The Roman Government in Greek Sources: The Effect of Literary Theory on the Translation of Official Titles

Abstract

linguistic problem of inadequate vocabulary, apart from the literary considerations of turning scientific Greek into poetic Latin. Modestinus, on the other hand, could draw on some four hundred years during which the Greek world had been subjected to Roman v6poia and documents in Greek were being published of a legal complexity that, if it did not equal that of a textbook on excusatio (the topic which the section introduces), at least offered the lawyer some precedent for his method. In fact, apart from a rather larger number of transcribed words, Modestinus' usage, and in general the Greek quotations in the Digest, do not differ from the bulk of official documents on stone or papyrus. Although there are problems, points not yet fully elucidated, it is clear that under the Empire at least, there existed a reasonably consistent, standardized Greek terminology,' drawing largely from familiar Greek official language, either of the Hellenistic states (e.g., lrapxos) or of the poleis (e.g., 6~biapxos and raitas) in a process called by Magie comparatio,2