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The Common People of Ancient Rome

Studies of Roman Life and Literature

By

Frank Frost Abbott

Kennedy Professor of the Latin Language and Literature in Princeton University

New York Charles Scribner's Sons



Copyright, 1911, by Charles Scribner's Sons

Printed in the United States of America



Dedicated to J. H. A.



Prefatory Note



This book, like the volume on "Society and Politics in Ancient Rome," deals with the life of the common people, with their language and literature, their occupations and amusements, and with their social, political, and economic conditions. We are interested in the common people of Rome because they made the Roman Empire what it was. They carried the Roman standards to the Euphrates and the Atlantic; they lived abroad as traders, farmers, and soldiers to hold and Romanize the provinces, or they stayed at home, working as carpenters, masons, or bakers, to supply the daily needs of the capital.

The other side of the subject which has engaged the attention of the author in studying these topics has been the many points of similarity which arise between ancient and modern conditions, and between the problems which the Roman faced and those which confront us. What policy shall the government adopt toward corporations? How can the cost of living be kept down? What effect have private benefactions on the character of a people? Shall a nation try to introduce its own language into the territory of a subject people, or shall it allow the native language to be used, and, if it seeks to introduce its own tongue, how can it best accomplish its object? The Roman attacked all these questions, solved some of them admirably, and failed with others egregiously. His successes and his failures are perhaps equally illuminating, and the fact that his attempts to improve social and economic conditions run through a period of a thousand years should make the study of them of the greater interest and value to us.

Of the chapters which this book contains, the article on "The Origin of the Realistic Romance among the Romans" appeared originally in Classical Philology, and the author is indebted to the editors of that periodical for permission to reprint it here. The other papers are now published for the first time.

It has not seemed advisable to refer to the sources to substantiate every opinion which has been expressed, but a few references have been given in the foot-notes mainly for the sake of the reader who may wish to follow some subject farther than has been possible in these brief chapters. The proofs had to be corrected while the author was away from his own books, so that he was unable to make a final verification of two or three of the citations, but he trusts that they, as well as the others, are accurate. He takes this opportunity to acknowledge his indebtedness to Dr. Donald Blythe Durham, of Princeton University, for the preparation of the index.

Frank Frost Abbott. Einsiedeln, Switzerland September 2, 1911



Contents



How Latin Became the Language of the World The Latin of the Common People The Poetry of the Common People of Rome: I. Their Metrical Epitaphs II. Their Dedicatory and Ephemeral Verses The Origin of the Realistic Romance Among the Romans Diocletian's Edict and the High Cost of Living Private Benefactions and Their Effect on the Municipal Life of the Romans Some Reflections on Corporations and Trade-Guilds A Roman Politician, Gaius Scribonius Curio Gaius Matius, a Friend of Caesar

Index



The Common People of Ancient Rome



How Latin Became the Language of the World



How the armies of Rome mastered the nations of the world is known to every reader of history, but the story of the conquest by Latin of the languages of the world is vague in the minds of most of us. If we should ask ourselves how it came about, we should probably think of the world-wide supremacy of Latin as a natural result of the world-wide supremacy of the Roman legions or of Roman law. But in making this assumption we should be shutting our eyes to the history of our own times. A conquered people does not necessarily accept, perhaps it has not commonly accepted, the tongue of its master. In his "Ancient and Modern Imperialism" Lord Cromer states that in India only one hundred people in every ten thousand can read and write English, and this condition exists after an occupation of one hundred and fifty years or more. He adds: "There does not appear the least prospect of French supplanting Arabic in Algeria." In comparing the results of ancient and modern methods perhaps he should have taken into account the fact that India and Algeria have literatures of their own, which most of the outlying peoples subdued by Rome did not have, and these literatures may have strengthened the resistance which the tongue of the conquered people has offered to that of the conqueror, but, even when allowance is made for this fact, the difference in resultant conditions is surprising. From its narrow confines, within a little district on the banks of the Tiber, covering, at the close of the fifth century B.C., less than a hundred square miles, Latin spread through Italy and the islands of the Mediterranean, through France, Spain, England, northern Africa, and the Danubian provinces, triumphing over all the other tongues of those regions more completely than Roman arms triumphed over the peoples using them.

In tracing the story we must keep in our mind's eye the linguistic geography of Italy, just as we must remember the political geography of the peninsula in following Rome's territorial expansion. Let us think at the outset, then, of a little strip of flat country on the Tiber, dotted here and there with hills crowned with villages. Such hill towns were Rome, Tusculum, and Praeneste, for instance. Each of them was the stronghold and market-place of the country immediately about it, and therefore had a life of its own, so that although Latin was spoken in all of them it varied from one to the other. This is shown clearly enough by the inscriptions which have been found on the sites of these ancient towns,[1] and as late as the close of the third century before our era, Plautus pokes fun in his comedies at the provincialism of Praeneste.

The towns which we have mentioned were only a few miles from Rome. Beyond them, and occupying central Italy and a large part of southern Italy, were people who spoke Oscan and the other Italic dialects, which were related to Latin, and yet quite distinct from it. In the seaports of the south Greek was spoken, while the Messapians and Iapygians occupied Calabria. To the north of Rome were the mysterious Etruscans and the almost equally puzzling Venetians and Ligurians. When we follow the Roman legions across the Alps into Switzerland, France, England, Spain, and Africa, we enter a jungle, as it were, of languages and dialects. A mere reading of the list of tongues with which Latin was brought into contact, if such a list could be drawn up, would bring weariness to the flesh. In the part of Gaul conquered by Caesar, for instance, he tells us that there were three independent languages, and sixty distinct states, whose peoples doubtless differed from one another in their speech. If we look at a map of the Roman world under Augustus, with the Atlantic to bound it on the west, the Euphrates on the east, the desert of Sahara on the south, and the Rhine and Danube on the north, and recall the fact that the linguistic conditions which Caesar found in Gaul in 58 B.C. were typical of what confronted Latin in a great many of the western, southern, and northern provinces, the fact that Latin subdued all these different tongues, and became the every-day speech of these different peoples, will be recognized as one of the marvels of history. In fact, so firmly did it establish itself, that it withstood the assaults of the invading Gothic, Lombardic, Frankish, and Burgundian, and has continued to hold to our own day a very large part of the territory which it acquired some two thousand years ago.

That Latin was the common speech of the western world is attested not only by the fact that the languages of France, Spain, Roumania, and the other Romance countries descend from it, but it is also clearly shown by the thousands of Latin inscriptions composed by freeman and freedman, by carpenter, baker, and soldier, which we find all over the Roman world.

How did this extraordinary result come about? It was not the conquest of the world by the common language of Italy, because in Italy in early days at least nine different languages were spoken, but its subjugation by the tongue spoken in the city of Rome. The traditional narrative of Rome, as Livy and others relate it, tells us of a struggle with the neighboring Latin hill towns in the early days of the Republic, and the ultimate formation of an alliance between them and Rome. The favorable position of the city on the Tiber for trade and defence gave it a great advantage over its rivals, and it soon became the commercial and political centre of the neighboring territory. The most important of these villages, Tusculum, Praeneste, and Lanuvium, were not more than twenty miles distant, and the people in them must have come constantly to Rome to attend the markets, and in later days to vote, to hear political speeches, and to listen to plays in the theatre. Some of them probably heard the jests at the expense of their dialectal peculiarities which Plautus introduced into his comedies. The younger generations became ashamed of their provincialisms; they imitated the Latin spoken in the metropolis, and by the second century of our era, when the Latin grammarians have occasion to cite dialectal peculiarities from Latium outside Rome, they quote at second-hand from Varro of the first century B.C., either because they will not take the trouble to use their own ears or because the differences which were noted in earlier days had ceased to exist. The first stage in the conquest of the world by the Latin of Rome comes to an end, then, with the extension of that form of speech throughout Latium.

Beyond the limits of Latium it came into contact with Oscan and the other Italic dialects, which were related to Latin, but of course were much farther removed from it than the Latin of Tusculum or Lanuvium had been,[2] so that the adoption of Latin was not so simple a matter as the acceptance of Roman Latin by the villages of Latium near Rome had been.

The conflict which went on between Latin and its Italic kinsmen is revealed to us now and then by a Latin inscription, into which Oscan or Umbrian forms have crept.[3] The struggle had come to an end by the beginning of our era. A few Oscan inscriptions are found scratched on the walls of Pompeii after the first earthquake, in 63 A.D., but they are late survivals, and no Umbrian inscriptions are known of a date subsequent to the first century B.C.

