In a world where they are already struggling for legitimacy, women are not given a strong motive to work on translationsīut now, at long last, we are beginning to see an outpouring of translations of Greek and Latin texts by women. They include the undervaluing of translation as a scholarly activity in the modern academy, which means that, in a world where women are already struggling for legitimacy in a historically male-dominated field, female classicists are not given a strong institutional motive to work on translations. There are a number of reasons for this dispiriting fact. In the US and the UK, almost all the most prominent translators of Greek and Roman literature have been men, even as recently as 10 or 20 years ago – and even as academic departments of classical literature have moved closer to a more balanced gender distribution. But Hutchinson’s work exists only in manuscript like that of most British female classical translators before this generation, her work was largely unknown beyond her own immediate circle. In Britain, Lady Jane Lumley translated Euripides and, in the 17th century, Lucy Hutchinson produced the first complete translation into English of Lucretius. Dacier’s well-informed, scholarly texts were widely read, not least by Alexander Pope, who used her French to produce his translations of Homer. Anne Dacier translated Homer’s Iliad into French prose in 1699 and his Odyssey nine years later. There were learned female classicists all over Europe in the early modern period, including several Italian humanists. The works of dead, white elite men have largely been translated by living, white elite men. It is also true, less obviously, of the available translations into English of ancient Greek and Roman texts, most of which are still created by “classicists”. This is true of the blockbuster Hollywood imaginings of ancient Greece and Rome such as Troy, 300 and Gladiator – all male-directed films in which female characters exist primarily as eye candy. But the legacy of male domination is still with us – inside the discipline of classics itself and in how non-specialist general readers gain access to the history and literature of the ancient world. After all, women from a wide variety of backgrounds are now able to enrol at prestigious universities and colleges and learn Latin and Greek from scratch knowledge of the ancient languages is no longer open only to men. One might assume optimistically that things have changed. (In fact, a handful of women are buried among the “classicists” one can find here several studies of Victorian classical scholar Jane Harrison, including a fine one by Beard.)įor hundreds of years, the study of ancient Greece and Rome was largely the domain of elite white men and their bored sons. Like “female scientists” (42 volumes, as opposed to 303 for “scientists”) or “male nurses” (three to 377), “female classicists” is a category that has been assumed not to exist. Male classical scholars are represented by the heading “classicists” – which counts more than 200 volumes. Predictably, there are no entries for “male classicists”. Next up, alphabetically, is “female cleaning personnel”, which has a larger number of volumes devoted to it: six, with no duplicates, none by Beard. Searching for Koine or Attic (Polytonic) Greek in a PDF is REALLY sketchy.If you look up the subject heading “female classicists” in the large research library catalogue at the university where I teach, a grand total of five books pop up – of which two are separate editions of It’s a Don’s Life by Mary Beard. Thanks for providing an invaluable document! It takes work, but you can get there, eventually. Nonetheless, the roots of the words are the same. I have found that the ability to move between the English and the Koine Greek (Josphus was not, necessarily, an Attic Greek "purist"). It appears that some Jewish apologists have cited Thackeray's work, rather than the work of William Whiston in trying to establish their credibility. It appears that he took many liberties in "translating (actually "interpreting") Josephus, which is unfortunate. Henry Saint John Thackeray comes immediately to mind. or C.E.) writers to see if their terminology is actually accurate/correct. The dictionary provided on this page (I'm using the PDF) is excellent for locating the Greek terminology for English terms used by contemporary (to me - 2019 A.D. I'm a big fan of Flavius Josephus ("Josephus" - 1st Century Jewish - actually, Hebraic) historian.
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