Lectures on the Science of Language

by F. Max Müller

As far as we can tell, the barbarians seem to have possessed a greater facility for acquiring languages than either Greeks or Romans. Soon after the Macedonian conquest, we find[63] Berosus in Babylon, Menander in Tyre, and Manetho in Egypt, compiling, from original sources, the annals of their countries.[64] Their works [pg 095] were written in Greek, and for the Greeks. The native language of Berosus was Babylonian, of Menander Phenician, of Manetho Egyptian. Berosus was able to read the cuneiform documents of Babylonia with the same ease with which Manetho read the papyri of Egypt. The almost contemporaneous appearance of three such men, barbarians by birth and language, who were anxious to save the histories of their countries from total oblivion, by entrusting them to the keeping of their conquerors, the Greeks, is highly significant. But what is likewise significant, and by no means creditable to the Greek or Macedonian conquerors, is the small value which they seem to have set on these works. They have all been lost, and are known to us by fragments only, though there can be little doubt that the work of Berosus would have been an invaluable guide to the student of the cuneiform inscriptions and of Babylonian history, and that Manetho, if preserved complete, would have saved us volumes of controversy on Egyptian chronology. We learn, however, from the almost simultaneous appearance of these works, that soon after the epoch marked by Alexander's conquests in the East, the Greek language was studied and cultivated by literary men of barbarian origin, though we should look in vain for any Greek [pg 096] learning or employing any but his own tongue for literary purposes. We hear of no intellectual intercourse between Greeks and barbarians before the days of Alexander and Alexandria. At Alexandria, various nations, speaking different languages, and believing in different gods, were brought together. Though primarily engaged in mercantile speculations, it was but natural that in their moments of leisure they should hold discourse on their native countries, their gods, their kings, their law-givers, and poets. Besides, there were Greeks at Alexandria who were engaged in the study of antiquity, and who knew how to ask questions from men coming from any country of the world. The pretension of the Egyptians to a fabulous antiquity, the belief of the Jews in the sacred character of their laws, the faith of the Persians in the writings of Zoroaster, all these were fit subjects for discussion in the halls and libraries of Alexandria. We probably owe the translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, to this spirit of literary inquiry which was patronized at Alexandria by the Ptolemies.[65] The writings of Zoroaster also, the Zend-Avesta, would seem to have been rendered into Greek about the same time. For Hermippus, who is said by Pliny to have translated the writings of Zoroaster, was in all probability Hermippus,[66] the Peripatetic philosopher, the pupil of Callimachus, [pg 097] one of the most learned scholars at Alexandria.

But although we find at Alexandria these and similar traces of a general interest having been excited by the literatures of other nations, there is no evidence which would lead us to suppose that their languages also had become the subject of scientific inquiry. It was not through the study of other languages, but through the study of the ancient dialects of their own language, that the Greeks at Alexandria were first led to what we should call critical and philological studies. The critical study of Greek took its origin at Alexandria, and it was chiefly based on the text of Homer. The general outline of grammar existed, as I remarked before, at an earlier period. It grew up in the schools of Greek philosophers.[67] Plato knew of noun and verb as the two component parts of speech. Aristotle added conjunctions and articles. He likewise observed the distinctions of number and case. But neither Plato nor Aristotle paid much attention to the forms of language which corresponded to these forms of thought, nor had they any inducement to reduce them to any practical rules. With Aristotle the verb or rhēmha is hardly more than predicate, and in sentences such as “the snow is white,” he would have called white a [pg 098] verb. The first who reduced the actual forms of language to something like order were the scholars of Alexandria. Their chief occupation was to publish correct texts of the Greek classics, and particularly of Homer. They were forced, therefore, to pay attention to the exact forms of Greek grammar. The MSS. sent to Alexandria and Pergamus from different parts of Greece varied considerably, and it could only be determined by careful observation which forms were to be tolerated in Homer and which were not. Their editions of Homer were not only ekdoseis, a Greek word literally rendered in Latin by editio, i.e. issues of books, but diorthōseis, that is to say, critical editions. There were different schools, opposed to each other in their views of the language of Homer. Each reading that was adopted by Zenodotus or Aristarchus had to be defended, and this could only be done by establishing general rules on the grammar of the Homeric poems. Did Homer use the article? Did he use it before proper names? These and similar questions had to be settled, and as one or the other view was adopted by the editors, the text of these ancient poems was changed by more or less violent emendations. New technical terms were required for distinguishing, for instance, the article, if once recognized, from the demonstrative pronoun. Article is a literal translation of the Greek word arthron. Arthron (Lat. artus) means the socket of a joint. The word was first used by Aristotle, and with him it could only mean words which formed, as it were, the sockets in which the members of a sentence moved. In such a sentence as: “Whoever did it, he shall suffer for it,” Greek grammarians would have called the demonstrative pronoun he the first socket, [pg 099] and the relative pronoun who, the second socket;[68] and before Zenodotus, the first librarian of Alexandria, 250 b. c., all pronouns were simply classed as sockets or articles of speech. He was the first to introduce a distinction between personal pronouns or antonymiai, and the mere articles or articulations of speech, which henceforth retained the name of arthra. This distinction was very necessary, and it was, no doubt, suggested to him by his emendations of the text of Homer, Zenodotus being the first who restored the article before proper names in the Iliad and Odyssey. Who, in speaking now of the definite or indefinite article, thinks of the origin and original meaning of the word, and of the time which it took before it could become what it is now, a technical term familiar to every school-boy?