The Social War of 90-88 B.C., between Rome and the Italians, was a turning-point in the struggle between Latin and the Italic dialects, because it marks a change in the political treatment of Rome's dependencies in Italy. Up to this time she had followed the policy of isolating all her Italian conquered communities from one another. She was anxious to prevent them from conspiring against her. Thus, with this object in view, she made differences in the rights and privileges granted to neighboring communities, in order that, not being subject to the same limitations, and therefore not having the same grievances, they might not have a common basis for joint action against her. It would naturally be a part of that policy to allow or to encourage the retention by the several communities of their own dialects. The common use of Latin would have enabled them to combine against her with greater ease. With the conclusion of the Social War this policy gave way before the new conception of political unity for the people of Italian stock, and with political unity came the introduction of Latin as the common tongue in all official transactions of a local as well as of a federal character. The immediate results of the war, and the policy which Rome carried out at its close of sending out colonies and building roads in Italy, contributed still more to the larger use of Latin throughout the central and southern parts of the peninsula. Samnium, Lucania, and the territory of the Bruttii suffered severely from depopulation; many colonies were sent into all these districts, so that, although the old dialects must have persisted for a time in some of the mountain towns to the north of Rome, the years following the conclusion of the Social War mark the rapid disappearance of them and the substitution of Latin in their place. Campania took little part in the war, and was therefore left untouched. This fact accounts probably for the occurrence of a few Oscan inscriptions on the walls of Pompeii as late as 63 A.D.

We need not follow here the story of the subjugation of the Greek seaports in southern Italy and of the peoples to the north who spoke non-Italic languages. In all these cases Latin was brought into conflict with languages not related to itself, and the situation contains slightly different elements from those which present themselves in the struggle between Latin and the Italic dialects. The latter were nearly enough related to Latin to furnish some support for the theory that Latin was modified by contact with them, and this theory has found advocates,[4] but there is no sufficient reason for believing that it was materially influenced. An interesting illustration of the influence of Greek on the Latin of every-day life is furnished by the realistic novel which Petronius wrote in the middle of the first century of our era. The characters in his story are Greeks, and the language which they speak is Latin, but they introduce into it a great many Greek words, and now and then a Greek idiom or construction.

The Romans, as is well known, used two agencies with great effect in Romanizing their newly acquired territory, viz., colonies and roads. The policy of sending out colonists to hold the new districts was definitely entered upon in the early part of the fourth century, when citizens were sent to Antium, Tarracina, and other points in Latium. Within this century fifteen or twenty colonies were established at various points in central Italy. Strategic considerations determined their location, and the choice was made with great wisdom. Sutrium and Nepete, on the borders of the Ciminian forest, were "the gates of Etruria"; Fregellae and Interamna commanded the passage of the river Liris; Tarentum and Rhegium were important ports of entry, while Alba Fucens and Carsioli guarded the line of the Valerian road.

This road and the other great highways which were constructed in Italy brought not only all the colonies, but all parts of the peninsula, into easy communication with the capital. The earliest of them was built to Capua, as we know, by the great censor Appius Claudius, in 312 B.C., and when one looks at a map of Italy at the close of the third century before our era, and sees the central and southern parts of the peninsula dotted with colonies, the Appian Way running from Rome south-east to Brundisium, the Popillian Way to Rhegium, the Flaminian Way north-east to Ariminum, with an extension to Cremona, with the Cassian and Aurelian ways along the western coast, the rapidity and the completeness with which the Latin language overspread Italy ceases to be a mystery. A map of Spain or of France under the Empire, with its network of roads, is equally illuminating.

The missionaries who carried Roman law, Roman dress, Roman ideas, and the Latin language first through central, southern, and northern Italy, and then to the East and the West, were the colonist, the merchant, the soldier, and the federal official. The central government exempted the Roman citizen who settled in a provincial town from the local taxes. As these were very heavy, his advantage over the native was correspondingly great, and in almost all the large towns in the Empire we find evidence of the existence of large guilds of Roman traders, tax-collectors, bankers, and land-owners.[5] When Trajan in his romantic eastern campaign had penetrated to Ctesiphon, the capital of Parthia, he found Roman merchants already settled there. Besides the merchants and capitalists who were engaged in business on their own account in the provinces, there were thousands of agents for the great Roman corporations scattered through the Empire. Rome was the money centre of the world, and the great stock companies organized to lend money, construct public works, collect taxes, and engage in the shipping trade had their central offices in the capital whence they sent out their representatives to all parts of the world.

The soldier played as important a part as the merchant in extending the use of Latin. Tacitus tells us that in the reign of Augustus there were twenty-five legions stationed in the provinces. If we allow 6,000 men to a legion, we should have a total of 150,000 Roman soldiers scattered through the provinces. To these must be added the auxiliary troops which were made up of natives who, at the close of their term of service, were probably able to speak Latin, and when they settled among their own people again, would carry a knowledge of it into ever-widening circles. We have no exact knowledge of the number of the auxiliary troops, but they probably came to be as numerous as the legionaries.[6] Soldiers stationed on the frontiers frequently married native women at the end of their term of service, passed the rest of their lives in the provinces, and their children learned Latin.

The direct influence of the government was no small factor in developing the use of Latin, which was of course the official language of the Empire. All court proceedings were carried on in Latin. It was the language of the governor, the petty official, and the tax-gatherer. It was used in laws and proclamations, and no native could aspire to a post in the civil service unless he had mastered it. It was regarded sometimes at least as a sine qua non of the much-coveted Roman citizenship. The Emperor Claudius, for instance, cancelled the Roman citizenship of a Greek, because he had addressed a letter to him in Latin which he could not understand. The tradition that Latin was the official language of the world was taken up by the Christian church. Even when Constantine presided over the Council at Nicaea in the East, he addressed the assembly in Latin.

The two last-mentioned agencies, the Latin of the Roman official and the Latin of the church, were the influences which made the language spoken throughout the Empire essentially uniform in its character. Had the Latin which the colonist, the merchant, and the soldier carried through Italy and into the provinces been allowed to develop in different localities without any external unifying influence, probably new dialects would have grown up all over the world, or, to put it in another way, probably the Romance languages would have come into existence several centuries before they actually appeared. That unifying influence was the Latin used by the officials sent out from Rome, which all classes eagerly strove to imitate. Naturally the language of the provinces did not conform in all respects to the Roman standard. Apuleius, for instance, is aware of the fact that his African style and diction are likely to offend his Roman readers, and in the introduction to his Metamorphoses he begs for their indulgence. The elder Seneca in his Controversiae remarks of a Spanish fellow-countryman "that he could never unlearn that well-known style which is brusque and rustic and characteristic of Spain," and Spartianus in his Life of Hadrian tells us that when Hadrian addressed the senate on a certain occasion, his rustic pronunciation excited the laughter of the senators. But the peculiarities in the diction of Apuleius and Hadrian seem to have been those which only a cultivated man of the world would notice. They do not appear to have been fundamental. In a similar way the careful studies which have been made of the thousands of inscriptions found in the West[7], dedicatory inscriptions, guild records, and epitaphs show us that the language of the common people in the provinces did not differ materially from that spoken in Italy. It was the language of the Roman soldier, colonist, and trader, with common characteristics in the way of diction, form, phraseology, and syntax, dropping into some slight local peculiarities, but kept essentially a unit by the desire which each community felt to imitate its officials and its upper classes.

The one part of the Roman world in which Latin did not gain an undisputed pre-eminence was the Greek East. The Romans freely recognized the peculiar position which Greek was destined to hold in that part of the Empire, and styled it the altera lingua. Even in Greek lands, however, Latin gained a strong hold, and exerted considerable influence on Greek[8].

In a very thoughtful paper on "Language-Rivalry and Speech-Differentiation in the Case of Race-Mixture,"[9] Professor Hempl has discussed the conditions under which language-rivalry takes place, and states the results that follow. His conclusions have an interesting bearing on the question which we are discussing here, how and why it was that Latin supplanted the other languages with which it was brought into contact.

He observes that when two languages are brought into conflict, there is rarely a compromise or fusion, but one of the two is driven out of the field altogether by the other. On analyzing the circumstances in which such a struggle for supremacy between languages springs up, he finds four characteristic cases. Sometimes the armies of one nation, though comparatively small in numbers, conquer another country. They seize the government of the conquered land; their ruler becomes its king, and they become the aristocracy. They constitute a minority, however; they identify their interests with those of the conquered people, and the language of the subject people becomes the language of all classes. The second case arises when a country is conquered by a foreign people who pour into it with their wives and children through a long period and settle permanently there. The speech of the natives in these circumstances disappears. In the third case a more powerful people conquers a country, establishes a dependent government in it, sends out merchants, colonists, and officials, and establishes new towns. If such a province is held long enough, the language of the conqueror prevails. In the fourth and last case peaceful bands of immigrants enter a country to follow the humbler callings. They are scattered among the natives, and succeed in proportion as they learn the language of their adopted country. For their children and grandchildren this language becomes their mother tongue, and the speech of the invaded nation holds its ground.

