(iii.) The curious construction of the gerundive (ad capiendam urbem), originally a present (and future?) passive participle, but restricted in its use by being linked with the so-called gerund (see § 32, b). The use, but probably not the restriction, appears in Oscan and Umbrian.
(iv.) The favourite use of the impersonal passive has already been mentioned (§ 5, iv.).
35. The chief authorities for the study of Latin syntax are: Brugmann’s Kurze vergl. Grammatik, vol. ii. (see § 28); Landgraf’s Historische lat. Syntax (vol. ii. of the joint Hist. Gram., see § 28); Hale and Buck’s Latin Grammar (see § 28); Draeger’s Historische lat. Syntax, 2 vols. (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1878-1881), useful but not always trustworthy; the Latin sections in Delbrück’s Vergleichende Syntax, being the third volume of Brugmann’s Grundriss (§ 28).
IV. Importation of Greek Words
36. It is convenient, before proceeding to describe the development of the language in its various epochs, to notice briefly the debt of its vocabulary to Greek, since it affords an indication of the steadily increasing influence of Greek life and literature upon the growth of the younger idiom. Corssen (Lat. Aussprache, ii. 814) pointed out four different stages in the process, and though they are by no means sharply divided in time, they do correspond to different degrees and kinds of intercourse.
(a) The first represents the period of the early intercourse of Rome with the Greek states, especially with the colonies in the south of Italy and Sicily. To this stage belong many names of nations, countries and towns, as Siculi, Tarentum, Graeci, Achivi, Poenus; and also names of weights and measures, articles of industry and terms connected with navigation, as mina, talentum, purpura, patina, ancora, aplustre, nausea. Words like amurca, scutula, pessulus, balineum, tarpessita represent familiarity with Greek customs and bear equally the mark of naturalization. To these may be added names of gods or heroes, like Apollo, Pollux and perhaps Hercules. These all became naturalized Latin words and were modified by the phonetic changes which took place in the Latin language after they had come into it (cf. §§ 9-27 supra). (b) The second stage was probably the result of the closer intercourse resulting from the conquest of southern Italy, and the wars in Sicily, and of the contemporary introduction of imitations of Greek literature into Rome, with its numerous references to Greek life and culture. It is marked by the free use of hybrid forms, whether made by the addition of Latin suffixes to Greek stems as ballistārius, hēpatārius, subbasilicānus, sycophantiōsus, cōmissārī or of Greek suffixes to Latin stems as plāgipatidas, pernōnides; or by derivation, as thermopōtāre, supparasītāri; or by composition as ineuschēmē, thyrsigerae, flagritribae, scrophipascī. The character of many of these words shows that the comic poets who coined them must have been able to calculate upon a fair knowledge of colloquial Greek on the part of a considerable portion of their audience. The most remarkable instance of this is supplied by the burlesque lines in Plautus (Pers. 702 seq.), where Sagaristio describes himself as
| Vaniloquidorus, Virginisvendonides, Nugipiloquides, Argentumexterebronides, Tedigniloquides, Nummosexpalponides, Quodsemelarripides, Nunquameripides. |
During this period Greek words are still generally inflected according to the Latin usage.
(c) But with Accius (see below) begins a third stage, in which the Greek inflexion is frequently preserved, e.g. Hectora, Oresten, Cithaeron; and from this time forward the practice wavers. Cicero generally prefers the Latin case-endings, defending, e.g., Piraeeum as against Piraeea (ad Att. vii. 3, 7), but not without some fluctuation, while Varro takes the opposite side, and prefers poëmasin to the Ciceronian poëmatis. By this time also y and z were introduced, and the representation of the Greek aspirates by th, ph, ch, so that words newly borrowed from the Greek could be more faithfully reproduced. This is equally true whatever was the precise nature of the sound which at that period the Greek aspirates had reached in their secular process of change from pure aspirates (as in Eng. ant-hill, &c.) to fricatives (like Eng. th in thin). (See Arnold and Conway, The Restored Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, 4th ed., Cambridge, 1908, p. 21.)
(d) A fourth stage is marked by the practice of the Augustan poets, who, especially when writing in imitation of Greek originals, freely use the Greek inflexions, such as Arcaděs, Tethŷ, Aegida, Echūs, &c. Horace probably always used the Latin form in his Satires and Epistles, the Greek in his Odes. Later prose writers for the most part followed the example of his Odes. It must be added, however, in regard to these literary borrowings that it is not quite clear whether in this fourth class, and even in the unmodified forms in the preceding class, the words had really any living use in spoken Latin.