mountainman

"tu filio meo babtismum da, quia tener est.
ego autem et fratres mei non possimus tibi
credere usque dum ad nostram plebem
pervenerimus, ne inrideant nobis".

Tirachan, Brev. xiv = p.309

gstafleu

Since nobody who really knows Latin has so far responded I'll give it a shot, accompanied by my Latin dictionary from 1900. So you realise this may be dangerous .

tu filio meo babtismum da, quia tener est.
You give (gave?) my son the baptism, because he is young.

ego autem et fratres mei non possimus tibi
I however and my broters cannot believe/trust you

credere usque dum ad nostram plebem
until we have gone to our people

pervenerimus, ne inrideant nobis.
so that they do not ridicule us.

Gerard Stafleu

Roger Pearse

Pretty good. Only one change:

Da is imperative: "Give (da) the baptism to my son (dative)..."

All the best,

Roger Pearse

gstafleu

Ah, imperative, of course. This is a bit weird Latin, isn't it (at least from a high-school Cicero & Ovid point of view)? I get the impression that this imperative is more a consent than a command: Well, ok, you can baptize my son because he is young anyway. But when it comes to us adults, we need to get some social consent first." Chicken, if you ask me .

Gerard Stafleu

mountainman

Thank you very much Gerard and Roger.

Roger Pearse

In a tribal society like this, do people really have individual rights? This comes out of Bede where the English tribes are evangelised by converting the chieftains, and the rest just conform. It's a very different type of society to our own. This is where the concept of the outlaw comes from -- that someone is nithing in law, has no rights and is the prey of any or all. It's a serious matter to differ from the rest of the tribe.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman

Here is a quote from p.30 Barbarians:
The authors go on to claim that all we know of the original pre-Byzantine law code comes from Gaius (2nd century) textbook.

However the point here is that the did exist Celtic law, and the ancient Roman and Celtic laws were different, because the societies were different. Here is a further quote, p.30:
Elsewhere (p.45) in reference to Boudica and other warrior queens of western europe, the authors mention that under Celtic Law (ie: Irish) the women had equal rights in the ownership of property and land, and the right to divorce. This is an important difference --- indeed an important distinction ---between the male dominated Roman law.