The Common People of Ancient Rome Part 1

The Common People of Ancient Rome.

by Frank Frost Abbott.

Prefatory Note

This book, like the volume on "Society and Politics in Ancient Rome,"

deals with the life of the common people, with their language and literature, their occupations and amus.e.m.e.nts, and with their social, political, and economic conditions. We are interested in the common people of Rome because they made the Roman Empire what it was. They carried the Roman standards to the Euphrates and the Atlantic; they lived abroad as traders, farmers, and soldiers to hold and Romanize the provinces, or they stayed at home, working as carpenters, masons, or bakers, to supply the daily needs of the capital.

The other side of the subject which has engaged the attention of the author in studying these topics has been the many points of similarity which arise between ancient and modern conditions, and between the problems which the Roman faced and those which confront us. What policy shall the government adopt toward corporations? How can the cost of living be kept down? What effect have private benefactions on the character of a people? Shall a nation try to introduce its own language into the territory of a subject people, or shall it allow the native language to be used, and, if it seeks to introduce its own tongue, how can it best accomplish its object? The Roman attacked all these questions, solved some of them admirably, and failed with others egregiously. His successes and his failures are perhaps equally illuminating, and the fact that his attempts to improve social and economic conditions run through a period of a thousand years should make the study of them of the greater interest and value to us.

Of the chapters which this book contains, the article on "The Origin of the Realistic Romance among the Romans" appeared originally in _Cla.s.sical Philology_, and the author is indebted to the editors of that periodical for permission to reprint it here. The other papers are now published for the first time.

It has not seemed advisable to refer to the sources to substantiate every opinion which has been expressed, but a few references have been given in the foot-notes mainly for the sake of the reader who may wish to follow some subject farther than has been possible in these brief chapters. The proofs had to be corrected while the author was away from his own books, so that he was unable to make a final verification of two or three of the citations, but he trusts that they, as well as the others, are accurate.

He takes this opportunity to acknowledge his indebtedness to Dr. Donald Blythe Durham, of Princeton University, for the preparation of the index.

Frank Frost Abbott.

Einsiedeln, Switzerland _September 2, 1911_

The Common People of Ancient Rome

How Latin Became the Language of the World

How the armies of Rome mastered the nations of the world is known to every reader of history, but the story of the conquest by Latin of the languages of the world is vague in the minds of most of us. If we should ask ourselves how it came about, we should probably think of the world-wide supremacy of Latin as a natural result of the world-wide supremacy of the Roman legions or of Roman law. But in making this a.s.sumption we should be shutting our eyes to the history of our own times. A conquered people does not necessarily accept, perhaps it has not commonly accepted, the tongue of its master. In his "Ancient and Modern Imperialism" Lord Cromer states that in India only one hundred people in every ten thousand can read and write English, and this condition exists after an occupation of one hundred and fifty years or more. He adds: "There does not appear the least prospect of French supplanting Arabic in Algeria." In comparing the results of ancient and modern methods perhaps he should have taken into account the fact that India and Algeria have literatures of their own, which most of the outlying peoples subdued by Rome did not have, and these literatures may have strengthened the resistance which the tongue of the conquered people has offered to that of the conqueror, but, even when allowance is made for this fact, the difference in resultant conditions is surprising. From its narrow confines, within a little district on the banks of the Tiber, covering, at the close of the fifth century B.C., less than a hundred square miles, Latin spread through Italy and the islands of the Mediterranean, through France, Spain, England, northern Africa, and the Danubian provinces, triumphing over all the other tongues of those regions more completely than Roman arms triumphed over the peoples using them.

In tracing the story we must keep in our mind's eye the linguistic geography of Italy, just as we must remember the political geography of the peninsula in following Rome's territorial expansion. Let us think at the outset, then, of a little strip of flat country on the Tiber, dotted here and there with hills crowned with villages. Such hill towns were Rome, Tusculum, and Praeneste, for instance. Each of them was the stronghold and market-place of the country immediately about it, and therefore had a life of its own, so that although Latin was spoken in all of them it varied from one to the other. This is shown clearly enough by the inscriptions which have been found on the sites of these ancient towns,[1] and as late as the close of the third century before our era, Plautus pokes fun in his comedies at the provincialism of Praeneste.

The towns which we have mentioned were only a few miles from Rome. Beyond them, and occupying central Italy and a large part of southern Italy, were people who spoke Oscan and the other Italic dialects, which were related to Latin, and yet quite distinct from it. In the seaports of the south Greek was spoken, while the Messapians and Iapygians occupied Calabria. To the north of Rome were the mysterious Etruscans and the almost equally puzzling Venetians and Ligurians. When we follow the Roman legions across the Alps into Switzerland, France, England, Spain, and Africa, we enter a jungle, as it were, of languages and dialects. A mere reading of the list of tongues with which Latin was brought into contact, if such a list could be drawn up, would bring weariness to the flesh. In the part of Gaul conquered by Caesar, for instance, he tells us that there were three independent languages, and sixty distinct states, whose peoples doubtless differed from one another in their speech. If we look at a map of the Roman world under Augustus, with the Atlantic to bound it on the west, the Euphrates on the east, the desert of Sahara on the south, and the Rhine and Danube on the north, and recall the fact that the linguistic conditions which Caesar found in Gaul in 58 B.C. were typical of what confronted Latin in a great many of the western, southern, and northern provinces, the fact that Latin subdued all these different tongues, and became the every-day speech of these different peoples, will be recognized as one of the marvels of history. In fact, so firmly did it establish itself, that it withstood the a.s.saults of the invading Gothic, Lombardic, Frankish, and Burgundian, and has continued to hold to our own day a very large part of the territory which it acquired some two thousand years ago.

