Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/354

 336 LATIN LANGUAGE poetry by the fashionable circles in the later years of Augustus. The style of Ovid bears many traces of the imitation of Virgil, but it is not less deeply affected by the rhetoric of the schools. His never-failing fertility cf fancy and command of diction often lead him into a diffuseuess which mars the effect of his best works ; according to Quintilian it was only in his (lost) tragedy of Medea that he showed what real excellence he might have reached if he had chosen to control his natural powers rather than to give them full rein. His influence on later poets was largely for evil : if he taught them smoothness of versifica tion and polish of language, he also co-operated powerfully with the practice of recitation to lead them to aim at rhetorical point and striking turns of expression, instead of a firm grasp of a subject as a whole, and due subordination of the several parts to the general impression. Ovid s own influence on language was not great : he took the diction of poetry as he found it, formed by the labours of his predecessors ; the conflict between the archaistic and the Grcecizing schools was already settled in favour of the latter ; and all that he did was to accept the generally accepted models as supplying the material in moulding which his luxuriant fancy could have free play. He is the pattern of the poet of society, never rising above that which was readily intelligible to the circle in which he moved, but achieving what all were attempting with consummate ease and grace. He has no deviations from classical syntax but those which were coming into fashion in his time (e.g., forsitan and quamvis with the indie., the dative of the agent with passive verbs, the ablative for the accusative of time, the infinitive after adjectives like certus, aptus, &c.), and but few peculiarities in his vocabulary. It is only in the letters from the Pontus that laxities of con struction are detected, which show that the purity of his Latin was impaired by his residence away from Home, and perhaps by increasing carelessness of composition. The While the leading writers of the Ciceronian and Augustan Latin of eras enable us to trace the gradual development of the J.J 1 J Latin language to its utmost finish as an instrument of literary expression, there are some less important authors who supply valuable evidence of the character of the sermo plebeius. Among them may be placed the authors of the Bellum Africaiium and the Bellum Hispaniense appended to Caesar s commentaries. These are not only far inferior to the exquisite urbanitas of Csesar s own writings ; they are much rougher in style even than the less polished Bellum Alexandrinum and De Bella Galileo Liber VIII. , which are now with justice ascribed to Hirtius. There is sufficient difference between the two to justify us in assuming two different authors ; but both freely employ words and constructions which are at once antiquated and vulgar. The writer of the Bellum Alexandrinum uses a larger number of diminutives within his short treatise than Csesar in nearly ten times the space : postquam and uli are used with the pluperfect subjunctive ; there are numerous forms unknown to the best Latin, Yikctristimo)iia,exporri(/ere, cruciabiliter, and convulnero ; pctior is followed by the accusative, a simple relative by the subjunctive. There is also a very common use of the pluperfect for the imperfect, which seems a mark of this pleltdus sermo (Nipperdey, Quaest. Caes., pp. 13-30). Another example of what we may call the Latin of business life is supplied by Vitruvius. Besides the obscurity of many of his technical expressions, there is a roughness and looseness in his language, far removed from a literary style ; he shares the incorrect use of the pluper fect, and uses plebeian forms like calefaciuntur, faciliter, expertiones, and such careless phrases as &quot;rogavit Archi- meclem uti in se sumeret sibi de eo cogitationem.&quot; At a somewhat later stage we have, not merely plebeian, but also provincial Latin represented in the Satyricon of Petronius. The narrative and the poems which are introduced into it are written in a style distinguished only by the ordinary peculiarities of silver Latinity ; but in the numerous conversations the distinctions of language appropriate to the various speakers are accurately preserved ; and we have in the talk of the slaves and provincials a perfect storehouse of words and constructions of the greatest linguistic value. Among the unclassical forms and constructions may be noticed masculines like fatus, viuus, balneus, fericulm, and lactem (for lac], striga for strix, gaiidimonium and tristimonium, sanguen, manducare, nutricare, molestare, nesapius (sapius = Fr. sage), rostrum ( = os), ipsimns ( = master), scordalias, baro, and numerous diminutives like camella, audacidus, potiuncula, savuncnlu?n, qffla, pedudus, corcillum, with constructions such as maledicere and persuadere with the accusative, and adiutare with the dative, and the deponent forms pudeatur and ridetur. Of especial interest for the Eomance languages are aslrum (desastre), berbex (brebis), botellus (boyau), improperare, muttus, naufragare. Suetonius (Aug., c. 87) gives an interesting selection of plebeian words employed in conversation by Augustus, who for the rest was something of a purist in his written utterances: &quot;ponit assidue et pro stulto baceolum, et pro pullo pulleiaceum, et pro cerrito vacerrosurn, et vapide se habere pro male, et betizare pro languere, quod vulgo lachanizare dicitur.&quot; The inscriptions, especially those of Pompeii, supply abundant evidence of the corruptions both of forms and of pronunciation common among the vulgar. It is not easy always to determine whether a mutilated form is evidence of a letter omitted in pronunciation, or only in writing ; but it is clear that there must have been a great tendency to drop final m, ?, and /, to omit n before s, and to dull the vowel sounds, e and i being especially frequently interchanged, and u taking the place of i even in inflexions. There are already signs of the confusion of ae and e, which later on became almost universal. The additions to our vocabulary are slight and unimportant (rf. Corpus I?iscr. Lat., vol. iv., with Zangemeisters Indices). To return to the language of literature. In the dark days of Tiberius and the two succeeding emperors a paralysis seemed to have come upon prose and poetry alike. With the one exception of oratory, literature had long been the utterance of a narrow circle, not the expression of the energies of national life ; and now, while all free speech in the popular assemblies was silenced, the nobles were living under a suspicious despotism, which, whatever the advan tage which it brought to the poorer classes and to the provincials, was to them a reign of terror. It is no wonder that the fifty years after the accession of Tiberius are a blank as regards all higher literature. Velleius Paterculus, Valerius Maximus, Celsus, and Phredrus give specimens of the Latin of the time, but the style of no one of these, classical for the most part in vocabulary, but occasionally approaching the later usages in syntax, calls for special analysis. The elder Seneca, in his collection of suasoriae and controversiae supplies examples of the barren quibblings by which the young Romans were trained in the rhetorical schools. A course of instruction, which may have been of service when its end was efficiency in active public life, though even then not without its serious drawbacks, as is shown by Cicero in his treatise De Oratore, became seriously injurious when its object was merely idle display. Prose came to be overloaded with ornament, and borrowed too often the language, though not the genius, of poetry ; while poetry in its turn, partly owing to the fashion of recitation, became a string of rhetorical points. In the writers of Nero s age there are already plain