The first typical case is illustrated by the history of Norman-French in England, the second by that of the European colonists in America; the Latinization of Spain, Gaul, and other Roman provinces furnishes an instance of the third, and our own experience with European immigrants is a case of the fourth characteristic situation. The third typical case of language-conflict is the one with which we are concerned here, and the analysis which we have made of the practices followed by the Romans in occupying newly acquired territory, both in Italy and outside the peninsula, shows us how closely they conform to the typical situation. With the exception of Dacia, all the provinces were held by the Romans for several centuries, so that their history under Roman rule satisfies the condition of long occupation which Professor Hempl lays down as a necessary one. Dacia which lay north of the Danube, and was thus far removed from the centres of Roman influence, was erected into a province in 107 A.D., and abandoned in 270. Notwithstanding its remoteness and the comparatively short period during which it was occupied, the Latin language has continued in use in that region to the present day. It furnishes therefore a striking illustration of the effective methods which the Romans used in Latinizing conquered territory.[10]

We have already had occasion to notice that a fusion between Latin and the languages with which it was brought into contact, such a fusion, for instance, as we find in Pidgin-English, did not occur. These languages influenced Latin only by way of making additions to its vocabulary. A great many Greek scientific and technical terms were adopted by the learned during the period of Roman supremacy. Of this one is clearly aware, for instance, in reading the philosophical and rhetorical works of Cicero. A few words, like rufus, crept into the language from the Italic dialects. Now and then the Keltic or Iberian names of Gallic or Spanish articles were taken up, but the inflectional system and the syntax of Latin retained their integrity. In the post-Roman period additions to the vocabulary are more significant. It is said that about three hundred Germanic words have found their way into all the Romance languages.[11] The language of the province of Gaul was most affected since some four hundred and fifty Gothic, Lombardic, and Burgundian words are found in French alone, such words as boulevard, homard, and blesser. Each of the provinces of course, when the Empire broke up, was subjected to influences peculiar to itself. The residence of the Moors in Spain, for seven hundred years, for instance, has left a deep impress on the Spanish vocabulary, while the geographic position of Roumanian has exposed it to the influence of Slavic, Albanian, Greek, Magyar, and Turkish.[12] A sketch of the history of Latin after the breaking up of the Empire carries us beyond the limits of the question which we set ourselves at the beginning and out of the domain of the Latinist, but it may not be out of place to gather together here a few of the facts which the Romance philologist has contributed to its later history, because the life of Latin has been continuous from the foundation of the city of Rome to the present day.

In this later period the question of paramount interest is, why did Latin in one part of the world develop into French, in another part into Italian, in another into Spanish? One answer to this question has been based on chronological grounds.[13] The Roman soldiers and traders who went out to garrison and to settle in a newly acquired territory, introduced that form of Latin which was in use in Italy at the time of their departure from the peninsula. The form of speech thus planted there developed along lines peculiar to itself, became the dialect of that province, and ultimately the (Romance) language spoken in that part of Europe. Sardinia was conquered in 241 B.C., and Sardinian therefore is a development of the Latin spoken in Italy in the middle of the third century B.C., that is of the Latin of Livius Andronicus. Spain was brought under Roman rule in 197 B.C., and consequently Spanish is a natural outgrowth of popular Latin of the time of Plautus. In a similar way, by noticing the date at which the several provinces were established down to the acquisition of Dacia in 107 A.D., we shall understand how it was that the several Romance languages developed out of Latin. So long as the Empire held together the unifying influence of official Latin, and the constant intercommunication between the provinces, preserved the essential unity of Latin throughout the world, but when the bonds were broken, the naturally divergent tendencies which had existed from the beginning, but had been held in check, made themselves felt, and the speech of the several sections of the Old World developed into the languages which we find in them to-day.

This theory is suggestive, and leads to several important results, but it is open to serious criticism, and does not furnish a sufficient explanation. It does not seem to take into account the steady stream of emigrants from Italy to the provinces, and the constant transfer of troops from one part of the world to another of which we become aware when we study the history of any single province or legion. Spain was acquired, it is true, in 197 B.C., and the Latin which was first introduced into it was the Latin of Plautus, but the subjugation of the country occupied more than sixty years, and during this period fresh troops were steadily poured into the peninsula, and later on there was frequently an interchange of legions between Spain and the other provinces. Furthermore, new communities of Roman citizens were established there even down into the Empire, and traders were steadily moving into the province. In this way it would seem that the Latin of the early second century which was originally carried into Spain must have been constantly undergoing modification, and, so far as this influence goes, made approximately like the Latin spoken elsewhere in the Empire.

A more satisfactory explanation seems to be that first clearly propounded by the Italian philologist, Ascoli. His reasoning is that when we acquire a foreign language we find it very difficult, and often impossible, to master some of the new sounds. Our ears do not catch them exactly, or we unconsciously substitute for the foreign sound some sound from our own language. Our vocal organs, too, do not adapt themselves readily to the reproduction of the strange sounds in another tongue, as we know from the difficulty which we have in pronouncing the French nasal or the German guttural. Similarly English differs somewhat as it is spoken by a Frenchman, a German, and an Italian. The Frenchman has a tendency to import the nasal into it, and he is also inclined to pronounce it like his own language, while the German favors the guttural. In a paper on the teaching of modern languages in our schools, Professor Grandgent says:[14] "Usually there is no attempt made to teach any French sounds but u and the four nasal vowels; all the rest are unquestioningly replaced by the English vowels and consonants that most nearly resemble them." The substitution of sounds from one's own language in speaking a foreign tongue, and the changes in voice-inflection, are more numerous and more marked if the man who learns the new language is uneducated and acquires it in casual intercourse from an uneducated man who speaks carelessly.

This was the state of things in the Roman provinces of southern Europe when the Goths, Lombards, and other peoples from the North gradually crossed the frontier and settled in the territory of Latin-speaking peoples. In the sixth century, for instance, the Lombards in Italy, the Franks in France, and the Visigoths in Spain would each give to the Latin which they spoke a twist peculiar to themselves, and out of the one Latin came Italian, out of the second, the language of France, and out of the third, Spanish. This initial impulse toward the development of Latin along different lines in Italy, France, and Spain was, of course, reinforced by differences in climate, in the temperaments of the three peoples, in their modes of life, and in their political and social experiences. These centrifugal forces, so to speak, became effective because the political and social bonds which had held Italy, France, and Spain together were now loosened, and consequently communication between the provinces was less frequent, and the standardizing influence of the official Latin of Rome ceased to keep Latin a uniform thing throughout the Empire.

One naturally asks why Latin survived at all, why the languages of the victorious Germanic peoples gave way to it. In reply to this question it is commonly said that the fittest survived, that the superiority of Roman civilization and of the Latin language gave Latin the victory. So far as this factor is to be taken into account, I should prefer to say that it was not so much the superiority of Latin, although that may be freely recognized, as it was the sentimental respect which the Germans and their leaders had for the Empire and for all its institutions. This is shown clearly enough, for instance, in the pride which the Visigothic and Frankish kings showed in holding their commissions from Rome, long after Rome had lost the power to enforce its claims upon them; it is shown in their use of Latin as the language of the court and of the official world. Under the influence of this sentiment Germanic rulers and their peoples imitated the Romans, and, among other things, took over their language. The church probably exerted considerable influence in this direction. Many of the Germans had been converted to Christianity before they entered the Empire, and had heard Latin used in the church services and in the hymns. Among cultivated people of different countries, it was the only medium of communication, and was accepted as the lingua franca of the political and ecclesiastical world, and the traditional medium of expression for literary and legal purposes.

Perhaps, however, one element in the situation should be given more weight than any of the facts just mentioned. Many of the barbarians had been allowed to settle in a more or less peaceful fashion in Roman territory, so that a large part of the western world came into their possession by way of gradual occupation rather than by conquest.[15] They became peasant proprietors, manual laborers, and soldiers in the Roman army. Perhaps, therefore, their occupation of central and southern Europe bears some resemblance to the peaceful invasion of this country by immigrants from Europe, and they may have adopted Latin just as the German or Scandinavian adopts English.

This brings us to the last important point in our inquiry. What is the date before which we shall call the language of the Western Empire Latin, and after which it is better to speak of French, Spanish, and Italian? Such a line of division cannot be sharply drawn, and will in a measure be artificial, because, as we shall attempt to show in the chapter which follows on the "Latin of the Common People," Latin survives in the Romance languages, and has had a continuous life up to the present day. But on practical grounds it is convenient to have such a line of demarcation in mind, and two attempts have been made to fix it. One attempt has been based on linguistic grounds, the other follows political changes more closely. Up to 700 A.D. certain common sound-changes take place in all parts of the western world.[16] After that date, roughly speaking, this is not the case. Consequently at that time we may say that unity ceased. The other method of approaching the subject leads to essentially the same conclusion, and shows us why unity ceased to exist.[17] In the sixth century the Eastern Emperor Justinian conceived the idea of reuniting the Roman world, and actually recovered and held for a short time Italy, southern Spain, and Africa. This attempt on his part aroused a national spirit among the peoples of these lands, and developed in them a sense of their national independence and individuality. They threw off the foreign yoke and became separate peoples, and developed, each of them, a language of its own. Naturally this sentiment became effective at somewhat different periods in different countries. For France the point may be fixed in the sixth century, for Spain and Italy, in the seventh, and at these dates Latin may be said to take the form of French, Spanish, and Italian.



