The stories of early interpreters
Themistocles and his historians reflect a range of attitudes to language, identity and loyalty, thus giving us a sense of attitudes towards interpreters far back in time and memory. Themistocles was a rare example of a Greek who could speak a foreign language … This sense of a common tongue was the decisive criterion for determining who were Greeks. Herodotus …
It is part of the working life of interpreters today that they are behind the scenes, most successful when unnoticed. That invisibility can characterise the historical record too: the interpreters who are known to us are the exceptions; the others are an assumed presence. That is certainly true of Ancient Rome. Interpreters are rarely mentioned in documentary or epigraphic sources for …