A History of Roman Classical Literature.

by R. W. Browne

CHAPTER I.
COMPARISON OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE WITH THE GREEK—ERAS OF LATINITY—ORIGIN OF THE ROMANS—ELEMENTS OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE—ETRUSCAN INFLUENCE.

The various races which, from very remote antiquity, inhabited the peninsula of Italy, necessarily gave a composite character to the Latin language. But as all of them sprang from one common origin, the great Indo-European stock to which also the Hellenic family belonged, a relation of the most intimate kind is visible between the languages of ancient Greece and Rome. Not only are their alphabets and grammatical constructions identical, but the genius of the one is so similar to that of the other, that the Romans readily adopted the principles of Greek literary taste, and Latin, without losing its own characteristic features, moulded itself after the Greek model.

Latin, however, has not the plastic property which the Greek possesses—the natural faculty of transforming itself into every variety of shape conceived by the fancy and imagination. It is a harder material, it readily takes a polish, but the process by which it receives it is laborious and artificial. Greek, like a liquid or a soft substance, seems to crystallize as it were spontaneously into the most beautiful forms: Latin, whether poetry or prose, derives only from consummate art and skill that graceful beauty which is the natural property of the kindred language.

Latin, also, to continue the same metaphor, has other characteristic features of hard substances—gravity, solidity, and momentum or energy. It is a fit language for embodying and expressing the thoughts of an active and practical but not an imaginative and speculative people.

But the Latin language, notwithstanding its nervous energy and constitutional vigour, has, by no means, exhibited the permanency and vitality of the Greek. The Greek language, reckoning from the earliest works extant to the present day, boasts of an existence measured by nearly one-half the duration of the human race, and yet how gradual were the changes during the classical periods, and how small, when compared with those of other European languages, the sum and result of them all! Setting aside the differences due to race and physical organization, there are no abrupt chasms, no broad lines of demarkation, between one literary period and another. The transition is gentle, slow, and gradual. The successive steps can be traced and followed out. The literary style of one period melts and is absorbed into that of the following one, just like the successive tints and colours of the prism. The Greek of the Homeric poems is not so different from that of Herodotus and Thucydides, or the tragedians or the orators, or even the authors of the later debased ages, but that the same scholar who understands the one can analyze the rest. Though separated by so many ages, the contemporaries of Demosthenes could appreciate the beauties of Homer; and the Byzantines and early Christian fathers wrote and spoke the language of the ancient Greek philosophers.

The Greek language long outlived Greek nationality. The earliest Roman historians wrote in Greek because they had as yet no native language fitter to express their thoughts. The Romans, in the time of Cicero, made Greek the foundation of a liberal education, and frequented Athens as a University for the purpose of studying Greek literature and philosophy. The great orator, in his defence of the poet Archias, informs us that Greek literature was read by almost all nations of the world, whilst Latin was still confined within very narrow boundaries. At the commencement of the Christian era Greek was so prevalent throughout the civilized world, that it was the language chosen by the Evangelists for recording the doctrines of the gospel. In the time of Hadrian, Greek was the favourite language of literary men. The Princess Anna Comnena, daughter of the Emperor Alexis, and Eustathius, the commentator on Homer, both of whom nourished in the twelfth century after the birth of Christ, are celebrated for the singular purity of their style; and, lastly, Philelphus, who lived in the fifteenth century, and had visited Constantinople, states, in a letter dated A. D. 1451, that although much bad Greek was spoken in that capital, the court, and especially the ladies, retained the dignity and elegance which characterize the purest writers of the classical ages. “Græci quibus lingua depravata non sit, et quos ipsi tum sequimur tum imitamur ita loquuntur vulgo etiam hac tempestate ut Aristophanes comicus ut Euripides tragicus, ut oratores omnes ut historiographi ut philosophi etiam ipsi et Plato et Aristoteles. Viri aulici veterem sermonis dignitatem atque elegantiam retinebant.”[^[3]]

Such was the wonderful vitality of Greek in its ancient form; and yet, strange to say, notwithstanding it clung so to existence, it seems as though it was a plant of such delicate nature, that it could only flourish under a combination of favourable circumstances. It pined and withered when separated from the living Greek intellect. It lived only where Greeks themselves lived, in their fatherland or in their colonies. It refused to take root elsewhere. Whenever in any part of the world a Greek settlement decayed, and the population became extinct, even although Greek art and science, and literature and philosophy, had found there a temporary home, the language perished also.

The Greek language could not exist when the fostering care of native genius was withdrawn: it then shrunk back again into its original dimensions, and was confined within the boundaries of its original home. When the Greeks in any place passed away, their language did not influence or amalgamate with that of the people which succeeded them. Latin, on the other hand, was propagated like the dominion of Rome by conquest; it either took the place of the language of the conquered nation, or became engrafted upon it and gradually pervaded its composition. Hence its presence is discernible in all European languages. In Spain it became united with the Celtic and Iberian as early as the period of the Gracchi: it was planted in Gaul by the conquests of Julius Cæsar, and in Britain (so far as the names of localities are concerned) by his transient expeditions; and lastly, in the reign of Trajan, it became permanently fixed in the distant regions of Dacia and Pannonia.

It is scarcely correct to term Greek a dead language. It has degenerated, but has never perished or disappeared. Its harmonious modulations are forgotten, and its delicate pronunciation is no longer heard, but Greek is still spoken at Athens. The language, of course, exhibits those features which constitute the principal difference between ancient and modern languages; prepositions and particles have supplanted affixes and inflexions, auxiliary verbs supply the gaps caused by the crumbling away of the old conjugations, and literal translations of modern modes of speech give an air of incongruity and barbarism; but still the language is upon the whole wonderfully preserved. A well-educated modern Greek would find less difficulty in understanding the writings of Xenophon than an Englishman would experience in reading Chaucer, or perhaps Spenser.

Greek has evinced not only vitality, but individuality likewise. Compared with other languages, its stream flowed pure through barbarous lands, and was but little tinged or polluted by the soil through which it passed. There is nothing of this in Latin, neither the vitality nor the power of resistance to change. Strange to say, although partially derived from the same source, its properties appear to be totally different. Latin seems to have a strong disposition to change; it readily became polished, and as readily barbarized; it had no difficulty in enriching itself with new expressions borrowed from the Greek, and conforming itself to Greek rules of taste and grammar. When it came in contact with the languages of other nations, the affinity which it had for them was so strong that it speedily amalgamated with them, but it did not so much influence them as itself receive an impress from them. It did not supersede, but it became absorbed in and was corrupted by, other tongues. Probably, as it was originally made up of many European elements, it recognised a relationship with all other languages, and therefore readily admitted of fusion together with them into a composite form. Its existence is confined within the limits of less than eight centuries. It assumed a form adapted for literary composition less than two centuries and a half before the Christian era, and it ceased to be a spoken language in the sixth century.