The Latin of the Common People



Unless one is a professional philologist he feels little interest in the language of the common people. Its peculiarities in pronunciation, syntax, phraseology, and the use of words we are inclined to avoid in our own speech, because they mark a lack of cultivation. We test them by the standards of polite society, and ignore them, or condemn them, or laugh at them as abnormal or illogical or indicative of ignorance. So far as literature goes, the speech of the common people has little interest for us because it is not the recognized literary medium. These two reasons have prevented the average man of cultivated tastes from giving much attention to the way in which the masses speak, and only the professional student has occupied himself with their language. This is unfortunate because the speech of the common people has many points of interest, and, instead of being illogical, is usually much more rigid in its adherence to its own accepted principles than formal speech is, which is likely to be influenced by convention or conventional associations. To take an illustration of what I have in mind, the ending -s is the common mark in English of a plural form. For instance, "caps," "maps," "lines," and "places" are plurals, and the corresponding singular forms are "cap," "map," "line," and "place." Consequently, granted the underlying premise, it is a perfectly logical and eminently scientific process from the forms "relapse" (pronounced, of course, "relaps") and "species" to postulate a corresponding singular, and speak of "a relap" and "a specie," as a negro of my acquaintance regularly does. "Scrope" and "lept," as preterites of "scrape" and "leap," are correctly formed on the analogy of "broke" and "crept," but are not used in polite society.

So far as English, German, or French go, a certain degree of general interest has been stimulated lately in the form which they take in every-day life by two very different agencies, by the popular articles of students of language, and by realistic and dialect novels. But for our knowledge of the Latin of the common people we lack these two all-important sources of information. It occurred to only two Roman writers, Petronius and Apuleius, to amuse their countrymen by writing realistic stories, or stories with realistic features, and the Roman grammarian felt an even greater contempt for popular Latin or a greater indifference to it than we feel to-day. This feeling was shared, as we know, by the great humanists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the revival of interest in the Greek and Latin languages and literatures begins. Petrarch, Poggio Bracciolini, and the other great leaders in the movement were concerned with the literary aspects of the classics, and the scholars of succeeding generations, so far as they studied the language, confined their attention to that of the great Latin stylists. The first student to conceive of the existence of popular Latin as a form of speech which differed from formal literary Latin, seems to have been the French scholar, Henri Etienne. In a little pamphlet on the language and style of Plautus, written toward the end of the sixteenth century, he noted the likeness between French and the language of the Latin dramatist, without, however, clearly perceiving that the reason for this similarity lay in the fact that the comedies of Plautus reflect the spoken language of his time, and that French and the other Romance languages have developed out of this, rather than from literary Latin. Not until the middle of the eighteenth century was this truth clearly recognized, and then almost simultaneously on both sides of the Rhine.

It was left for the nineteenth century, however, to furnish scientific proof of the correctness of this hypothesis, and it was a fitting thing that the existence of an unbroken line of connection between popular Latin of the third century before our era, and the Romance languages of the nineteenth century, should have been established at the same time by a Latinist engaged in the study of Plautus, and a Romance philologist working upward toward Latin. The Latin scholar was Ritschl, who showed that the deviations from the formal standard which one finds in Plautus are not anomalies or mistakes, but specimens of colloquial Latin which can be traced down into the later period. The Romance philologist was Diez, who found that certain forms and words, especially those from the vocabulary of every-day life, which are common to many of the Romance languages, are not to be found in serious Latin literature at all, but occur only in those compositions, like comedy, satire, or the realistic romance, which reflect the speech of the every-day man. This discovery made it clear that the Romance languages are related to folk Latin, not to literary Latin. It is sixty years since the study of vulgar Latin was put on a scientific basis by the investigations of these two men, and during that period the Latinist and the Romance philologist have joined hands in extending our knowledge of it. From the Latin side a great impetus was given to the work by the foundation in 1884 of Woelfflin's Archiv fuer lateinische Lexikographie und Grammatik. This periodical, as is well known, was intended to prepare the way for the publication of the Latin Thesaurus, which the five German Academies are now bringing out.

One of its primary purposes, as its title indicates, was to investigate the history of Latin words, and in its first number the editor called attention to the importance of knowing the pieces of literature in which each Latin word or locution occurred. The results have been very illuminating. Some words or constructions or phrases are to be found, for instance, only in comedy, satire, and the romance. They are evidently peculiar to vulgar Latin. Others are freely used in these types of literature, but sparingly employed in historical or rhetorical works. Here again a shade of difference is noticeable between formal and familiar usage. The method of the Latinist then is essentially one of comparison and contrast. When, for instance, he finds the word equus regularly used by serious writers for "horse," but caballus employed in that sense in the colloquial compositions of Lucilius, Horace, and Petronius, he comes to the conclusion that caballus belongs to the vocabulary of every-day life, that it is our "nag."

The line of reasoning which the Romance philologist follows in his study of vulgar Latin is equally convincing. The existence of a large number of words and idioms in French, Spanish, Italian, and the other Romance languages can be explained only in one of three ways. All these different languages may have hit on the same word or phrase to express an idea, or these words and idioms may have been borrowed from one language by the others, or they may come from a common origin. The first hypothesis is unthinkable. The second is almost as impossible. Undoubtedly French, for instance, borrowed some words from Spanish, and Spanish from Portuguese. It would be conceivable that a few words originating in Spain should pass into France, and thence into Italy, but it is quite beyond belief that the large element which the languages from Spain to Roumania have in common should have passed by borrowing over such a wide territory. It is clear that this common element is inherited from Latin, out of which all the Romance languages are derived. Out of the words, endings, idioms, and constructions which French, Spanish, Italian, and the other tongues of southern Europe have in common, it would be possible, within certain limits, to reconstruct the parent speech, but fortunately we are not limited to this material alone. At this point the Latinist and the Romance philologist join hands. To take up again the illustration already used, the student of the Romance languages finds the word for "horse" in Italian is cavallo, in Spanish caballo, in French cheval, in Roumanian cal, and so on. Evidently all these forms have come from caballus, which the Latinist finds belongs to the vocabulary of vulgar, not of formal, Latin. This one illustration out of many not only discloses the fact that the Romance languages are to be connected with colloquial rather than with literary Latin, but it also shows how the line of investigation opened by Diez, and that followed by Woelfflin and his school, supplement each other. By the use of the methods which these two scholars introduced, a large amount of material bearing on the subject under discussion has been collected and classified, and the characteristic features of the Latin of the common people have been determined. It has been found that five or six different and independent kinds of evidence may be used in reconstructing this form of speech.

We naturally think first of the direct statements made by Latin writers. These are to be found in the writings of Cicero, Quintilian, Seneca the Rhetorician, Petronius, Aulus Gellius, Vitruvius, and the Latin grammarians. The professional teacher Quintilian is shocked at the illiterate speech of the spectators in the theatres and circus. Similarly a character in Petronius utters a warning against the words such people use. Cicero openly delights in using every-day Latin in his familiar letters, while the architect Vitruvius expresses the anxious fear that he may not be following the accepted rules of grammar. As we have noticed above, a great deal of material showing the differences between formal and colloquial Latin which these writers have in mind, may be obtained by comparing, for instance, the Letters of Cicero with his rhetorical works, or Seneca's satirical skit on the Emperor Claudius with his philosophical writings. Now and then, too, a serious writer has occasion to use a bit of popular Latin, but he conveniently labels it for us with an apologetic phrase. Thus even St. Jerome, in his commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, says: "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, as the vulgar proverb has it." To the ancient grammarians the "mistakes" and vulgarisms of popular speech were abhorrent, and they have fortunately branded lists of words and expressions which are not to be used by cultivated people. The evidence which may be had from the Romance languages, supplemented by Latin, not only contributes to our knowledge of the vocabulary of vulgar Latin, but it also shows us many common idioms and constructions which that form of speech had. Thus, "I will sing" in Italian is cantero (=cantar[e]-ho), in Spanish, cantare (=cantar-he), in French, chanterai (=chanter-ai), and similar forms occur in some of the other Romance languages. These forms are evidently made up of the Latin infinitive cantare, depending on habeo ("I have to sing"). But the future in literary Latin was cantabo, formed by adding an ending, as we know, and with that the Romance future can have no connection. However, as a writer in the Archiv has pointed out,[18] just such analytical tense forms as are used in the Romance languages to-day are to be found in the popular Latin sermons of St. Jerome. From these idioms, common to Italian, French, and Spanish, then, we can reconstruct a Latin formation current among the common people. Finally a knowledge of the tendencies and practices of spoken English helps us to identify similar usages when we come upon them in our reading of Latin. When, for instance, the slave in a play of Plautus says: "Do you catch on" (tenes?), "I'll touch the old man for a loan" (tangam senem, etc.), or "I put it over him" (ei os sublevi) we recognize specimens of Latin slang, because all of the metaphors involved are in current use to-day. When one of the freedmen in Petronius remarks: "You ought not to do a good turn to nobody" (neminem nihil boni facere oportet) we see the same use of the double negative to which we are accustomed in illiterate English. The rapid survey which we have just made of the evidence bearing on the subject establishes beyond doubt the existence of a form of speech among the Romans which cannot be identified with literary Latin, but it has been held by some writers that the material for the study of it is scanty. However, an impartial examination of the facts ought not to lead one to this conclusion. On the Latin side the material includes the comedies of Plautus and Terence, and the comic fragments, the familiar odes of Catullus, the satires of Lucilius, Horace, and Seneca, and here and there of Persius and Juvenal, the familiar letters of Cicero, the romance of Petronius and that of Apuleius in part, the Vulgate and some of the Christian fathers, the Journey to Jerusalem of St. AEtheria, the glossaries, some technical books like Vitruvius and the veterinary treatise of Chiron, and the private inscriptions, notably epitaphs, the wall inscriptions of Pompeii, and the leaden tablets found buried in the ground on which illiterate people wrote curses upon their enemies.

