This sentence rattles on unhaltingly through “and’s” and “that’s” for a solid page before it falls down to a stop from sheer exhaustion.
After the battle was over we have the Authorized Version with its magnificent directness:
The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee; but the word shall be to thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.
Briefly, the parallel between early Latin and early English prose can be indicated thus. The prose of Ennius, like that of Chaucer, was very much inferior to his verse. Before Ennius died, however, the mighty struggle of statesmen had begun in the polemics of Cato, a contest which was destined to build up in time a dignified and versatile language. Cato represented the native, middle-class, agrarian population of Italy that feared the expensive and ambitious foreign entanglements which the philhellenic party of Scipio had incurred and hated the foreign culture which followed in the wake of philhellenism. Cato spoke incessantly. A hundred and fifty of his speeches were available in Cicero’s day. He attacked the Scipionic group in the senate, in public harangues, and in court. And not only he but his lieutenants—and of course his opponents—had constantly to be on their feet. This was the beginning of the party divisions that led through the Gracchan reforms and through the debating period of the civil wars to the final defeat of the Roman Republic a hundred years later. The contest of words was as bitter as in the England of Wycliffe, Tindall, Cranmer, Latimer, and Hooker. Here, too, the best intellects of the nation were exercised in the debate; here, too, the gravity of the theme and the demands of aristocratic audiences required dignified expression, while the constant necessity of winning the populace required entire clarity and lucidity of expression. The struggle was not indeed for eternal salvation, but it often involved the question of life and death, and always the future of the state. And from men like Cato, the Gracchi, Cicero and Brutus, the state claimed and won a devotion more intense than religion could. Thus there is a certain similarity between the growth of Latin prose from Ennius to Cicero and that of English from Chaucer to Hooker. And though Greek rhetorical theory and models were factors in shaping Latin prose, as Roman theory and models were factors in shaping English, it seems to me quite probable that both languages would have taken the course they did without those models, for both were determined by forensic expression, by great causes, and by intense devotion to those causes on the part of the most intelligent men of their day.
In following the evolution of Latin prose[5] we unfortunately have to deal largely with fragments quoted by later writers, and we cannot always be sure that these fragments are representative. For our purposes however they may legitimately be considered so. Before Ennius’ time very few speeches had actually been published. Cicero had at hand an old oration of Appius Claudius of about 281 B.C. and some funerary laudations, but he did not think either worth considering in a history of oratory. So far as we know, written prose documents before these were confined to laws, treaties, and meager official records. The fragments of the Twelve Tables (450 B.C.) are too scanty to afford any basis for judging style. Some of them are so wanting in lucidity, because of an ambiguous use of pronominal subjects, that a modern lawyer might readily manipulate them to prove any point. A few fourth- and third-century inscriptions from headstones and votive tablets[6] contain only blunt sentences which reveal chiefly an obvious desire to save the expense of stone-cutting. They do however show the native Latin word order and its fondness for the deferred verb. Orcevia Numeri (uxor) nationu gratia, Fortuna Diovo fileia primogenia donum dedi. This is of course a tendency in all inflected languages where the verb can be postponed till the subject and object have been visualized, since the inflectional endings indicate the direction of the verbal action. And in Latin, the hierarchy of what is important can be and was recognized by the word order. “Orcevia, Numerius’ wife, for the gift of childbirth, to Fortuna, Jove’s daughter the firstborn, this gift I give.” Strictly speaking Cicero’s best-shaped sentence is not more periodic than that colloquial tablet of a humble woman a century before any Roman scholar thought of studying style. It was not the study of Greek that determined the form of Latin prose.
The Duilian inscription of 260 B.C.—doubtless authentic in the main though found in an imperial copy[7]—is our only pre-Ennian fragment of prose that contains several complete sentences. This inscription is far more fulsome and boastful than the modest Scipionic epitaphs of two generations later, a fact probably due to Duilius’ sojourn in Sicily where he could see verbose honorary tablets at every hand. In spirit and content it is Sicilian, but its phrasing and diction are normal Latin. Its longest sentence is rambling, badly coordinated and illogically constructed despite its periodic placement of the verbs. The man who composed it had no feeling for lapidary style:
enque eodem mac [istratud bene]
[r]em navebos marid consol primos c[eset copiasque]
[c]lasesque navales primos ornavet pa[ravetque],