Ancient Beer

[Pantagathus]

Now considering all this: Does it make sense that these neighboring people would adopt a Latin word for a beverage that they had been making since the neolithic and that the Romans themselves rarely drank???

 

CONSIDERING THE LINGUISTIC INFLUENCE!!!!!! YES!!

 

In case you havent noticed, spanish is a romance language, meaning it came from LATIN!!

Your source has one problem, and thats, that it doesnt state any dates and time periods!

 

The Romans conquered that terretory and Romanised it, and this beverage was also known in Italica.

 

It was originally called fermentum in Latin. The Romans eventually latinized the 'barbarian' word. That's why in the Lewis & Short dictionary, they have the word Gallic in brackets...

[LEG X EQ]

YES; BECAUSE THERE WERE SO MANY BARBARIANS WITH GODS NAMED CERES AND OH SO HAPPENED TO BE GODS OF FERTILLITY!!

YEAH RIGHT!

 

Its a long way from Zuthos to cerea, and agian, your source is missing time frames.

 

come on, forget about it. read my last post and let it be.

Edited December 22, 2005 by LEG X EQ

[Pantagathus]

You've got to be kidding me...

[LEG X EQ]

Its a long way from Zuthos to cerea, and agian, your source is missing time frames.

 

 

You've got to be kidding me...

 

thats the whole point i am trying to make, that the romans brewed beer before having contact with the iberians, and called that beverage CERVISIA after their goddess CERES. And that the term Cervisia was romanized in iberia later on. The Egyptians had beer long before the iberians, so did the greeks.

 

I ask you again, what is your point, and what are the facts to back it up! Except for making jokes about my apperent sources you havent stated any facts of your own.

Edited December 22, 2005 by LEG X EQ

[Pantagathus]

Your source is missing time frames.... .....you havent stated any facts of your own.

 

As to part 1 of above, at least I gave sources. As to number 2: Are you sure about that? Seriously

Edited December 22, 2005 by Pantagathus

[LEG X EQ]

What are we debating anyways.

 

Neither the Iberians nor the Romans had this beverage first. They all had it from north africans, and they had it from Messopotamians.

 

Where the names came from is secondary, the romans had the name from their Goddess CERES!

 

whats the problem??

 

I didnt include sources for the several reasons: 1. There are to many 2. I was appealing to your logic, it makes perfect sense, to call a beverage such as beer after a goddess of fertillity. that also sounds very similar to the later named beverage 3.That the greeks had brewed beer in magna grecia and that the Italics also knew how to brew beer, from the greeks. is proven.

Edited December 22, 2005 by LEG X EQ

[Pantagathus]

To be more accurate, it was the Sumarians who first brewed beer. It was very, very important to them & all the brewers were women.

 

Hey I am curious about this, could you please give more details? Why only women?

 

I believe it had to do with women food preparers being the first ones to happen upon beer?

 

In the Sumerian texts it was a Godess who bequethed the gift to mankind and that the knowledge of how to brew was specifically her gift to women. I guess it was a link between the Godess Ninkasi's preistesses and brewing. I really don't know other than that is what the cuniform texts say

 

Its a long way from Zuthos to cerea

 

You are right, because it's a greek word used by Strabo for the Lusitanian version of beer

[P.Clodius]

Wow, I love beer but the passions ignited here are awesome. I'm still waiting for the outcome so I can determine if Arthur Guinness was spanish or roman!

Edited December 22, 2005 by P.Clodius

[Pertinax]

Arthur was from Kildare ,so he could have been Ibero-Celtic!

 

or Celt-Iberian , or Scotti-Viking, or Irish.

Edited December 22, 2005 by Pertinax

[LEG X EQ]

You are right, because it's a greek word used by Strabo for the Lusitanian version of beer

 

Thats all i wanted to read,thanks for making my point.

The word of that beverage is secondary, it depends what sources you relie on. The Lusitanians had a different word for that beverage. So did the carthagians and egyptians. And as you pointed out, so did the greeks. But the romans didnt use that word, so why would they use a barbarian word ? that also matches a word that can be traced from one of their gods?

Edited December 22, 2005 by LEG X EQ

[Ludovicus]

"...other info i couldnt care less about."