It is clear that there has been preserved for the study of colloquial Latin a very large body of material, coming from a great variety of sources and running in point of time from Plautus in the third century B.C. to St. AEtheria in the latter part of the fourth century or later. It includes books by trained writers, like Horace and Petronius, who consciously adopt the Latin of every-day life, and productions by uneducated people, like St. AEtheria and the writers of epitaphs, who have unwittingly used it.

St. Jerome says somewhere of spoken Latin that "it changes constantly as you pass from one district to another, and from one period to another" (et ipsa Latinitas et regionibus cotidie mutatur et tempore). If he had added that it varies with circumstances also, he would have included the three factors which have most to do in influencing the development of any spoken language. We are made aware of the changes which time has brought about in colloquial English when we compare the conversations in Fielding with those in a present-day novel. When a spoken language is judged by the standard of the corresponding literary medium, in some of its aspects it proves to be conservative, in others progressive. It shows its conservative tendency by retaining many words and phrases which have passed out of literary use. The English of the Biglow Papers, when compared with the literary speech of the time, abundantly illustrates this fact. This conservative tendency is especially noticeable in districts remote from literary centres, and those of us who are familiar with the vernacular in Vermont or Maine will recall in it many quaint words and expressions which literature abandoned long ago. In Virginia locutions may be heard which have scarcely been current in literature since Shakespeare's time. Now, literary and colloquial Latin were probably drawn farther apart than the two corresponding forms of speech in English, because Latin writers tried to make the literary tongue as much like Greek in its form as possible, so that literary Latin would naturally have diverged more rapidly and more widely from conversational Latin than formal English has drawn away from colloquial English.

But a spoken language in its development is progressive as well as conservative. To certain modifying influences it is especially sensitive. It is fond of the concrete, picturesque, and novel, and has a high appreciation of humor. These tendencies lead it to invent many new words and expressions which must wait months, years, perhaps a generation, before they are accepted in literature. Sometimes they are never accepted. The history of such words as buncombe, dude, Mugwump, gerrymander, and joy-ride illustrate for English the fact that words of a certain kind meet a more hospitable reception in the spoken language than they do in literature. The writer of comedy or farce, the humorist, and the man in the street do not feel the constraint which the canons of good usage put on the serious writer. They coin new words or use old words in a new way or use new constructions without much hesitation. The extraordinary material progress of the modern world during the last century has undoubtedly stimulated this tendency in a remarkable way, but it would seem as if the Latin of the common people from the time of Plautus to that of Cicero must have been subjected to still more innovating influences than modern conversational English has. During this period the newly conquered territories in Spain, northern Africa, Greece, and Asia poured their slaves and traders into Italy, and added a great many words to the vocabulary of every-day life. The large admixture of Greek words and idioms in the language of Petronius in the first century of our era furnishes proof of this fact. A still greater influence must have been felt within the language itself by the stimulus to the imagination which the coming of these foreigners brought, with their new ideas, and their new ways of looking at things, their strange costumes, manners, and religions.

The second important factor which affects the spoken language is a difference in culture and training. The speech of the gentleman differs from that of the rustic. The conversational language of Terence, for instance, is on a higher plane than that of Plautus, while the characters in Plautus use better Latin than the freedmen in Petronius. The illiterate freedmen in Petronius speak very differently from the freemen in his story. Sometimes a particular occupation materially affects the speech of those who pursue it. All of us know something of the linguistic eccentricities of the London cabman, the Parisian thief, or the American hobo. This particular influence cannot be estimated so well for Latin because we lack sufficient material, but some progress has been made in detecting the peculiarities of Latin of the nursery, the camp, and the sea.

Of course a spoken language is never uniform throughout a given area. Dialectal differences are sure to develop. A man from Indiana and another from Maine will be sure to notice each other's peculiarities. Even the railway, the newspaper, and the public school will never entirely obliterate the old differences or prevent new ones from springing up. Without these agencies which do so much to promote uniformity to-day, Italy and the rest of the Empire must have shown greater dialectal differences than we observe in American English or in British English even.

For the sake of bringing out clearly some of the points of difference between vulgar and formal Latin we have used certain illustrations, like caballus, where the two forms of speech were radically opposed to each other, but of course they did not constitute two different languages, and that which they had in common was far greater than the element peculiar to each, or, to put it in another way, they in large measure overlapped each other. Perhaps we are in a position now to characterize colloquial Latin and to define it as the language which was used in conversation throughout the Empire with the innumerable variations which time and place gave it, which in its most highly refined form, as spoken in literary circles at Rome in the classical period, approached indefinitely near its ideal, literary Latin, which in its most unconventional phase was the rude speech of the rabble, or the "sermo inconditus" of the ancients. The facts which have just been mentioned may be illustrated by the accompanying diagrams.



In Fig. I the heavy-lined ellipse represents the formal diction of Cicero, the dotted line ellipse his conversational vocabulary. They overlap each other through a great part of their extent, but there are certain literary locutions which would rarely be used by him in conversation, and certain colloquial words and phrases which he would not use in formal writing. Therefore the two ellipses would not be coterminous. In Fig. II the heavy ellipse has the same meaning as in Fig. I, while the space enclosed by the dotted line represents the vocabulary of an uneducated Roman, which would be much smaller than that of Cicero and would show a greater degree of difference from the literary vocabulary than Cicero's conversational stock of words does. The relation of the uncultivated Roman's conversational vocabulary to that of Cicero is illustrated in Fig. III, while Fig. IV shows how the Latin of the average man in Rome would compare, for instance, with that of a resident of Lugudunum, in Gaul.

This naturally brings us to consider the historical relations of literary and colloquial Latin. In explaining them it has often been assumed that colloquial Latin is a degenerate form of literary Latin, or that the latter is a refined type of the former. Both these theories are equally false. Neither is derived from the other. The true state of the case has never been better put than by Schuchardt, who says: "Vulgar Latin stands with reference to formal Latin in no derivative relation, in no paternal relation, but they stand side by side. It is true that vulgar Latin came from a Latin with fuller and freer forms, but it did not come from formal Latin. It is true that formal Latin came from a Latin of a more popular and a cruder character, but it did not come from vulgar Latin. In the original speech of the people, preliterary Latin (the prisca Latinitas), is to be found the origin of both; they were twin brothers."

Of this preliterary Latin we have no record. The best we can do is to infer what its characteristics were from the earliest fragments of the language which have come down to us, from the laws of the Twelve Tables, for instance, from the religious and legal formulae preserved to us by Varro, Cicero, Livy, and others, from proverbs and popular sayings. It would take us too far afield to analyze these documents here, but it may be observed that we notice in them, among other characteristics, an indifference to strict grammatical structure, not that subordination of clauses to a main clause which comes only from an appreciation of the logical relation of ideas to one another, but a co-ordination of clauses, the heaping up of synonymous words, a tendency to use the analytical rather than the synthetical form of expression, and a lack of fixity in the forms of words and in inflectional endings. To illustrate some of these traits in a single example, an early law reads "if [he] shall have committed a theft by night, if [he] shall have killed him, let him be regarded as put to death legally" (si nox furtum faxsit, si im occisit, iure caesus esto).[19] We pass without warning from one subject, the thief, in the first clause to another, the householder, in the second, and back to the thief again in the third. Cato in his book on Agriculture writes of the cattle: "let them feed; it will be better" (pascantur; satius erit), instead of saying: "it will be better for them to feed" (or "that they feed"). In an early law one reads: "on the tablet, on the white surface" (in tabula, in albo), instead of "on the white tablet" (in alba tabula). Perhaps we may sum up the general characteristics of this preliterary Latin out of which both the spoken and written language developed by saying that it showed a tendency to analysis rather than synthesis, a loose and variable grammatical structure, and a lack of logic in expression.

Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and Plautus in the third century before our era show the language as first used for literary purposes, and with them the breach between the spoken and written tongues begins. So far as Livius Andronicus, the Father of Latin literature, is concerned, allowance should be made without doubt for his lack of poetic inspiration and skill, and for the fact that his principal work was a translation, but even making this allowance the crude character of his Latin is apparent, and it is very clear that literary Latin underwent a complete transformation between his time and that of Horace and Virgil. Now, the significant thing in this connection is the fact that this transformation was largely brought about under an external influence, which affected the Latin of the common people only indirectly and in small measure. Perhaps the circumstances in which literary Latin was placed have never been repeated in history. At the very outset it was brought under the sway of a highly developed literary tongue, and all the writers who subsequently used it earnestly strove to model it after Greek. Livius Andronicus, Ennius, Accius, and Pacuvius were all of Greek origin and familiar with Greek. They, as well as Plautus and Terence, translated and adapted Greek epics, tragedies, and comedies. Several of the early writers, like Accius and Lucilius, interested themselves in grammatical subjects, and did their best to introduce system and regularity into their literary medium. Now, Greek was a highly inflected, synthetical, regular, and logical medium of literary expression, and it was inevitable that these qualities should be introduced into Latin. But this influence affected the spoken language very little, as we have already noticed. Its effect upon the speech of the common people would be slight, because of the absence of the common school which does so much to-day to hold together the spoken and written languages.