Again, to take another illustration of the influence which the critical study of Homer at Alexandria exercised on the development of grammatical terminology,—we see that the first idea of numbers, of a singular and a plural, was fixed and defined by the philosopher. But Aristotle had no such technical terms as singular and plural; and he does not even allude to the dual. He only speaks of the cases which express one or many, though with him case, or ptōsis, had a very different meaning from what it has in our grammars. The terms singular and plural were not invented till they were wanted, and they were first wanted by the grammarians. Zenodotus, the editor of Homer, was the first to observe the use of the dual in the Homeric poems, and, with the usual zeal of discoverers, he has altered many a plural into a dual when there was no necessity for it.

The scholars of Alexandria, therefore, and of the rival academy of Pergamus, were the first who studied the Greek language critically, that is to say, who analyzed the language, arranged it under general categories, distinguished the various parts of speech, invented proper technical terms for the various functions of words, observed the more or less correct usage of certain poets, marked the difference between obsolete and classical forms, and published long and learned treatises on all these subjects. Their works mark a great era in the history of the science of language. But there was still a step to be made before we can expect to meet with a real practical or elementary grammar of the Greek language. Now the first real Greek grammar was that of Dionysius Thrax. It is still in existence, and though its genuineness has been doubted, these doubts have been completely disposed of.

But who was Dionysius Thrax? His father, as we learn from his name, was a Thracian; but Dionysius himself lived at Alexandria, and was a pupil of the famous critic and editor of Homer, Aristarchus.[69] Dionysius afterwards went to Rome, where he taught about the time of Pompey. Now here we see a new feature in the history of mankind. A Greek, a pupil of Aristarchus, settles at Rome, and writes a practical grammar of the Greek language—of course, for the benefit of his young Roman pupils. He was not the inventor of grammatical science. Nearly all the framework of grammar, as we saw, was supplied to him through the labors of his predecessors from Plato to [pg 101] Aristarchus. But he was the first who applied the results of former philosophers and critics to the practical purpose of teaching Greek; and, what is most important, of teaching Greek not to Greeks, who knew Greek and only wanted the theory of their language, but to Romans who had to be taught the declensions and conjugations, regular and irregular. His work thus became one of the principal channels through which the grammatical terminology, which had been carried from Athens to Alexandria, flowed back to Rome, to spread from thence over the whole civilized world.

