Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ancient Warfare Podcast.

With me today are Lindsay Powell, Mark Vicentis, Mark McCaffrey, Murray Daum, and I am Jasper Ortiz.

I am the editor of Ancient Warfare Magazine and today we'll be discussing the latest issue, Ancient Warfare Issue 163, which deals with the Roman Empire in the East from the 4th,

the 5th and 6th centuries AD. Difficult time for the Empire or Empires. We can maybe talk about that,

whether it's one or two or not, and how one part lasts

it so long, despite being battered, I think we can say from both the northern and eastern

sides, almost constantly by Gothic peoples in the north and theassanian Empire in the East.

That's what the issue deals with, and that's what we'll be talking about tonight.

We, oddly enough, only have one question from the audience to get us going, but I'm sure after that we'll think of something to talk about.

My question is, even though Latin was the language of the army, how present were other languages

like Greek and other dialects and military functions. And I suppose that is a question that

really extends chronologically before that, certainly. Anybody want to pitch in there? Well, I think the official language remains Latin

for the Roman army. And even though most of our sources, certainly for later Rome and the East,

are written in Greek, there's still generally transliterations of Latin terms or translations of Latin terms,

whereas we know that even the Eastern Empire who idiomatically spoke Greek and other languages

rather than Latin, the administrative language is still Latin.

So what was spoken in the ranks would have had to know some Latin to know, presumably

orders are given in Latin. We don't know specifically. I think one, again, one of our only sources of Latin

orders is a Greek handbook. So they're listed in Greek, but were they given in Greek? Or were

they given in Latin? And that's just a sort of an equivalency. So I think it's a bit like,

and the analogy of the French foreign legend, that yes, you can speak whatever language you like, but we do this in this language and you'll learn at least what those words mean in order to be able to perform your duties.

And might happen say it would be worth, or two cents worth, depending on which side of the Atlantic you are, would be, I mean, my period is Augustus,

...