The development then of preliterary Latin under the influence of this systematizing, synthetical influence gave rise to literary Latin, while its independent growth more nearly in accordance with its original genius produced colloquial Latin. Consequently, we are not surprised to find that the people's speech retained in a larger measure than literary Latin did those qualities which we noticed in preliterary Latin. Those characteristics are, in fact, to be expected in conversation. When a man sets down his thoughts on paper he expresses himself with care and with a certain reserve in his statements, and he usually has in mind exactly what he wants to say. But in speaking he is not under this constraint. He is likely to express himself in a tautological, careless, or even illogical fashion. He rarely thinks out to the end what he has in mind, but loosely adds clauses or sentences, as new ideas occur to him.

We have just been thinking mainly about the relation of words to one another in a sentence. In the treatment of individual words, written and spoken Latin developed along different lines. In English we make little distinction between the quantity of vowels, but in Latin of course a given vowel was either long or short, and literary tradition became so fixed in this matter that the professional poets of the Augustan age do not tolerate any deviation from it. There are indications, however, that the common people did not observe the rules of quantity in their integrity. We can readily understand why that may have been the case. The comparative carelessness, which is characteristic of conversation, affects our pronunciation of words. When there is a stress accent, as there was in Latin, this is especially liable to be the case. We know in English how much the unaccented syllables suffer in a long word like "laboratory." In Latin the long unaccented vowels and the final syllable, which was never protected by the accent, were peculiarly likely to lose their full value. As a result, in conversational Latin certain final consonants tended to drop away, and probably the long vowel following a short one was regularly shortened when the accent fell on the short syllable, or on the syllable which followed the long one. Some scholars go so far as to maintain that in course of time all distinction in quantity in the unaccented vowels was lost in popular Latin. Sometimes the influence of the accent led to the excision of the vowel in the syllable which followed it. Probus, a grammarian of the fourth century of our era, in what we might call a "Guide to Good Usage"[20] or "One Hundred Words Mispronounced," warns his readers against masclus and anglus for masculus and angulus. This is the same popular tendency which we see illustrated in "lab'ratory."

The quality of vowels as well as their quantity changed. The obscuring of certain vowel sounds in ordinary or careless conversation in this country in such words as "Latun" and "Amurican" is a phenomenon which is familiar enough. In fact a large number of our vowel sounds seem to have degenerated into a grunt. Latin was affected in a somewhat similar way, although not to the same extent as present-day English. Both the ancient grammarians in their warnings and the Romance languages bear evidence to this effect.

We noticed above that the final consonant was exposed to danger by the fact that the syllable containing it was never protected by the accent. It is also true that there was a tendency to do away with any difficult combination of consonants. We recall in English the current pronunciations, "February," and "Calwell" for Caldwell. The average Roman in the same way was inclined to follow the line of least resistance. Sometimes, as in the two English examples just given, he avoided a difficult combination of consonants by dropping one of them. This method he followed in saying santus for sanctus, and scriserunt for scripserunt, just as in vulgar English one now and then hears "slep" and "kep" for the more difficult "slept" and "kept." Sometimes he lightened the pronunciation by metathesis, as he did when he pronounced interpretor as interpertor. A third device was to insert a vowel, as illiterate English-speaking people do in the pronunciations "ellum" and "Henery." In this way, for instance, the Roman avoided the difficult combinations -mn- and -chn- by saying mina and techina for the historically correct mna and techna. Another method of surmounting the difficulty was to assimilate one of the two consonants to the other. This is a favorite practice of the shop-girl, over which the newspapers make merry in their phonetical reproductions of supposed conversations heard from behind the counter. Adopting the same easy way of speaking, the uneducated Roman sometimes said isse for ipse, and scritus for scriptus. To pass to another point of difference, the laws determining the incidence of the accent were very firmly established in literary Latin. The accent must fall on the penult, if it was long, otherwise on the antepenult of the word. But in popular Latin there were certain classes of words in whose case these principles were not observed.

The very nature of the accent probably differed in the two forms of speech. In preliterary Latin the stress was undoubtedly a marked feature of the accent, and this continued to be the case in the popular speech throughout the entire history of the language, but, as I have tried to prove in another paper,[21] in formal Latin the stress became very slight, and the pitch grew to be the characteristic feature of the accent. Consequently, when Virgil read a passage of the AEneid to Augustus and Livia the effect on the ear of the comparatively unstressed language, with the rhythmical rise and fall of the pitch, would have been very different from that made by the conversation of the average man, with the accented syllables more clearly marked by a stress.

In this brief chapter we cannot attempt to go into details, and in speaking of the morphology of vulgar Latin we must content ourselves with sketching its general characteristics and tendencies, as we have done in the case of its phonology. In English our inflectional forms have been reduced to a minimum, and consequently there is little scope for differences in this respect between the written and spoken languages. From the analogy of other forms the illiterate man occasionally says: "I swum," or, "I clumb," or "he don't," but there is little chance of making a mistake. However, with three genders, five declensions for nouns, a fixed method of comparison for adjectives and adverbs, an elaborate system of pronouns, with active and deponent, regular and irregular verbs, four conjugations, and a complex synthetical method of forming the moods and tenses, the pitfalls for the unwary Roman were without number, as the present-day student of Latin can testify to his sorrow. That the man in the street, who had no newspaper to standardize his Latin, and little chance to learn it in school, did not make more mistakes is surprising. In a way many of the errors which he did make were historically not errors at all. This fact will readily appear from an illustration or two. In our survey of preliterary Latin we had occasion to notice that one of its characteristics was a lack of fixity in the use of forms or constructions. In the third century before our era, a Roman could say audibo or audiam, contemplor or contemplo, senatus consultum or senati consultum. Thanks to the efforts of the scientific grammarian, and to the systematizing influence which Greek exerted upon literary Latin, most verbs were made deponent or active once for all, a given noun was permanently assigned to a particular declension, a verb to one conjugation, and the slight tendency which the language had to the analytical method of forming the moods and tenses was summarily checked. Of course the common people tried to imitate their betters in all these matters, but the old variable usages persisted to some extent, and the average man failed to grasp the niceties of the new grammar at many points. His failures were especially noticeable where the accepted literary form did not seem to follow the principles of analogy. When these principles are involved, the common people are sticklers for consistency. The educated man conjugates: "I don't," "you don't," "he doesn't," "we don't," "they don't"; but the anomalous form "he doesn't" has to give way in the speech of the average man to "he don't." To take only one illustration in Latin of the effect of the same influence, the present infinitive active of almost all verbs ends in -re, e.g., amare, monere, and regere. Consequently the irregular infinitive of the verb "to be able," posse, could not stand its ground, and ultimately became potere in vulgar Latin. In one respect in the inflectional forms of the verb, the purist was unexpectedly successful. In comedy of the third and second centuries B.C., we find sporadic evidence of a tendency to use auxiliary verbs in forming certain tenses, as we do in English when we say: "I will go," "I have gone," or "I had gone." This movement was thoroughly stamped out for the time, and does not reappear until comparatively late.

In Latin there are three genders, and the grammatical gender of a noun is not necessarily identical with its natural gender. For inanimate objects it is often determined simply by the form of the noun. Sella, seat, of the first declension, is feminine, because almost all nouns ending in -a are feminine; hortus, garden, is masculine, because nouns in -us of its declension are mostly masculine, and so on. From such a system as this two results are reasonably sure to follow. Where the gender of a noun in literary Latin did not conform to these rules, in popular Latin it would be brought into harmony with others of its class. Thus stigma, one of the few neuter nouns in -a, and consequently assigned to the third declension, was brought in popular speech into line with sella and the long list of similar words in -a, was made feminine, and put in the first declension. In the case of another class of words, analogy was supplemented by a mechanical influence. We have noticed already that the tendency of the stressed syllable in a word to absorb effort and attention led to the obscuration of certain final consonants, because the final syllable was never protected by the accent. Thus hortus in some parts of the Empire became hortu in ordinary pronunciation, and the neuter caelum, heaven, became caelu. The consequent identity in the ending led to a confusion in the gender, and to the ultimate treatment of the word for "heaven" as a masculine. These influences and others caused many changes in the gender of nouns in popular speech, and in course of time brought about the elimination of the neuter gender from the neo-Latin languages.

Something has been said already of the vocabulary of the common people. It was naturally much smaller than that of cultivated people. Its poverty made their style monotonous when they had occasion to express themselves in writing, as one can see in reading St. AEtheria's account of her journey to the Holy Land, and of course this impression of monotony is heightened by such a writer's inability to vary the form of expression. Even within its small range it differs from the vocabulary of formal Latin in three or four important respects. It has no occasion, or little occasion, to use certain words which a formal writer employs, or it uses substitutes for them. So testa was used in part for caput, and bucca for os. On the other hand, it employs certain words and phrases, for instance vulgar words and expletives, which are not admitted into literature.