Dionysius, however, though the author of the first practical grammar, was by no means the first “professeur de langue” who settled at Rome. At his time Greek was more generally spoken at Rome than French is now spoken in London. The children of gentlemen learnt Greek before they learnt Latin, and though Quintilian in his work on education does not approve of a boy learning nothing but Greek for any length of time, “as is now the fashion,” he says, “with most people,” yet he too recommends that a boy should be taught Greek first, and Latin afterwards.[70] This may seem strange, but the fact is that as long as we know anything of Italy, the Greek language was as much at home there as Latin. Italy owed almost everything to Greece, not only in later days when the setting sun of Greek civilization mingled its rays with the dawn of Roman greatness; but ever since the first Greek colonists started Westward Ho! in search of new homes. It was from the Greeks that the Italians received their alphabet and were taught to read and to [pg 102] write.[71] The names for balance, for measuring-rod, for engines in general, for coined money,[72] many terms connected with seafaring,[73] not excepting nausea or sea-sickness, are all borrowed from Greek, and show the extent to which the Italians were indebted to the Greeks for the very rudiments of civilization. The Italians, no doubt, had their own national gods, but they soon became converts to the mythology of the Greeks. Some of the Greek gods they identified with their own; others they admitted as new deities. Thus Saturnus, originally an Italian harvest god, was identified with the Greek Kronos, and as Kronos was the son of Uranos, a new deity was invented, and Saturnus was fabled to be the son of Cœlus. Thus the Italian Herculus, the god of hurdles, enclosures, and walls, was merged in the Greek Heracles.[74] Castor and Pollux, both of purely Greek origin, were readily believed in as nautical deities by the Italian sailors, and they were the first Greek gods to whom, after the battle on the Lake Regillus (485), a temple was erected at Rome.[75] In 431 another temple was erected at Rome to Apollo, whose oracle at Delphi had been consulted by Italians [pg 103] ever since Greek colonists had settled on their soil. The oracles of the famous Sibylla of Cumæ were written in Greek,[76] and the priests (duoviri sacris faciundis) were allowed to keep two Greek slaves for the purpose of translating these oracles.[77]

When the Romans, in 454 b. c., wanted to establish a code of laws, the first thing they did was to send commissioners to Greece to report on the laws of Solon at Athens and the laws of other Greek towns.[78] As Rome rose in political power, Greek manners, Greek art, Greek language and literature found ready admittance.[79] Before the beginning of the Punic wars, many of the Roman statesmen were able to understand, and even to speak Greek. Boys were not only taught the Roman letters by their masters, the literatores, but they had to learn at the same time the Greek alphabet. Those who taught Greek at Rome were then called grammatici, and they were mostly Greek slaves or liberti.

Among the young men whom Cato saw growing up at Rome, to know Greek was the same as to be a gentleman. They read Greek books, they conversed in Greek, they even wrote in Greek. Tiberius Gracchus, consul in 177, made a speech in Greek at Rhodes, which he afterwards published.[80] Flaminius, when addressed by the Greeks in Latin, returned the compliment by writing Greek verses in honor of their [pg 104] gods. The first history of Rome was written at Rome in Greek, by Fabius Pictor,[81] about 200 b. c.; and it was probably in opposition to this work, and to those of Lucius Cincius Alimentus, and Publius Scipio, that Cato wrote his own history of Rome in Latin. The example of the higher classes was eagerly followed by the lowest. The plays of Plautus are the best proof; for the affectation of using Greek words is as evident in some of his characters as the foolish display of French in the German writers of the eighteenth century. There was both loss and gain in the inheritance which Rome received from Greece; but what would Rome have been without her Greek masters? The very fathers of Roman literature were Greeks, private teachers, men who made a living by translating school-books and plays. Livius Andronicus, sent as prisoner of war from Tarentum (272 b. c.), established himself at Rome as professor of Greek. His translation of the Odyssey into Latin verse, which marks the beginning of Roman literature, was evidently written by him for the use of his private classes. His style, though clumsy and wooden in the extreme, was looked upon as a model of perfection by the rising poets of the capital. Nævius and Plautus were his cotemporaries and immediate successors. All the plays of Plautus were translations and adaptations of Greek originals; and Plautus was not even allowed to transfer the scene from Greece to Rome. The Roman public wanted to see Greek life and Greek depravity; it would have stoned the poet who had ventured to bring on the stage a Roman patrician or a Roman matron. Greek tragedies, also, were [pg 105] translated into Latin. Ennius, the cotemporary of Nævius and Plautus, though somewhat younger (239-169), was the first to translate Euripides. Ennius, like Andronicus, was an Italian Greek, who settled at Rome as a teacher of languages and translator of Greek. He was patronized by the liberal party, by Publius Scipio, Titus Flaminius, and Marcus Fulvius Nobilior.[82] He became a Roman citizen. But Ennius was more than a poet, more than a teacher of languages. He has been called a neologian, and to a certain extent he deserved that name. Two works written in the most hostile spirit against the religion of Greece, and against the very existence of the Greek gods, were translated by him into Latin.[83] One was the philosophy of Epicharmus (470 b. c., in Megara), who taught that Zeus was nothing but the air, and other gods but names of the powers of nature; the other the work of Euhemerus, of Messene (300 b. c.), who proved, in the form of a novel, that the Greek gods had never existed, and that those who were believed in as gods had been men. These two works were not translated without a purpose; and though themselves shallow in the extreme, they proved destructive to the still shallower systems of Roman theology. Greek became synonymous with infidel; and Ennius would hardly have escaped the punishment inflicted on Nævius for his political satires, had he not enjoyed the patronage and esteem of the most influential statesmen at Rome. Even Cato, the stubborn enemy of Greek philosophy[84] and rhetoric, was a friend of the dangerous Ennius; and such was the growing influence of Greek at Rome, that Cato himself [pg 106] had to learn it in his old age, in order to teach his boy what he considered, if not useful, at least harmless in Greek literature. It has been the custom to laugh at Cato for his dogged opposition to everything Greek; but there was much truth in his denunciations. We have heard much of young Bengál—young Hindus who read Byron and Voltaire, play at billiards, drive tandems, laugh at their priests, patronize missionaries, and believe nothing. The description which Cato gives of the young idlers at Rome reminds us very much of young Bengál.

