From: mbottorff@lshelby.com   
      
   John W Kennedy  wrote:   
      
   > > Unless, as a scholar, her own personal specialty was something   
   > > pre-roman, maybe?   
   >   
   > Well, it's your world, and the mere existence of a female scholar   
   > raises questions about how far parallels can be drawn.   
      
   I haven't done any social re-engineering.   
   She was taught privately.  Very unusual circumstances.   
      
   > But in the real   
   > early-modern world, scholars started on Greek only after several years   
   > of Latin, and continued to use Latin, even to speak Latin, for their   
   > entire professional lives, no matter what their subject,   
      
   So in other words, my "Spy Guy" is very likely to do Latin, and very   
   unlikely to be very good at Greek.  So if she is doing a "gotcha!"  she   
   would probably use a Greek reference, to make sure she does actually   
   catch him out.   
      
   Looks like I'm good to go.  :)   
      
      
   > whereas Greek was used merely for Classics and Religion. And the only   
   > "pre-Roman" other than Greek was Hebrew (with a little Aramaic).   
      
   Ahem.  Here's where the our world parallels start going out the window.   
      
   My heroine reads Old Persian cuniform.   
      
   Her mother had an ability with languages that was literally magical, and   
   she inherited some of the learning, if not the magic.   
      
   My theory was that she has a correspondence with someone in Persia, who   
   collects copies of Achaemenid inscriptions for her, and she then uses   
   what she learns from them as a sort of behind-the-scenes insider   
   knowlege to create and carry on scholarly debates over the accuracy and   
   meaning of various passages about Persia written by Greek historians.   
      
   She works with another historian/scholar who is aware of her unusual   
   background and only his name is used.   
      
   None of that is important to the plot, though.  It's the *other*   
   entirely impossible language her mother taught her to read that is plot   
   important.  >:)   
      
      
   > (This continued, by the way, into quite recent times. I, myself,   
   > attended a prep school that had been founded in 1820 for the sole   
   > purpose of ensuring that there would be a steady stream of   
   > Latin-speaking boys for the new local college -- a Baptist college,   
   > incidentally.)   
      
   My mother studied Latin too.   My school didn't offer it -- I learned   
   French.  (At least, I was supposed to be learning it.  It was my worst   
   subject.)   
      
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   Michelle Bottorff -> Chelle B. -> Shelby   
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