In its choice of words it shows a marked preference for certain suffixes and prefixes. It would furnish an interesting excursion into folk psychology to speculate on the reasons for this preference in one case and another. Sometimes it is possible to make out the influence at work. In reading a piece of popular Latin one is very likely to be impressed with the large number of diminutives which are used, sometimes in the strict sense of the primitive word. The frequency of this usage reminds one in turn of the fact that not infrequently in the Romance languages the corresponding words are diminutive forms in their origin, so that evidently the diminutive in these cases crowded out the primitive word in popular use, and has continued to our own day. The reason why the diminutive ending was favored does not seem far to seek. That suffix properly indicates that the object in question is smaller than the average of its kind. Smallness in a child stimulates our affection, in a dwarf, pity or aversion. Now we give expression to our emotion more readily in the intercourse of every-day life than we do in writing, and the emotions of the masses are perhaps nearer the surface and more readily stirred than are those of the classes, and many things excite them which would leave unruffled the feelings of those who are more conventional. The stirring of these emotions finds expression in the use of the diminutive ending, which indirectly, as we have seen, suggests sympathy, affection, pity, or contempt. The ending -osus for adjectives was favored because of its sonorous character. Certain prefixes, like de-, dis-, and ex-, were freely used with verbs, because they strengthened the meaning of the verb, and popular speech is inclined to emphasize its ideas unduly.

To speak further of derivation, in the matter of compounds and crystallized word groups there are usually differences between a spoken and written language. The written language is apt to establish certain canons which the people do not observe. For instance, we avoid hybrid compounds of Greek and Latin elements in the serious writing of English. In formal Latin we notice the same objection to Greco-Latin words, and yet in Plautus, and in other colloquial writers, such compounds are freely used for comic effect. In a somewhat similar category belong the combinations of two adverbs or prepositions, which one finds in the later popular Latin, some of which have survived in the Romance languages. A case in point is ab ante, which has come down to us in the Italian avanti and the French avant. Such word-groups are of course debarred from formal speech.

In examining the vocabulary of colloquial Latin, we have noticed its comparative poverty, its need of certain words which are not required in formal Latin, its preference for certain prefixes and suffixes, and its willingness to violate certain rules, in forming compounds and word-groups, which the written language scrupulously observes. It remains for us to consider a third, and perhaps the most important, element of difference between the vocabularies of the two forms of speech. I mean the use of a word in vulgar Latin with another meaning from that which it has in formal Latin. We are familiar enough with the different senses which a word often has in conversational and in literary English. "Funny," for instance, means "amusing" in formal English, but it is often the synonym of "strange" in conversation. The sense of a word may be extended, or be restricted, or there may be a transfer of meaning. In the colloquial use of "funny" we have an extension of its literary sense. The same is true of "splendid," "jolly," "lovely," and "awfully," and of such Latin words as "lepidus," "probe," and "pulchre." When we speak of "a splendid sun," we are using splendid in its proper sense of shining or bright, but when we say, "a splendid fellow," the adjective is used as a general epithet expressing admiration. On the other hand, when a man of a certain class refers to his "woman," he is employing the word in the restricted sense of "wife." Perhaps we should put in a third category that very large colloquial use of words in a transferred or figurative sense, which is illustrated by "to touch" or "to strike" when applied to success in getting money from a person. Our current slang is characterized by the free use of words in this figurative way.

Under the head of syntax we must content ourselves with speaking of only two changes, but these were far-reaching. We have already noticed the analytical tendency of preliterary Latin. This tendency was held in check, as we have just observed, so far as verb forms were concerned, but in the comparison of adjectives and in the use of the cases it steadily made headway, and ultimately triumphed over the synthetical principle. The method adopted by literary Latin of indicating the comparative and the superlative degrees of an adjective, by adding the endings -ior and -issimus respectively, succumbed in the end to the practice of prefixing plus or magis and maxime to the positive form. To take another illustration of the same characteristic of popular Latin, as early as the time of Plautus, we see a tendency to adopt our modern method of indicating the relation which a substantive bears to some other word in the sentence by means of a preposition rather than by simply using a case form. The careless Roman was inclined to say, for instance, magna pars de exercitu, rather than to use the genitive case of the word for army, magna pars exercitus. Perhaps it seemed to him to bring out the relation a little more clearly or forcibly.

The use of a preposition to show the relation became almost a necessity when certain final consonants became silent, because with their disappearance, and the reduction of the vowels to a uniform quantity, it was often difficult to distinguish between the cases. Since final -m was lost in pronunciation, Asia might be nominative, accusative, or ablative. If you wished to say that something happened in Asia, it would not suffice to use the simple ablative, because that form would have the same pronunciation as the nominative or the accusative, Asia(m), but the preposition must be prefixed, in Asia. Another factor cooperated with those which have already been mentioned in bringing about the confusion of the cases. Certain prepositions were used with the accusative to indicate one relation, and with the ablative to suggest another. In Asia, for instance, meant "in Asia," in Asiam, "into Asia." When the two case forms became identical in pronunciation, the meaning of the phrase would be determined by the verb in the sentence, so that with a verb of going the preposition would mean "into," while with a verb of rest it would mean "in." In other words the idea of motion or rest is disassociated from the case forms. From the analogy of in it was very easy to pass to other prepositions like per, which in literary Latin took the accusative only, and to use these prepositions also with cases which, historically speaking, were ablatives.

In his heart of hearts the school-boy regards the periodic sentences which Cicero hurled at Catiline, and which Livy used in telling the story of Rome as unnatural and perverse. All the specious arguments which his teacher urges upon him, to prove that the periodic form of expression was just as natural to the Roman as the direct method is to us, fail to convince him that he is not right in his feeling—and he is right. Of course in English, as a rule, the subject must precede the verb, the object must follow it, and the adverb and attribute adjective must stand before the words to which they belong. In the sentence: "Octavianus wished Cicero to be saved," not a single change may be made in the order without changing the sense, but in a language like Latin, where relations are largely expressed by inflectional forms, almost any order is possible, so that a writer may vary his arrangement and grouping of words to suit the thought which he wishes to convey. But this is a different matter from the construction of a period with its main subject at the beginning, its main verb at the end, and all sorts of subordinate and modifying clauses locked in by these two words. This was not the way in which the Romans talked with one another. We can see that plainly enough from the conversations in Plautus and Terence. In fact the Latin period is an artificial product, brought to perfection by many generations of literary workers, and the nearer we get to the Latin of the common people the more natural the order and style seem to the English-speaking person. The speech of the uneducated freedmen in the romance of Petronius is interesting in this connection. They not only fail to use the period, but they rarely subordinate one idea to another. Instead of saying "I saw him when he was an aedile," they are likely to say "I saw him; he was an aedile then."

When we were analyzing preliterary Latin, we noticed that the co-ordination of ideas was one of its characteristics, so that this trait evidently persisted in popular speech, while literary Latin became more logical and complex.

In the preceding pages we have tried to find out the main features of popular Latin. In doing so we have constantly thought of literary Latin as the foil or standard of comparison. Now, strangely enough, no sooner had the literary medium of expression slowly and painfully disassociated itself from the language of the common people than influences which it could not resist brought it down again to the level of its humbler brother. Its integrity depended of course upon the acceptance of certain recognized standards. But when flourishing schools of literature sprang up in Spain, in Africa, and in Gaul, the paramount authority of Rome and the common standard for the Latin world which she had set were lost. When some men tried to imitate Cicero and Quintilian, and others, Seneca, there ceased to be a common model of excellence. Similarly a careful distinction between the diction of prose and verse was gradually obliterated. There was a loss of interest in literature, and professional writers gave less attention to their diction and style. The appearance of Christianity, too, exercised a profound influence on literary Latin. Christian writers and preachers made their appeal to the common people rather than to the literary world. They, therefore, expressed themselves in language which would be readily understood by the average man, as St. Jerome frankly tells us his purpose was. The result of these influences, and of others, acting on literary Latin, was to destroy its unity and its carefully developed scientific system, and to bring it nearer and nearer in its genius to popular Latin, or, to put it in another way, the literary medium comes to show many of the characteristics of the spoken language. Gregory of Tours, writing in the sixth century, laments the fact that he is unfamiliar with grammatical principles, and with this century literary Latin may be said to disappear.

As for popular Latin, it has never ceased to exist. It is the language of France, Spain, Italy, Roumania, and all the Romance countries to-day. Its history has been unbroken from the founding of Rome to the present time. Various scholars have tried to determine the date before which we shall call the popular speech vulgar Latin, and after which it may better be styled French or Spanish or Italian, as the case may be. Some would fix the dividing line in the early part of the eighth century A.D., when phonetic changes common to all parts of the Roman world would cease to occur. Others would fix it at different periods between the middle of the sixth to the middle of the seventh century, according as each section of the old Roman world passed definitely under the control of its Germanic invaders. The historical relations of literary and colloquial Latin would be roughly indicated by the accompanying diagram, in which preliterary Latin divides, on the appearance of literature in the third century B.C., into popular Latin and literary Latin. These two forms of speech develop along independent lines until, in the sixth century, literary Latin is merged in popular Latin and disappears. The unity for the Latin tongue thus secured was short lived, because within a century the differentiation begins which gives rise to the present-day Romance languages.

It may interest some of the readers of this chapter to look over a few specimens of vulgar Latin from the various periods of its history.

