Irenaeus

(Nandana) #1

Notes to Chapter 2 219


These passages are discussed by Craige Champion, “Romans as Barbaroi: Three Polybian Speeches and the
Politics of Cultural Indeterminacy,” CPh 95.4 (2000): 425–44, who is more eager to believe that Polybius calls
the Romans barbarians than Andrew Erskine, “Polybios and Barbarian Rome,” Mediterraneo Antico 3 (2000),
165–82, who comes to slightly different conclusions. Plutarch’s Pyrrhus also contains explicit references to
the Romans as barbarians, all in reported speech (16.7 and 16.13 are the most telling). This work is now
discussed by Judith Mossman, “Taxis ou Barbaros: Greek and Roman in Plutarch’s Pyrrhus,” CQ 55.2 (2005):
502–4. My thanks to David Potter for drawing my attention to this reference.



  1. The evidence is discussed by Michel Dubuisson, “Le latin est-il une langue barbare?” Ktema 9 (1984):
    55–68.

  2. Plutarch describes the circumstances of his time in Italy in Demosthenes, 2.

  3. Useful discussion with examples in Susan Mattern, Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing (Baltimore: Johns
    Hopkins University Press, 2008), esp. 50–52.

  4. Some examples are collected, for instance, by Noy, Foreigners at Rome, 228–30. Cf. Ramsay MacMul-
    len, “The Unromanized in Rome,” in Diasporas in Antiquity, ed. Shaye J.D. Cohen and Ernest S. Frerichs,
    Brown Judaic Studies 288 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1993), 47–64.

  5. A summary in Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries,
    trans. Michael Steinhauser, ed. Marshall D. Johnson (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 143–46, with refer-
    ences to earlier scholarship.

  6. The evidence is presented in detail by Noy, Foreigners at Rome, 172–74.

  7. Cf. the status of Greek as an “in-group” language for Jews in Italy well into the late antique period. See
    David Noy, “Writing in Tongues: The Use of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew in Jewish Inscriptions from Roman
    I t a l y,” JJS 48 (1997): 300–11, and Margaret Williams, “The Jews of Early Byzantine Venusia: The Family of
    Faustinus I, the Father,” JJS 50 (1999): 38–52, for detailed studies.

  8. Gustave Bardy, La question des langues dans l’église ancienne (Paris: Beauchesne, 1948), 81–115, pro-
    vides a detailed review of the evidence relating to language among Christians at Rome. He comments (156),
    with only slight hyperbole, that “au début du IIIe siècle, tout le monde à Rome parle grec.”

  9. Irenaeus’s connections with Justin are now explored by Michael Slusser, “How Much Did Irenaeus
    Learn from Justin?” Studia Patristica XL (2006): 515–20.

  10. For Greek orators at Lyons, see Suetonius, Caligula, 20. A Greek actor at Lyons is attested by Cassius
    Dio LXXVIII.21.2, who scoffs that his success there owed more to the rusticity of the audience! Cf. Pliny the
    Younger, Ep. IX.11, who expresses his surprise that his writings were being sold in Lyons. He apparently had
    not realized that the city possessed any booksellers!

  11. A survey of the epitaphs from Lyons is provided by A. Audin and Y. Burnand, “Chronologie des épi-
    taphes romaines de Lyon,” REA 61 (1959): 320–52. Burnand, “La datation des épitaphes romaines de Lyon:
    remarques complémentaires,” in Inscriptions Latines de Gaule Lyonnaise, ed. F. Bérard and Y. Le Bohec (Paris:
    Collection Centre d’Etudes romaines et gallo-romaines n.s. 10, 1992), 21–27, updates and revises slightly the
    original study.

  12. Greek inscriptions from Gaul are collected in an appendix to IG 14. A more inclusive and up-to-date
    survey of Greek epigraphy from Gaul is provided by F. Biville, “Les hellénismes dans les inscriptions latines
    paiennes de la Gaule (1er–4ème s. ap. J.-C.),” in La langue des inscriptions de la Gaule. Actes de la Table-ronde
    tenue au C.E.R.G.R. les 6 et 7 Octobre 1988 (Lyon: Centre d’études romaines et gallo-romaines, 1989), 29–40.

  13. For example, CIL 13.1854 = IG 14.2526.

  14. For example, CIL 13.2004 = IG 14.2529.

  15. Jean-Claude Decourt, “χαῖρε καὶ ὑγίαινε: à propos de quelques inscriptions lyonnaises,” RPh 67 (1993):



  16. Cf. J. N. Adams, Bilingualism and the Latin Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003),
    364, n.129.

  17. Discussion in Noy, Foreigners at Rome, 172.

  18. On these “Gallo-Latin” inscriptions, see Greg Woolf, Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civi-
    lization in Gaul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 94–96.

  19. See ibid., 78, 96, for Gaul in general. For Lyons, see Audin and Burnand, 326.

  20. Woolf, 103, discusses the change. Statistics are provided by Jean-Jacques Hatt, La tombe gallo-romaine
    (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1951), 23–42 with comments by Marcel Le Glay, “Remarques sur
    l’onomastique gallo-romaine,” in L’Onomastique Latine, ed. Noël Duval (Paris: CNRS, 1977), 269–77.

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