INTRODUCTION

In Chapter II republican inscriptions were discussed. Most inscriptions are from the Empire, and I now turn to these. I will also consider what I call ‘non-literary’ evidence, that is informal writing (some of it newly discovered) on materials other than stone (curse tablets, writing tablets, ostraca, papyri), which has not been exploited in the discussion of regional diversification, though the evidence of such texts is in some ways superior to that of inscriptions.

Spellings, particularly misspellings, as possible indicators of the phonological system have been the usual subject of surveys of inscriptions, and I will be dealing mainly with spelling here. There has been optimism that by comparing the incidence of misspellings area by area it might be possible to finds signs of the dialectalisation of Latin. Statistical surveys have been made, for example, by Gaeng (1968) (of spellings and misspellings to do with the vowel system), Omeltchenko (1977) (of spellings to do with the vowel system in areas not covered by Gaeng), Barbarino (1978) (of B and V, that is of B written for CL [w] or V written for B), Herman (of a variety of phenomena in a series of papers) and Gratwick (1982) (of B and V again). It is, for instance, conceivable that a misspelling of peculiar type indicative of a feature of pronunciation might be attested in just one area (and the pronunciation reflected in the same area in Romance). But evidence of this type is lacking.

During the Empire Latin became widely established in the western provinces and Africa. Observers went on noting regional features, but there is a difference of focus, in that, whereas republican commentators rarely looked far beyond Rome, the practice of Gauls, Spaniards and Africans now attracted interest. Provincials themselves were conscious of linguistic features that distinguished them from others. From the first century AD onwards for several centuries we have the views of outsiders looking to Rome or Italy from a distance, and assessing their Latin alongside that of the imperial centre. The imperial testimonia are probably less familiar than the republican, but there is an abundance of evidence. The material is arranged geographically here, with sections on Italy, Spain, Gaul and Africa. Where possible I assess the accuracy of metalinguistic comments using various criteria.

ITALY

A contrast was seen in the last chapter between the attitudes of Cicero and of Varro to variations within Italy. For Cicero Roman Latin was superior to other varieties. Varro was interested in identifying variations without asserting the superiority of a Roman accent. There are neutral observations from the Empire too, but rhetorical dismissals of regional Latin persisted. It must be asked whether as the Empire advanced ‘Romanness’ of Latin continued to be idealised in the same form, or whether there are new attitudes to be seen (see 1.2.3–4, 1.2.12, 3.1).

Romanness and related ideas

Rome maintained a linguistic centrality in the eyes of the provincial educated class.

INTRODUCTION

There is evidence from an early period pointing to regional variation in the Latin of Italy, much of which has been discussed in chapters II–IV. I concentrate in this chapter on textual evidence, but also comment briefly on Pompeian graffiti. Italian inscriptions will come up again in Chapter X. A comprehensive study of all the texts written in Italy would be out of the question, and I have had to be selective. Texts that might be expected to show a regional flavour include the fragments of Atellan farce (but for farce the best evidence is metalinguistic: see III.6.1), the Cena Trimalchionis of Petronius and curse tablets. Varro was from outside Rome and not averse from admitting non-standard usages. Virgil himself wrote on country life. In the late period there is a corpus of medical texts (translated from Greek originals) now conventionally attributed to Ravenna, and these provide material for a case study concerning the question whether and on what criteria the provenance of a late text might be identified. I have treated the ‘Ravenna school’ as a subject of study in its own right, and this occupies a good part of the chapter, but some principles relevant to the themes of this book will emerge.

There is an important topic to which I will only allude here, as it is a familiar one in the history of the language.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter and the next five will be mainly about literary texts. Literary evidence for the regional diversification of Latin is either explicit or implicit. By ‘explicit’ I refer to comments by Latin writers about features of the speech of an area or people. Evidence of this type is sometimes referred to as ‘metalinguistic’. Latin speakers from the earliest period were interested in the diversity of the language, and they often noted details or expressed an attitude to the variations that they observed. There were also those who did not describe regionalisms as a linguistic exercise in its own right, but commented on practices particular to a region and made passing remarks about the terminology related to those practices. The corpus of metalinguistic comments is considerable, stretching from Plautus through to late antiquity, and has never, as far as I am aware, been comprehensively assembled. In this chapter I collect and discuss the republican and Augustan testimonia, and in the next the later testimonia.

By ‘implicit’ evidence I mean the use without comment in a text of a word or usage that there may be reason to think was confined to the area from which the writer came. Regionalisms of this second type are hard to detect, and problems of methodology must be addressed.

In this chapter I review some of the findings and themes of the book.

‘UNITARY’ AND ‘DIFFERENTIAL’ THEORIES

Väänänen (1983) pointed out that it is possible to distinguish between two theories that have been advanced to account for the transition from a single language, Latin, apparently without regional variations, to the regional diversity of Romance. He calls them (1983: 481) the ‘thèse unitaire’ and the ‘thèse différencielle’, the first favoured by Latinists and the second by Romance philologists. According to the first Latin showed no variations until very late. According to the second Latin had local variations ‘from the imperial period, and in any case well before 600’ (Väänänen 1983: 490). The metalinguistic evidence presented in this book makes nonsense of the unitarian thesis, and the differential thesis as formulated by Väänänen just quoted is itself not satisfactory, because the regional diversity of the language can be traced back at least to 200 BC and was not a new development of the Empire. That is not to say that the Romance languages were in any sense being foreshadowed already in 200 (though we will see some continuities below, 3.5). The patterns of local diversity in 200 were not the same as those to be found a millennium or more later, but the essential point is that the language always showed regional as well as social, educational and stylistic variations. The nature of the diversity was not static but went on changing.

