savunculum, offla, peduclus, corcillum, with constructions such as
maledicere and persuadere with the accusative, and adiutare with the
dative, and the deponent forms pudeatur and ridetur. Of especial
interest for the Romance languages are astrum (désastre), berbex
(brébis), botellus (boyau), improperare, muttus, naufragare.
Suetonius (Aug. c. 87) gives an interesting selection of plebeian words employed in conversation by Augustus, who for the rest was something of a purist in his written utterances: ponit assidue et pro stulto baceolum, et pro pullo pulleiaceum, et pro cerrito vacerrosum, et vapide se habere pro male, et betizare pro languere, quod vulgo lachanizare dicitur.
The inscriptions, especially those of Pompeii, supply abundant evidence of the corruptions both of forms and of pronunciation common among the vulgar. It is not easy always to determine whether a mutilated form is evidence of a letter omitted in pronunciation, or only in writing; but it is clear that the ordinary man habitually dropped final m, s, and t, omitted n before s, and pronounced ĭ like ĕ. There are already signs of the decay of ae to e, which later on became almost universal. The additions to our vocabulary are slight and unimportant (cf. Corpus Inscr. Lat. iv., with Zangemeister’s Indices).
64. To turn to the language of literature. In the dark days of Tiberius and the two succeeding emperors a paralysis seemed to have come upon prose and poetry alike. With the one exception of oratory, literature had long been the utterance of a narrow circle, not the expression of the energies of national life; and now, while all free speech in the popular assemblies was silenced, the nobles were living under a suspicious despotism, which, whatever the advantage which it brought to the poorer classes and to the provincials, was to them a reign of terror. It is no wonder that the fifty years after the accession of Tiberius are a blank as regards all higher literature. Velleius Paterculus, Valerius Maximus, Celsus and Phaedrus give specimens of the Latin of the time, but the style of no one of these, classical for the most part in vocabulary, but occasionally approaching the later usages in syntax, calls for special analysis. The elder Seneca in his collection of suasoriae and controversiae supplies examples of the barren quibblings by which the young Romans were trained in the rhetorical schools. A course of instruction, which may have been of service when its end was efficiency in active public life, though even then not without its serious drawbacks, as is shown by Cicero in his treatise De Oratore, became seriously injurious when its object was merely idle display. Prose came to be overloaded with ornament, and borrowed too often the language, though not the genius, of poetry; while poetry in its turn, partly owing to the fashion of recitation, became a string of rhetorical points.
65. Seneca, Persius and Lucan.—In the writers of Nero’s age there are already plain indications of the evil effects of the rhetorical schools upon language as well as literature. The leading man of letters was undoubtedly Seneca the younger, “the Ovid of prose”; and his style set the model which it became the fashion to imitate. But it could not commend itself to the judgment of sound critics like Quintilian, who held firmly to the great masters of an earlier time. He admits its brilliance, and the fertility of its pointed reflections, but charges the author justly with want of self-restraint, jerkiness, frequent repetitions and tawdry tricks of rhetoric. Seneca was the worst of models, and pleased by his very faults. In his tragedies the rhetorical elaboration of the style only serves to bring into prominence the frigidity and frequent bad taste of the matter. But his diction is on the whole fairly classical; he is, in the words of Muretus, vetusti sermonis diligentior quam quidam inepte fastidiosi suspicantur. In Persius there is a constant straining after rhetorical effect, which fills his verses with harsh and obscure expressions. The careful choice of diction by which his master Horace makes every word tell is exaggerated into an endeavour to gain force and freshness by the most contorted phrases. The sin of allusiveness is fostered by the fashion of the day for epigram, till his lines are barely intelligible after repeated reading. Conington happily suggested that this style was assumed only for satiric purposes, and pointed out that when not writing satire Persius was as simple and unaffected as Horace himself. This view, while it relieves Persius of much of the censure which has been directed against his want of judgment, makes him all the more typical a representative of this stage of silver Latinity. In his contemporary Lucan we have another example of the faults of a style especially attractive to the young, handled by a youth of brilliant but ill-disciplined powers. The Pharsalia abounds in spirited rhetoric, in striking epigram, in high sounding declamation; but there are no flights of sustained imagination, no ripe wisdom, no self-control in avoiding the exaggerated or the repulsive, no mature philosophy of life or human destiny. Of all the Latin poets he is the least Virgilian. It has been said of him that he corrupted the style of poetry, not less than Seneca that of prose.
66. Pliny, Quintilian, Frontinus.—In the elder Pliny the same tendencies are seen occasionally breaking out in the midst of the prosaic and inartistic form in which he gives out the stores of his cumbrous erudition. Wherever he attempts a loftier tone than that of the mere compiler, he falls into the tricks of Seneca. The nature of his encyclopaedic subject matter naturally makes his vocabulary very extensive; but in syntax and general tone of language he does not differ materially from contemporary writers. Quintilian is of interest especially for the sound judgment which led him to a true appreciation of the writers of Rome’s golden age. He set himself strenuously to resist the tawdry rhetoric fashionable in his own time, and to hold up before his pupils purer and loftier models. His own criticisms are marked by excellent taste, and often by great happiness of expression, which is pointed without being unduly epigrammatic. But his own style did not escape, as indeed it hardly could, the influences of his time; and in many small points his language falls short of classical purity. There is more approach to the simplicity of the best models in Frontinus, who furnishes a striking proof that it was rather the corruption of literary taste than any serious change in the language of ordinary cultivated men to which the prevalent style was due. Writing on practical matters—the art of war and the water-supply of Rome—he goes straight to the point without rhetorical flourishes; and the ornaments of style which he occasionally introduces serve to embellish but not to distort his thought.
67. The Flavian Age.—The epic poets of the Flavian age present a striking contrast to the writers of the Claudian period. As a strained originality was the cardinal fault of the one school, so a tame and slavish following of authority is the mark of the other. The general correctness of this period may perhaps be ascribed (with Merivale) partly to the political conditions, partly to the establishment of professional schools. Teachers like Quintilian must have done much to repress extravagance of thought and language; but they could not kindle the spark of genius. Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus and Papinius Statius are all correct in diction and in rhythm, and abound in learning; but their inspiration is drawn from books and not from nature or the heart; details are elaborated to the injury of the impression of the whole; every line is laboured, and overcharged with epigrammatic rhetoric. Statius shows by far the greatest natural ability and freshness; but he attempts to fill a broad canvas with drawing and colouring suited only to a miniature. Juvenal exemplifies the tendencies of the language of his time, as moulded by a singularly powerful mind. A careful study of the earlier poets, especially Virgil and Lucan, has kept his language up to a high standard of purity. His style is eminently rhetorical; but it is rhetoric of real power. The concise brevity by which it is marked seems to have been the result of a deliberate attempt to mould his natural diffuseness into the form recognized as most appropriate for satire. In his verses we notice a few metrical peculiarities which represent the pronunciation of his age, especially the shortening of the final -o in verbs, but as a rule they conform to the Virgilian standard. In Martial the tendency of this period to witty epigram finds its most perfect embodiment, combined with finished versification.
68. Pliny the Younger and Tacitus.—The typical prose-writers of this time are Pliny the younger and Tacitus. Some features of the style of Tacitus are peculiar to himself; but on the whole the following statement represents the tendencies shared in greater or less degree by all the writers of this period. The gains lie mainly in the direction of a more varied and occasionally
