Latin Language

From the Sabines were taken a number of forms showing f medially, as rufus, "red haired" (contrast ruber, "red," with pure Latin b) ; or f initially, e.g., fordicidia, "sacrifice of unborn calves" (pure Latin /z, as in hordicalia), filum, "thread," beside Latin ni-hil, "nothing"—literally "not a thread"; and 1 for pure Latin d, as in lacrima, "tear." It has also been plausibly held that the peculiar hodgepodge of six or eight different means of forming non-present or non-continuous tenses which in Latin were fused together into a single "perfect" tense, and also the shaping of forms in -r in the passive voice, were the work of a large Sabine element in the population of Rome which some have identified with the Patrician class. Finally, if not from Sabine itself, from some one of the Italic dialects outside the Latinian group, were imported words with p or b for pure Latin qu (c) or u (g), as Pompilius, lupus, "wolf," popina, "cook-shop"; bos, "ox." Thus does the evidence of language confirm the his torical tradition of Sabine and Etruscan kings in Rome.

Latin in the Historical Period.

Certain differences too in sounds (e.g., losna, Lat. luna, "moon"; nefrones, Lat. nebrun dines, "testes"), in usage (e.g., tammodo, properly "just as," in the sense of "on the spot, straightway"), in word forms (e.g., magistreis for the n. pl. magistri; or the dual form Cestio, "the two Cestiuses"), and in vocabulary (e.g., tongitio, "idea," Lat. "notio") are clearly marked in early rustic Latin as spoken at Praeneste, some 20 miles from Rome ; but besides such local pe culiarities of dialectic Latin, account must be taken of distinc tions of date, and further, subsequent to the development, for the most part after Greek models, of an elaborate literature, also of (I) differences which may be called social, though they are not merely as between educated and uneducated usage, but also be tween the "stylized" language of literary forms and the popular spoken language of everyday life; and (2) differences, at least in expression and style, between prose and poetry, or between the language of oratory and that of philosophy, science, law or of correspondence. Slangy Latin, for example, is occasionally to be recognized in the letters of some of Cicero's friends. Naturally the popular language ("vulgar Latin") appears, not only in the artless inscriptions of plain folk, but from time to time in the literature too, as in the plays of Plautus, and later in the Satiricon of Petronius, and, at the end of the story, it is spoken Latin which wins the day and which is the true basis of the Romance languages. And again in Romance, it is important to discriminate with regard to date and locality. The language of Spain, for example, was superimposed upon a different linguistic substratum from, say that of Rumania ; it was planted there by speakers of quite different stock, and that 30o years earlier. Such consider ations help to explain the divergent development of the Romance languages from a common spoken Latin. The oldest documents of

what can no longer be called Latin do not, it is true, go back be yond the 9th century A.D. ; but it is certain that, as regularly happens, the development of the written had lagged far behind that of the spoken tongue. The artificiality of the Latin of writers later than the 4th or 5th century is self-evident. Indeed the very conditions—central government, stability and security of life, ease of intercommunication and the rest—which had ensured the spread and maintenance of a common language, were already seriously impaired and destined soon to fail. As an official lan guage for correspondence and ritual Latin has been retained by the Roman Church ; and it remained the language of instruction throughout western Europe for many centuries. But in both cases it was divorced from the living tongues developing around it. Re cent serious suggestions (as made by a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science) to revive Latin as an international auxiliary language for learned use, are hardly likely to result in actual practice. Amongst classical scholars it has always been so used.

The sources of our knowledge of the history of Latin are main ly the language itself as recorded in inscriptions and in the literature ; the testimony of ancient grammarians and glosso graphers; and the light shed by comparison with related lan guages and dialects, and by the history of the Romance languages themselves. Chronologically we may distinguish six periods, be ginning with (I) pre-literary Latin (to c. 250 B.C.). The oldest document is a presentation inscription on a brooch found, not at Rome itself, but at Praeneste, so that perhaps it would be better counted dialectic. It runs Manios med fhefhaked Numasioi, "Manius made me for Numerius," and is not later than c. 600 B.C. The differences between this and the classical Latin (Manius me fecit Numerio) are striking. Next in date we have two 5th century inscriptions, from the Roman Forum and Tivoli (Tibur) respectively, the latter discovered in 1926, neither perfectly understood, the former indeed being so much mutilated as to defy all attempt at restoration and interpretation. But it shows among others the following interesting forms which are certain: recei "for the king, regi," sakros, "holy, sacer"; iouxmenta, "beasts of burden, iumenta"; diouestod, "lawfully, iusto"; and the Tibur inscription contains mitat 3rd sg. pres. subj. (mittat), a spelling which had long been known from the Quirinal vase inscription (4th century), a curse beginning with the words iouesat deiuos qoi med mitat, "whoso sends me adjures the gods. . . ." The epitaphs of the Scipios, the laws of the Twelve Tables, the Saliar and Arval hymns, and the commemorative inscription of Gaius Duilius—these were nearly all more or less "restored" in a later age—are the more important surviving documents of this period.