INTRODUCTION: SOME POINTS OF METHODOLOGY

Sometimes a text or inscription contains without comment a usage that there is reason to assign to a region. Its regional character may be deducible from various types of evidence. First, it may be discussed as a regionalism by another writer. Second, its distribution in extant Latin may suggest that it was localised. Third, in the Romance languages its reflexes may have a restricted distribution corresponding to its distribution in Latin texts. Sometimes the origin of the writer of the text may be known: if a usage associated with Gaul is found in a text written by someone known to have been Gallic it may be obvious that the writer had picked it up in his patria. If on the other hand there is no external evidence for the writer's origin, the usage, or, better, a cluster of such usages, may suggest either that he was a native of a certain area, or that he wrote the text in that area and drew on the local variety of the language.

But this is an idealised picture. It has in practice proved difficult to pin down the geographical origin of late texts. E. Löfstedt made the point thus (1959: 42): ‘To assign any text to a particular province on linguistic grounds has in most cases been found impossible, and at the best is extremely difficult.’

In this chapter I set out some aims and findings of the work, define some terms, and state some of the questions that will be addressed later. The types of evidence that will be used are described. I will also comment on methodology, but that will be discussed in greater detail in later chapters. Dialectal variation in other languages has been extensively investigated in recent years (and earlier as well), and I consider here the issues that have emerged in dialect studies and relate them to the Roman world. Most of these issues will come up later.

AIMS, METHODS AND FINDINGS

The attentive reader of Latin texts written between 200 BC and AD 600, the period to be covered here, will probably have a sense that the language changes in time, but no sense that texts could be assigned a place of composition on linguistic evidence alone. There have even been those who have taken the texts at their face value and argued that the language was a unity which did not begin to develop regional variations until the medieval or proto-Romance period (see also below, XI.1). But if so it is surely paradoxical that Latin should have spawned a diversity of Romance languages and dialects and yet had no regional varieties itself. The paradox has long puzzled scholars. The unitarian argument is at variance with all that is known about the behaviour of geographically widespread languages over time.

Introduction

Solon's visit to Croesus (translated from Herodotus Histories 1.29–33)

When Sardis was at its most prosperous, all the teachers (σοϕισταί) of the Greek world paid a visit, including Solon the Athenian … On arrival, he was entertained by Croesus in the palace, and after three or four days slaves at Croesus' command showed him around the treasury in all its greatness and magnificence. When he had dutifully examined and admired everything as best he could, Croesus asked him, ‘Guest from Athens, we have frequently been told of your wisdom and of the sight-seeing journeys you have undertaken all over the world to foster it. Now then, I find myself quite unable to resist asking you if you have ever seen anyone who is the happiest (ὄλβιος) man in the world.’ He asked this hoping that he himself was the happiest. Solon did not flatter him, but spoke the plain truth. ‘Yes, O King, Tellos the Athenian.’ Croesus, astonished at this reply, acidly asked the reason for his judgment. Solon replied, ‘First, Tellos’ city was prosperous, and he had fine sons, and he saw children born to them all, and all of them survived; second, he was as well off as a man can expect, and his death was glorious. For in a battle between the Athenians and their neighbours in Eleusis, it was he who rescued the situation, routed the enemy and died gloriously.

This book is written to be used in step with Reading Greek (Text) of the Joint Association of Classical Teachers' Greek Course. In it will be found:

1. A: Section-by-section grammatical explanations and exercises to support the reading of the twenty sections of the Text (pp. 1–368). While we recommend that the Text is tackled before students turn to the grammar and exercises, no harm will be done by taking a different view.

2. B: A Reference Grammar, which summarises and sometimes expands upon the essential features of the grammar met in the Course (pp. 369–464).

3. C: A number of Language Surveys which look in detail at some of the more important features of the language (pp. 465–496).

4. D: A Total Vocabulary of all words that should have been learnt – this has been appended to the Text as well – followed by a list of proper names (pp. 497–520).

5. E: A vocabulary for the English-Greek exercises (pp. 521–528).

6. F: Indices to the grammar and to Greek words (pp. 529–543), originally constructed by Professor W. K. Lacey and his students at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and here revised.

It would be impracticable to produce an exhaustive grammar of the whole Greek language. We have therefore concentrated attention on its most common features. Students and teachers should bear in mind that the first aim of this grammar is to help students to translate from Greek into English.

Introduction

The reason that Euelpides gave for leaving Athens was that he and Peisetairos had been unjustly found guilty in a law-suit. Whatever the actual rights and wrongs of the matter, the Athenians' reputation for litigiousness was notorious throughout the Mediterranean. Pericles (Περικλῆς) had introduced pay for dikasts (δικασταί, jurors) in c. 461 BC, so that even the poorest might be encouraged to take part in the democratic process of judging their fellow-man, and it would appear that some men were happy to scrape a living out of serving as dikasts. The courts handled not only judicial business, but political cases as well: their power was, potentially, enormous, and could be wielded to deadly effect. There was little ‘procedure’ in the courts; certainly no judge to guide dikasts and clarify the law; no question of the dikasts (usually 501 Athenian males) retiring to discuss what they had heard; few rules of evidence; and no cross-questioning of witnesses. The dikasts listened to both sides, and voted on the issue at once. In such an atmosphere, the law could easily be abused.

In Wasps, Aristophanes presents his vision of the ‘typical’ Athenian dikast, and leaves us to ponder its implications for the administration of justice in Athens.

In World of Athens: the law-courts 6.39ff.

Law-court mania in Athens

It has been estimated that, when allowance is made for festivals, ἐκκλησίαι and so on, juries might sit on between 150 and 200 days in the year … If we are to believe Aristophanes' Wasps of 422, some elderly Athenians had a passion to serve.