When Rome took the torch of knowledge from the dying hands of Greece, that torch was not burning with its brightest light. Plato and Aristotle had been succeeded by Chrysippus and Carneades; Euripides and Menander had taken the place of Æschylus and Sophocles. In becoming the guardian of the Promethean spark first lighted in Greece, and intended hereafter to illuminate not only Italy, but every country of Europe, Rome lost much of that native virtue to which she owed her greatness. Roman frugality and gravity, Roman citizenship and patriotism, Roman purity and piety, were driven away by Greek luxury and levity, Greek intriguing and self-seeking, Greek vice and infidelity. Restrictions and anathemas were of no avail; and Greek ideas were never so attractive as when they had been reprobated by Cato and his friends. Every new generation became more and more impregnated with Greek. In 131[85] we hear of a consul (Publius Crassus) who, like another Mezzofanti, was able to converse in the various dialects of Greek. Sulla allowed foreign ambassadors to speak Greek [pg 107] before the Roman senate.[86] The Stoic philosopher Panætius[87] lived in the house of the Scipios, which was for a long time the rendezvous of all the literary celebrities at Rome. Here the Greek historian Polybius, and the philosopher Cleitomachus, Lucilius the satirist, Terence the African poet (196-159), and the improvisatore Archias (102 b. c.), were welcome guests.[88] In this select circle the master-works of Greek literature were read and criticised; the problems of Greek philosophy were discussed; and the highest interests of human life became the subject of thoughtful conversation. Though no poet of original genius arose from this society, it exercised a most powerful influence on the progress of Roman literature. It formed a tribunal of good taste; and much of the correctness, simplicity, and manliness of the classical Latin is due to that “Cosmopolitan Club,” which met under the hospitable roof of the Scipios.

The religious life of Roman society at the close of the Punic wars was more Greek than Roman. All who had learnt to think seriously on religious questions were either Stoics or followers of Epicurus; or they embraced the doctrines of the New Academy, denying the possibility of any knowledge of the Infinite, and putting opinion in the place of truth.[89] Though the doctrines of Epicurus and the New Academy were always considered dangerous and heretical, the philosophy of the Stoics was tolerated, and a kind of compromise effected between philosophy and religion. There was a state-philosophy as well as a state-religion. [pg 108] The Roman priesthood, though they had succeeded, in 161, in getting all Greek rhetors and philosophers expelled from Rome, perceived that a compromise was necessary. It was openly avowed that in the enlightened classes[90] philosophy must take the place of religion, but that a belief in miracles and oracles was necessary for keeping the large masses in order. Even Cato,[91] the leader of the orthodox, national, and conservative party, expressed his surprise that a haruspex, when meeting a colleague, did not burst out laughing. Men like Scipio Æmilianus and Lælius professed to believe in the popular gods; but with them Jupiter was the soul of the universe, the statues of the gods mere works of art.[92] Their gods, as the people complained, had neither body, parts, nor passions. Peace, however, was preserved between the Stoic philosopher and the orthodox priest. Both parties professed to believe in the same gods, but they claimed the liberty to believe in them in their own way.