Polyglot classical rulers could bypass interpreters and speak directly to subject peoples

Evidence

Another classical author, Plutarch, tells us that among the many qualities of Cleopatra, she was an accomplished linguist: ‘And her tongue, like an instrument of many strings, she could readily turn to whatever language she pleased, so that in her interviews with barbarians she very seldom had need of an interpreter [e\rmhney¬ ß], but made her replies to most of them herself and unassisted, whether they were Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes or Parthians.’ — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 145

Categorization

• XREF: Plutarch’s catalogue of peoples Cleopatra addressed maps onto the earliest Western catalogue of ‘Eastern’ peoples, bearing on how imperial audiences were taxonomized centuries before Said’s Orientalism — connects to: The scale of an empire determined whether a single administrative language was feasible — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 528; A language stays rich only through risking contact with other cultures — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 578
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The scale of an empire determined whether a single administrative language was feasible — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on…, 528; A language stays rich only through risking contact with other cultures — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 578

Broader Connections

• The scale of an empire determined whether a single administrative language was feasible #complicates (0.76) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 528