Re: Deadwood - Is the dialogue anachronistic?

On Mon, 20 Feb 2006 13:00:06 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:43F9BD55.36D3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:

Paul J Kriha wrote:

Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:43F88926.6AC4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Paul J Kriha wrote:

Recently, I watched one of the installments of "Empire".
It's based in Rome of Julius Caesar, Octavius, Cicero, etc.
The names are familiar, the rest is total crap.
However, there was one particular scene that caught
me by surprise and left me ROTFL.

A line of Roman legioner archers are getting ready to
welcome advancing line of Gaul fighters.
The general shouts: "Ready....ready....FIRE!" :-)))

P.S. The archers must have been clairvoyant, they knew
what he meant, instead of starting a row of camp fires
they let loose the arrows :-)

Are you suggesting that the officer in charge of the archers didn't have
some command to them telling them to release their arrows, and that
"Fire!" isn't a suitable translation of it?

No and yes.

Of course the Roman officer had a command for the archers
to release their arrows and it is known what it was. We also
know what the traditional English command was/is.

The command "Fire!" used around 40 BC in Europe is about
1,400 years too early.
The usual English military command for the archers to shoot
was "Loose!". Even just ordinary "Shoot!" wouldn't be as
jarring as the futuristic "Fire!".

The audience wouldn't understand "Loose!"

Even I'm not that disparaging of the intelligence of movie
audiences. In context it should be pretty obvious.

(which, moreover, Andrew has
pointed out was also not used until quite recently),

No, *I* said that the first OED citation for this sense is
from ca.1400. It seems likely that it was *used*
considerably earlier.

In any case, 'Fire!' is very disconcerting in this context,
and 'Loose!' would not be.

[...]

Brian
.

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