This chapter examines aspects of coordination in the language of Latin prayers. The general question addressed concerns the sense in which ‘early Latin’ features manifest themselves in prayers, and whether the term ‘early Latin’ is an appropriate designation of any peculiarities of prayer coordination. The results of the inquiry on ‘early’ prayers in the corpus considered in the chapter is that asyndeton bimembre, though in use, was not in high fashion, and that end-of-list coordination was preferred to long asyndeta and multiple coordinations, a preference that is the reverse of that of genres other than prayers in the early period and later.

The chapter examines what features of ‘early Latin’ may be identified in the scripts that belong to the literary phase of a type of theatrical entertainment conventionally known as fabula Atellana. Despite being contemporaries of Caesar, Cicero and Varro, the major playwrights of Atellane comedy were linguistically closer to Plautus than to any of them, exhibiting linguistic features – morphology, syntax and lexicon – of third- and second-century BC authors. Much rarer are the occasions in which linguistic phenomena that were obsolescent or old-fashioned in chronologically ‘early’ Latin authors feature in the Atellane playwrights, and even then there are considerations of genre and register to take into account. The overall artistic effect must have been rich, carefully crafted and varied: ‘early’ words and constructions do not seem to be mechanically included in the scripts. The playwrights were conscious that their works formed part of an established comic tradition, and the ‘unclassical’ linguistic features were employed by them not to stress the long-standing history of Campanian/Oscan drama but to give variety to the register of a scene and enhance the comic moment.

Legal texts from the early period contain a number of peculiarities that are not common in classical and post-classical Latin. The chapter discusses some of them: relative clauses introduced by a relative phrase, subjunctive mood, restrictive quod and subordinators introducing impediment argument clauses (quo minus and quo setius). Legalisms represent a subtype of early Latin phenomena in that they need not be features of every text found in that period; they are restricted to legal documents as a specific text type. Some of them are true legal archaisms (siremps, quo setius) – and they can be easily identified as such – that continue to be used in the same text type after the pre-classical period or appear in other text types in a legal context. As for the remaining ones: autonomous relative clauses introduced by a relative phrase and those containing a subjunctive for factual content as well as restrictive quod clauses can be at least considered as characteristic of legal Latin.

What is ‘early Latin’? The main contention of the present volume is that this question does not have a single answer. Rather, ‘early Latin’ is one of those ubiquitous labels (like ‘old’ or ‘archaic’ Latin) which have been used by classical scholars to denote different linguistic entities, and above all to describe a variety of linguistic features, in an often confusing and potentially contentious way. ‘Early Latin’ is above all a linguistic construct, which evokes frameworks of periodisation (often diverging), and posits a distinction between a supposedly discrete and cohesive linguistic variety (‘classical Latin’) and another one, equally discrete and cohesive, belonging to an earlier time period (‘pre-classical Latin’, a notion which has often carried negative value judgments since antiquity). Far from aiming to replace one theoretical framework with another, the studies presented here contribute, through a fresh analysis of specific linguistic phenomena and stylistic trends, to challenge the myths of periodisation and standardisation, and to expose the limited usefulness of evolutionary models to explain language change.

Dividing the Latin language into neat chronological periods will not work without severe reservations. Usages that may seem to be ‘early’ often turn out not to be confined to a particular period, or alternatively their attestations may be genre-related, that is characteristic of a genre that happens to survive mainly from an early period. As for ancient grammarians and commentators on the language, no single concept of what early Latin is may be extracted from their works. Early Latin, or the Latin of ueteres, was a different thing for different commentators. One could use ‘early Latin’ (arbitrarily) of the Latin of the period before about 100 BC, provided that one excludes from the category ‘early’ usages which, though they were current early, also remained current beyond that time. Latin is attested over many centuries, and it was definitely not static. There was not however an entity ‘early Latin’ in use until a convenient date, which then changed into ‘classical Latin’. Recovery of early phenomena requires careful analysis of the distribution, comparative evidence across periods and genres, and a distinction between usage and fashion.

This paper is concerned with the presence of early Latin linguistic and stylistic elements in a first-century BC text, Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. The poem notoriously features a variety of optional archaic forms, such as the terminations -ai for the genitive singular of the first declension, and -ier for the passive infinitive. These are found alongside their more standard equivalents -ae and -i, resulting in a mixed style that combines archaisms and non-archaisms. This study offers 1) a full reconsideration of these optional archaisms, providing richer data on their distribution both in the poem and in the hexameter line, and methodological consideration of ‘metrical convenience’, an explanatory concept which is often invoked when dealing with such forms but rarely explored in detail or depth; and 2) a new analysis of features of vocabulary and phraseology that are shared by Lucretius and early Latin authors. A particular concern will be distinguishing, where possible, between the influence of Latin and Greek: Lucretius’ use of compounds is demonstrably influenced by Empedocles, but also by Ennius; his use of tmesis finds some parallels in Homer, and some in Early Latin.

