Wednesday, July 20, 2005
(10:07 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Clement of Alexandria on Language
The bulk of the first book of Clement's Stromata (Miscellanies) is taken up with using historical evidence to undercut the cultural primacy of the Greeks. He approaches this problem from many directions, primarily showing that Hebrew culture and wisdom/"philosophy" is older than Greece (which is actually true in general, even if the evidence that he cites is somewhat questionable). He also has many passages where he shows that the Greeks got their best ideas from barbarians, meaning non-Greeks -- by his reckoning, Greece seems to get the dubious honor that moderns most often bestow upon Japan, that of being skilled at adapting practices developed in other cultures.In any case, here he is dealing with language in general terms -- I can't quite follow how he got to a point where it seemed appropriate to deal with the origin of language, since he has a very rambling style and turns immediately to enumerating the reign of the Caesars after the passage I am about to cite. In any case, here it is:
Euphorus and many other historians say that there are seventy-five nations and tongues, in consequence of hearing the statement made by Moses: "All the souls that sprang from Jacob, which went down into Egypt, were seventy-five." According to the true reckoning, there appear to be seventy-two generic dialects, as our Scriptures hand down. The rest of the vulgar tongues are formed by the blending of two, or three, or more dialects. A dialect is a mode of speech which exhibits a character peculiar to a locality, or a mode of speech which exhibits a character peculiar or common to a race. The Greeks say, that among them are five dialects--the Attic, Ionic, Doric, Aeolic, and the fifth the Common; and that the languages of the barbarians, which are innumerable, are not called dialects, but tongues.The main point I would like to highlight here is that he thinks animals can talk among themselves. Perhaps later on he will randomly turn again to this topic and clarify the relationship between animal and human language, if there is any.
Plato attributes a dialect also to the gods, forming this conjecture mainly from dreams and oracles, and especially from demoniacs, who do not speak their own language or dialect, but that of the demons who have taken possession of them. He thinks also that the irrational creatures have dialects, which those that belong to the same genus understand. Accordingly, when an elephant falls into the mud and bellows out any other one that is at hand, on seeing what has happened, shortly turns, and brings with him a herd of elephants, and saves the one that has fallen in. It is said also in Libya, that a scorpion, if it does not succeed in stinging a man, goes away and returns with several more; and that, hanging on one to the other like a chain they make in this way the attempt to succeed in their cunning design.
The irrational creatures do not make use of an obscure intimation, or hint their meaning by assuming a particular attitude, but, as I think, by a dialect of their own. And some others say, that if a fish which has been taken escape by breaking the line, no fish of the same kind will be caught in the same place that day. But the first and generic barbarous dialects have terms by nature, since also men confess that prayers uttered in a barbarian tongue are more powerful.
Also, Clement knows about Buddhism and Hinduism, in broad outlines. I never would have guessed.
