middle Eastern culture brought by Arabs likely even less than with Berbers of the first millenium) but no one knows.
What of this counts?
Synchronously there is also such a thing as loyalty.
Say, your awareness that you belong to a certain tribe might not be supported by shared tribal traditions or really anything… Except that you take the side of this tribe in conflicts and support it otherwise.
@drasvi: These things come and go. A lot of national mythology was constructed by romantic nationalists in the 18th and 19th century and then popularized through the education system. I doubt that the average German peasant had a folk tale tradition concerning Arminius / Herrmann and the battle of the Teutoburg forest; this becoming a German national myth was due to German Humanists rediscovering Tacitus’s “Germania” and adopting it in contemporary ideological battles of early modernity (against the reception of Roman law and its replacing of “Germanic” common law; Protestants drawing inspiration from his fight against “Rome”…), and then he fit right in with the 19th century fight for German unity. And it can go out of fashion again; while my generation still learnt that stuff at school, I don’t know whether the average German school kid would know who Herrmann/Arminius was.
@Hans, I mean that a proponent of the linguistical connection theory (perhaps not Bathrobe) can dismiss a link like that between Tunisia and Carthage as insubstantial and arbitrary (only important to a modern Tunisian in a specific context). But maybe this is not what Barthobe* meant.
*I won’t correct the typo because
So bath robe and bar thobe indeed form a funny pair.
Also: robe is one of those words I never hear but learned early (when I was a beginner in English, did not intend to actually learn it, but read in it) so I STILL pronounce it as [robʲe] in my head*:) Only noticed that because ثَوْب has ⟨و⟩.
*In an actual conversation I’d have first stumbled and possibly then either guessed the correct pronunciation after a pause or consulted my interlocutor. Happens to me frequently.
I STILL pronounce it as [robʲe] in my head
Робишь в робе?
Yes.
…maybe kinda. There is the idea that Siegfried the dragon-killer is him, and the dragon is the worm-shaped Roman army with its shields (actually called squamae, “scales”) glistening in the sun. Apparently Tacitus said Arminius’s father was named Segimer (the immediate Pre-Germanic form of Si(e)gmar), and later Germanic families often named children by remixing the parents’ name elements… however, I’m not aware of evidence that the Nibelungenlied or any part of it ever was a folk tale.
I didn’t know that was ever a thing. It went nowhere; until pretty recently law school started with courses on römisches Recht.
I didn’t know that was ever a thing. It went nowhere; until pretty recently law school started with courses on römisches Recht
Very briefly, the Roman law tradition was mostly lost in Western Europe outside of Church canonical law after the fall of the Western Empire and replaced by a patchwork of customary laws; after the rediscovery of the digesta in the 11th century and after the newly founded universities took on the study of law, Roman law with its systematic approach became more and more influential, mostly replacing the old customary law on the continent. This was not only a conflict of law practice, but also of law practitioners; the spread of the Roman law tradition went together with the spread of professional lawyers and the centralization of jurisdiction by the modern state, replacing the old laymen courts.