(a) The first one is an extract from the Laws of the Twelve Tables. The original document goes back to the middle of the fifth century B.C., and shows us some of the characteristics of preliterary Latin. The non-periodic form, the omission of pronouns, and the change of subject without warning are especially noticeable.

"Si in ius vocat, ito. Ni it, antestamino, igitur em (=eum) capito. Si calvitur pedemve struit, manum endo iacito (=inicito). Si morbus aevitasve (=aetasve) vitium escit, iumentum dato: si nolet, arceram ne sternito."



(b) This passage from one of Cicero's letters to his brother (ad Q. fr. 2, 3, 2) may illustrate the familiar conversational style of a gentleman in the first century B.C. It describes an harangue made by the politician Clodius to his partisans.

"Ille furens et exsanguis interrogabat suos in clamore ipso quis esset qui plebem fame necaret. Respondebant operae: 'Pompeius.' Quem ire vellent. Respondebant: 'Crassum.' Is aderat tum Miloni animo non amico. Hora fere nona quasi signo dato Clodiani nostros consputare coeperunt. Exarsit dolor. Vrgere illi ut loco nos moverent."

(c) In the following passage, Petronius, 57, one of the freedmen at Trimalchio's dinner flames out in anger at a fellow-guest whose bearing seems to him supercilious. It shows a great many of the characteristics of vulgar Latin which have been mentioned in this paper. The similarity of its style to that of the preliterary specimen is worth observing. The great number of proverbs and bits of popular wisdom are also noticeable.

"Et nunc spero me sic vivere, ut nemini iocus sim. Homo inter homines sum, capite aperto ambulo; assem aerarium nemini debeo; constitutum habui nunquam; nemo mihi in foro dixit 'redde, quod debes.' Glebulas emi, lamelullas paravi; viginti ventres pasco et canem; contubernalem meam redemi, ne quis in sinu illius manus tergeret; mille denarios pro capite solvi; sevir gratis factus sum; spero, sic moriar, ut mortuus non erubescam."

(d) This short inscription from Pompeii shows some of the peculiarities of popular pronunciation. In ortu we see the same difficulty in knowing when to sound the aspirate which the cockney Englishman has. The silence of the final -m, and the reduction of ae to e are also interesting. Presta mi sinceru (=sincerum): si te amet que (=quae) custodit ortu (=hortum) Venus.

(e) Here follow some of the vulgar forms against which a grammarian, probably of the fourth century, warns his readers. We notice that the popular "mistakes" to which he calls attention are in (1) syncopation and assimilation, in (2) the use of the diminutive for the primitive, and pronouncing au as o, in (3) the same reduction of ct to t (or tt) which we find in such Romance forms as Ottobre, in (4) the aspirate falsely added, in (5) syncopation and the confusion of v and b, and in (6) the silence of final -m.

(1) frigida non fricda (2) auris non oricla (3) auctoritas non autoritas (4) ostiae non hostiae (5) vapulo non baplo (6) passim non passi

(f) The following passages are taken from Brunot's "Histoire de la langue Fracaise," p. 144. In the third column the opening sentence of the famous Oath of Strasburg of 842 A.D. is given. In the other columns the form which it would have taken at different periods is set down. These passages bring out clearly the unbroken line of descent from Latin to modern French.



The Oath of Strasburg of 842

Classic Latin

Per Dei amorem et per christiani populi et nostram communem salutem, ab hac die, quantum Deus scire et posse mini dat, servabo hunc meum fratrem Carolum

Spoken Latin, Seventh Cent.

For deo amore et por chrestyano pob(o)lo et nostro comune salvamento de esto die en avante en quanto Deos sabere et podere me donat, sic salvarayo eo eccesto meon fradre Karlo

Actual Text

Pro deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d'ist di en avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo

French, Eleventh Cent.

Por dieu amor et por del crestueen poeple et nostre comun salvement, de cest jorn en avant, quant que Dieus saveir et podeir me donet, si salverai jo cest mien fredre Charlon

French, Fifteenth Cent.

Pour l'amour Dieu et pour le sauvement du chrestien peuple et le nostre commun, de cest jour en avant, quant que Dieu savoir et pouvoir me done, si sauverai je cest mien frere Charle

Modern French

Pour l'amour de Dieu et pour le salut commun du peuple chretien et le notre, a partir de ce jour, autant que Dieu m'en donne le savoir et le pouvoir, je soutiendrai mon frere Charles



The Poetry of the Common People of Rome



I. Their Metrical Epitaphs

The old village churchyard on a summer afternoon is a favorite spot with many of us. The absence of movement, contrasted with the life just outside its walls, the drowsy humming of the bees in the flowers which grow at will, the restful gray of the stones and the green of the moss give one a feeling of peace and quiet, while the ancient dates and quaint lettering in the inscriptions carry us far from the hurry and bustle and trivial interests of present-day life. No sense of sadness touches us. The stories which the stones tell are so far removed from us in point of time that even those who grieved at the loss of the departed have long since followed their friends, and when we read the bits of life history on the crumbling monuments, we feel only that pleasurable emotion which, as Cicero says in one of his letters, comes from our reading in history of the little tragedies of men of the past. But the epitaph deals with the common people, whom history is apt to forget, and gives us a glimpse of their character, their doings, their beliefs, and their views of life and death. They furnish us a simple and direct record of the life and the aspirations of the average man, the record of a life not interpreted for us by the biographer, historian, or novelist, but set down in all its simplicity by one of the common people themselves.

These facts lend to the ancient Roman epitaphs their peculiar interest and charm. They give us a glimpse into the every-day life of the people which a Cicero, or a Virgil, or even a Horace cannot offer us. They must have exerted an influence, too, on Roman character, which we with our changed conditions can scarcely appreciate. We shall understand this fact if we call to mind the differences between the ancient practices in the matter of burial and our own. The village churchyard is with us a thing of the past. Whether on sanitary grounds, or for the sake of quiet and seclusion, in the interest of economy, or not to obtrude the thought of death upon us, the modern cemetery is put outside of our towns, and the memorials in it are rarely read by any of us. Our fathers did otherwise. The churchyard of old England and of New England was in the middle of the village, and "short cuts" from one part of the village to another led through its enclosure. Perhaps it was this fact which tempted our ancestors to set forth their life histories more fully than we do, who know that few, if any, will come to read them. Or is the world getting more reserved and sophisticated? Are we coming to put a greater restraint upon the expression of our emotions? Do we hesitate more than our fathers did to talk about ourselves? The ancient Romans were like our fathers in their willingness or desire to tell us of themselves. Perhaps the differences in their burial practices, which were mentioned above, tempted them to be communicative, and sometimes even garrulous. They put their tombstones in a spot still more frequented than the churchyard. They placed them by the side of the highways, just outside the city walls, where people were coming or going constantly. Along the Street of Tombs, as one goes out of Pompeii, or along the great Appian Way, which runs from Rome to Capua, Southern Italy and Brundisium, the port of departure for Greece and the Orient, they stand on both sides of the roadway and make their mute appeals for our attention. We know their like in the enclosure about old Trinity in New York, in the burial ground in New Haven, or in the churchyards across the water. They tell us not merely the date of birth and death of the deceased, but they let us know enough of his life to invest it with a certain individuality, and to give it a flavor of its own.

Some 40,000 of them have come down to us, and nearly 2,000 of the inscriptions upon them are metrical. This particular group is of special interest to us, because the use of verse seems to tempt the engraver to go beyond a bare statement of facts and to philosophize a bit about the present and the future. Those who lie beneath the stones still claim some recognition from the living, for they often call upon the passer-by to halt and read their epitaphs, and as the Roman walked along the Appian Way two thousand years ago, or as we stroll along the same highway to-day, it is in silent converse with the dead. Sometimes the stone itself addresses us, as does that of Olus Granius:[22] "This mute stone begs thee to stop, stranger, until it has disclosed its mission and told thee whose shade it covers. Here lie the bones of a man, modest, honest, and trusty—the crier, Olus Granius. That is all. It wanted thee not to be unaware of this. Fare thee well." This craving for the attention of the passer-by leads the composer of one epitaph to use somewhat the same device which our advertisers employ in the street-cars when they say: "Do not look at this spot," for he writes: "Turn not your eyes this way and wish not to learn our fate," but two lines later, relenting, he adds: "Now stop, traveller...within this narrow resting-place,"[23] and then we get the whole story. Sometimes a dramatic, lifelike touch is given by putting the inscription into the form of a dialogue between the dead and those who are left behind. Upon a stone found near Rome runs the inscription:[24] "Hail, name dear to us, Stephanus,...thy Moschis and thy Diodorus salute thee." To which the dead man replies: "Hail chaste wife, hail Diodorus, my friend, my brother." The dead man often begs for a pleasant word from the passer-by. The Romans, for instance, who left Ostia by the highway, read upon a stone the sentiment:[25] "May it go well with you who lie within and, as for you who go your way and read these lines, 'the earth rest lightly on thee' say." This pious salutation loses some of the flavor of spontaneity in our eyes when we find that it had become so much of a convention as to be indicated by the initial letters of the several words: S(it) t(ibi) t(erra) l(evis). The traveller and the departed exchange good wishes on a stone found near Velitrae:[26]