[25] Bellum Gallicum, v. 6.
[26] Porcius Cato, in his Origines, written a hundred years before Caesar crossed the mountains, says that Gallia was devoted to the art of war and to eloquence (argute loqui). Presumably the Gallia that Cato thus characterized as clever or acute of speech, was Cisalpine Gaul, to wit, the north of Italy; yet Caesar’s transalpine Gauls were both clever of speech and often the fools of their own arguments. Lucian, in his Hercules (No. 55, Dindorf’s edition) has his “Celt” argue that Hercules accomplished his deeds by the power of words.
[27] See, generally, Fustel de Coulanges, Institutions politiques de l’ancienne France, vol. i. (La Gaule romaine).
[28] Bellum Gallicum, vi. 11, 12.
[29] Cf. Julian, Vercingetorix (2nd ed., Paris, 1902).
[30] Bellum Gallicum, iv. 5; vi. 20.
[31] There are a number of texts from the second to the fifth century which bear on the matter. Taken altogether they are unsatisfying, if not blind. They have been frequently discussed. See Gröber, Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, i. 451 sqq. (2nd edition, 1904); Brunot, Origines de la langue française, which is the Introduction to Petit de Julleville’s Histoire de la langue et de la littérature française (Paris, 1896); Bonnet, Le Latin de Grégoire de Tours, pp. 22-30 (Paris, 1890); Mommsen’s Provinces of the Roman Empire, p. 108 sqq. of English translation; Fustel de Coulanges, Institutions politiques, vol. i. (La Gaule romaine), pp. 125-135 (Paris, 1891); Roger, L’Enseignement des lettres classiques d’ Ausone à Alcuin, p. 24 sqq. (Paris, 1905).
[32] Such words are, e.g., wine, street, wall. See Toller, History of the English Language (Macmillan & Co., 1900), pp. 41, 42.
[33] See Paul, Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, Band i. pp. 305-315, (Strassburg, 1891).
[34] A prime illustration is afforded by the Latin juristic word persona used in the Creed. The Latins had to render the three ὑποστάσεις of the Greeks; and “three somethings,” tria quaedam, was too loose, as Augustine says (De Trinitate, vii. 7-12). The true and literal translation of ὑπόστασις would have been substantia; but that word had been taken to render οὐσία. So the legal word persona was employed in spite of its recognized unfitness. Cf. Taylor, Classical Heritage, etc., p. 116 sqq.