 

 

 

That's not a way to discuss a topic. One needs to be more polite in a public forum.

Edited December 22, 2005 by Ludovicus

[Ludovicus]

Now considering all this: Does it make sense that these neighboring people would adopt a Latin word for a beverage that they had been making since the neolithic and that the Romans themselves rarely drank???

 

CONSIDERING THE LINGUISTIC INFLUENCE!!!!!! YES!!

 

In case you havent noticed, spanish is a romance language, meaning it came from LATIN!!

Your source has one problem, and thats, that it doesnt state any dates and time periods!

 

The Romans conquered that terretory and Romanised it, and this beverage was also known in Italica.

 

 

There are a number of high frequency words in Spanish that do not come from Latin. For example the word for dog "perro" is not Latin-derived. There are others, too.

 

"First it should be pointed out that about a fifth of all Spanish words were not derived from Latin. Most of these came from Gothic and Arabic (see the history above), though of course many others are from Basque..."

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/2444/splatin.html

[Andrew Dalby]

I've had to skim this thread very hastily -- forgive me if I've missed something and am repeating it. Here (I hope) is a link to the article on 'Beer' that I included in /Food in the ancient world from A to Z/ (2003) (ideal New Year present for any classicist)

 

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/dalby/texts/BeerAZ.html

 

The article lists the several names for beer found in Latin and anc. Greek. The local origin of these names is clear because they went on being linked with their own regions. Cervisia isn't Latin (if it's connected with Ceres, what does the -visia bit mean?) or Iberian: it's Celtic -- which might theoretically include Celtiberian but I don't think there's positive evidence for that. All the ancient words (except zythos) are borrowed from various languages of what became the Roman Empire.

 

And, certainly, Roman soldiers -- when they were far away from Italy and Greece -- drank the stuff in gallons. Three kinds of beer are priced in Diocletian's Price Edict, which is intended as a fixing of prices for army purchasing. I don't think there's evidence for a single sip of beer being taken in classical Italy or Greece ...

[Pantagathus]

I've had to skim this thread very hastily -- forgive me if I've missed something and am repeating it. Here (I hope) is a link to the article on 'Beer' that I included in /Food in the ancient world from A to Z/ (2003) (ideal New Year present for any classicist)

 

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/dalby/texts/BeerAZ.html

 

The article lists the several names for beer found in Latin and anc. Greek. The local origin of these names is clear because they went on being linked with their own regions. Cervisia isn't Latin (if it's connected with Ceres, what does the -visia bit mean?) or Iberian: it's Celtic -- which might theoretically include Celtiberian but I don't think there's positive evidence for that. All the ancient words (except zythos) are borrowed from various languages of what became the Roman Empire.

 

And, certainly, Roman soldiers -- when they were far away from Italy and Greece -- drank the stuff in gallons. Three kinds of beer are priced in Diocletian's Price Edict, which is intended as a fixing of prices for army purchasing. I don't think there's evidence for a single sip of beer being taken in classical Italy or Greece ...

 

Thank You Andrew,

 

That is exactly what I was trying to get accross to Leg X. My first post I was speaking from memory and it was from a paper I had read a while ago that linked Cervisia with the ancient Iberian word, that is where the Basque comment came from.

 

After I was challanged by Leg X I went back to refine my argument which was still that whatever the word and whatever the region, it was already in place before the Romans and whatever curious similarity to Ceres was either coincidence, or connected by an even more ancient linguistic connection that is lost to us.

[Andrew Dalby]

... I went back to refine my argument which was still that whatever the word and whatever the region, it was already in place before the Romans and whatever curious similarity to Ceres was either coincidence, or connected by an even more ancient linguistic connection that is lost to us.

 

Incidentally 'cervoise' as a French word is still well known though it is no longer the current word for beer. If you read Asterix in French you'll find that cervoise is what they drink when they can't get magic potion. The word survives in Gaul and Spain (cerveza), an indication that it was current in the local Latin of those provinces of the Empire.

 

Besides cerevisia, Latin braces 'malted barley' is known to be a Celtic borrowing: the word is found also in modern Celtic languages, I think.