The cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, throughout American history, have been used to support the ideologies that have underpinned slavery, discrimination, and social and political exclusion. As a black woman in twentieth-century America, Holiday had to endure racism throughout her life and career, and would have had little hope or right of access to the formal educational environments in which Greek and Latin were taught. The song is called These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You), and there is a famous version by the American jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915–1959). In the 1930s Caesar’s phrase found its way into a pop song written by two Englishmen, Eric Maschwitz (lyrics) and Jack Strachey (music). What’s more, when a phrase like this one enters the language as an independent phrase, there’s no end to the ways in which is can be re-appropriated. Rome (whatever that means) is there to be re-imagined, from as many perspectives as there are readers, or watchers, or listeners. For all that Latin is a language of the powerful and the elite, most people can walk in a bookshop and pick up a paperback translation, or go online, or listen to a podcast, or go to the cinema and see a film. Anyone can use the stuff of ancient Roman culture however they like. There was a lot of misery behind those Roman triumphs.īut here’s the thing about phrases like this: they are the property of no one. Patrick’s Day parade with chained prisoners amongst the floats. Think of George Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner from 2003, or imagine a St. Roman triumphs were crass and brutal displays of imperial power, at which captured prisoners were sometimes led through the streets in chains. After so many years, it’s easy to forget that the original context for the phrase is pretty objectionable. Recently I saw it on the front page of a local newspaper, slightly edited, and used to advertise an accountancy firm. The phrase is so old that is has taken on many meanings in many different contexts. ‘At his triumph over Pontus, amidst the floats in the parade he displayed a sign bearing three words ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’, referring not, like the other signs, to the war’s events, but to its speedy execution.’ Suetonius, The Life of Julius Caesar. A short, snappy phrase to signify the speed of Caesar’s victory.
In its original context, then, the words are a boast. The story is that this slogan was written on a sign carried in one of Caesar’s triumphs, the ceremonial parades of victorious generals which passed through the centre of Rome. One of the most well-known Latin phrases is attributed to Julius Caesar: veni, vidi, vici, or, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’
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