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the constructions with support verb (like verba facere, consilium capere, in memoria habere, etc.) in Plautus and Terence, as well as to highlight, among other aspects, their frequency of use, syntactic types, and which are the most common verbs and constructions. At the same time, the comparison between Plautus and Terence and, above all, between early Latin and a selected corpus of classical Latin prose (Caesar, Cicero, Sallust and Livy) and poetry (Virgil and Ovid) will allow me (i) to demonstrate the process of grammaticalization and renewal of these analytic expressions, (ii) to refine the widespread idea that the constructions with support verb are a characteristic of colloquial Latin, and finally (iii) to determine whether early Latin has its own peculiarities in the use of these complex expressions.

Handbooks of Latin usually draw attention to the presence of Greek loanwords from the very earliest stages of the Latin language. Greek loans feature in texts of all types, in a wide range of different spheres: words for flora and fauna, food and drink, aspects of trade, law and administration. The last major study of the Greek loanwords in Latin (Biville ) concentrated on the ways in which Greek sounds were represented in Latin, but did not have so much to say about the place of Greek loanwords within the vocabulary of Latin as a whole. This chapter gives a survey of Greek loanwords in Republican Latin, in both literary and epigraphic documents, with several different research questions in mind. Is it possible to unearth different chronological strata of loanwords? Can learned and vulgar loans be separated in Republican Latin, and how well integrated were Greek loans into Latin? Do phonological and semantic aspects of the words reveal anything about the source of the loans? Why do some Greek loanwords make it into the higher registers of Roman poetry (and sometimes prose) and others not, and how do these conventions come about?

This paper discusses the origins and the transmission of the alphabet to the peoples inhabiting the lower and central Tiber river valley. While some consideration is given to the development of the alphabet of Etruscans, as the driving force behind the dissemination of writing and literacy in central Italy, and to the alphabet(s) of Sabellic speakers, the focus is squarely on Latin and its sister language/dialect Faliscan. The paper aims to flesh out alphabetic reforms, signal possible areal developments, and identify major regional/chronological developments in the period before movements toward more standard orthography and letterforms in the two writing systems. The paper also maps out the diversity of epigraphic forms and their functions, which, it turns out, are much less homogenous in Latin and Faliscan than is the case in Etruscan during this same time period. Ultimately, the investigation reveals a vital epigraphic cultures in Latium and in Falerii that were adapting to the changes in social, political, and economic realities of the period, and that were, as a result, beginning to forge their own regional identities.

This chapter examines aspects of coordination in the language of Latin prayers. The general question addressed concerns the sense in which early Latin features manifest themselves in prayers, and whether the term ‘early Latin’ is an appropriate designation of any peculiarities of prayer coordination. The results of the inquiry on ‘early’ prayers in the corpus considered in the chapter is that asyndeton bimembre, though in use, was not in high fashion, and that end-of-list coordination was preferred to long asyndeta and multiple coordinations, a preference that is the reverse of that of genres other than prayers in the early period and later.

Nonius Marcellus’ intellectual tendencies, contemporary concerns and treatment of the Roman literary past are the subject of this study, which contends that the author’s predilections and intended readership often guided his selection of quotations, affected his presentation of them, and, consequently, shaped our reception of early Latin we know principally or exclusively from the De compendiosa doctrina. Nonius was selecting not merely ‘old words’ regardless of their valence, but more precisely those old words that could be incorporated with minimal accommodation into the speech patterns of fourth-century North Africa. This means that his collection of Latinity often has as much to do with imperial, provincial, and formal public speech as it does with republican Latin literary styles; that Nonius was more attuned to the philosophical, intellectual, theological, and cultural implications of the texts that he was excerpting than has yet been recognised; and that he probably bequeathed us a collection of literary Latin distorted by his own interests and concerns, and by his readers’ particular needs.

Cicero is well known to provide information about early Roman drama through his frequent references to performances, biographical details and characteristics of playwrights, motifs in dramas, language and style. Most of these comments are integrated into a specific context and therefore reflect Cicero’s argumentative aim. Yet, at the same time, they reveal insights into the nature of Roman Republican drama and its assessment in Cicero’s time. This chapter explores Cicero’s comments on the language, style and rhythm of early Republican dramas as well as his taking up of linguistic features of these plays. By looking at a selection of representative passages, this contribution examines what Cicero says about the language and idioms of early Roman playwrights and analyses whether Cicero takes up any of the linguistic features highlighted or instead opts for alternative versions. Such a study enables a better understanding of the Romans’ own view of the language of their early dramas as well as of any differences and developments between the various playwrights and dramatic genres.

This chapter focuses on morpho-syntactical phenomena that are typically brushed off with labels such as ‘archaism’ or ‘colloquialism’ (e.g. siet; medio-passive infinitives ending in -ier; med; familiai; absence of subordinator ut; absence of subject accusatives). These labels provide neither an explanation nor an assessment that takes their functions and distributions into account. The analysis of distribution patterns shows whether a type of scansion, a morpheme, or a construction that stands out from the angle of an Indo-Europeanist or that of a classicist is in fact normal in early Latin, or marked in some way. For example, the discrepancy between the different conjugations shows that Plautus and Terence do not pick forms in -ier and then try to fit them into the line; rather, they write their lines and only pick forms in -ier if it cannot be helped. This has implications for assessing the stylistic value of forms in -ier in contemporary inscriptions or in Lucretius. This analysis, in turn, can help us to understand early texts in their own right, and aids us in reconstruction or understanding how a Roman of the classical period would have felt about a specific phenomenon.