That Latin was the common speech of the western world is attested not only by the fact that the languages of France, Spain, Roumania, and the other Romance countries descend from it, but it is also clearly shown by the thousands of Latin inscriptions composed by freeman and freedman, by carpenter, baker, and soldier, which we find all over the Roman world.

How did this extraordinary result come about? It was not the conquest of the world by the common language of Italy, because in Italy in early days at least nine different languages were spoken, but its subjugation by the tongue spoken in the city of Rome. The traditional narrative of Rome, as Livy and others relate it, tells us of a struggle with the neighboring Latin hill towns in the early days of the Republic, and the ultimate formation of an alliance between them and Rome. The favorable position of the city on the Tiber for trade and defence gave it a great advantage over its rivals, and it soon became the commercial and political centre of the neighboring territory. The most important of these villages, Tusculum, Praeneste, and Lanuvium, were not more than twenty miles distant, and the people in them must have come constantly to Rome to attend the markets, and in later days to vote, to hear political speeches, and to listen to plays in the theatre. Some of them probably heard the jests at the expense of their dialectal peculiarities which Plautus introduced into his comedies. The younger generations became ashamed of their provincialisms; they imitated the Latin spoken in the metropolis, and by the second century of our era, when the Latin grammarians have occasion to cite dialectal peculiarities from Latium outside Rome, they quote at second-hand from Varro of the first century B.C., either because they will not take the trouble to use their own ears or because the differences which were noted in earlier days had ceased to exist. The first stage in the conquest of the world by the Latin of Rome comes to an end, then, with the extension of that form of speech throughout Latium.

Beyond the limits of Latium it came into contact with Oscan and the other Italic dialects, which were related to Latin, but of course were much farther removed from it than the Latin of Tusculum or Lanuvium had been,[2] so that the adoption of Latin was not so simple a matter as the acceptance of Roman Latin by the villages of Latium near Rome had been.

The conflict which went on between Latin and its Italic kinsmen is revealed to us now and then by a Latin inscription, into which Oscan or Umbrian forms have crept.[3] The struggle had come to an end by the beginning of our era. A few Oscan inscriptions are found scratched on the walls of Pompeii after the first earthquake, in 63 A.D., but they are late survivals, and no Umbrian inscriptions are known of a date subsequent to the first century B.C.

The Social War of 90-88 B.C., between Rome and the Italians, was a turning-point in the struggle between Latin and the Italic dialects, because it marks a change in the political treatment of Rome's dependencies in Italy. Up to this time she had followed the policy of isolating all her Italian conquered communities from one another. She was anxious to prevent them from conspiring against her. Thus, with this object in view, she made differences in the rights and privileges granted to neighboring communities, in order that, not being subject to the same limitations, and therefore not having the same grievances, they might not have a common basis for joint action against her. It would naturally be a part of that policy to allow or to encourage the retention by the several communities of their own dialects. The common use of Latin would have enabled them to combine against her with greater ease. With the conclusion of the Social War this policy gave way before the new conception of political unity for the people of Italian stock, and with political unity came the introduction of Latin as the common tongue in all official transactions of a local as well as of a federal character. The immediate results of the war, and the policy which Rome carried out at its close of sending out colonies and building roads in Italy, contributed still more to the larger use of Latin throughout the central and southern parts of the peninsula. Samnium, Lucania, and the territory of the Bruttii suffered severely from depopulation; many colonies were sent into all these districts, so that, although the old dialects must have persisted for a time in some of the mountain towns to the north of Rome, the years following the conclusion of the Social War mark the rapid disappearance of them and the subst.i.tution of Latin in their place. Campania took little part in the war, and was therefore left untouched. This fact accounts probably for the occurrence of a few Oscan inscriptions on the walls of Pompeii as late as 63 A.D.

We need not follow here the story of the subjugation of the Greek seaports in southern Italy and of the peoples to the north who spoke non-Italic languages. In all these cases Latin was brought into conflict with languages not related to itself, and the situation contains slightly different elements from those which present themselves in the struggle between Latin and the Italic dialects. The latter were nearly enough related to Latin to furnish some support for the theory that Latin was modified by contact with them, and this theory has found advocates,[4] but there is no sufficient reason for believing that it was materially influenced. An interesting ill.u.s.tration of the influence of Greek on the Latin of every-day life is furnished by the realistic novel which Petronius wrote in the middle of the first century of our era. The characters in his story are Greeks, and the language which they speak is Latin, but they introduce into it a great many Greek words, and now and then a Greek idiom or construction.

The Romans, as is well known, used two agencies with great effect in Romanizing their newly acquired territory, viz., colonies and roads. The policy of sending out colonists to hold the new districts was definitely entered upon in the early part of the fourth century, when citizens were sent to Antium, Tarracina, and other points in Latium. Within this century fifteen or twenty colonies were established at various points in central Italy. Strategic considerations determined their location, and the choice was made with great wisdom. Sutrium and Nepete, on the borders of the Ciminian forest, were "the gates of Etruria"; Fregellae and Interamna commanded the pa.s.sage of the river Liris; Tarentum and Rhegium were important ports of entry, while Alba Fucens and Carsioli guarded the line of the Valerian road.

This road and the other great highways which were constructed in Italy brought not only all the colonies, but all parts of the peninsula, into easy communication with the capital. The earliest of them was built to Capua, as we know, by the great censor Appius Claudius, in 312 B.C., and when one looks at a map of Italy at the close of the third century before our era, and sees the central and southern parts of the peninsula dotted with colonies, the Appian Way running from Rome south-east to Brundisium, the Popillian Way to Rhegium, the Flaminian Way north-east to Ariminum, with an extension to Cremona, with the Ca.s.sian and Aurelian ways along the western coast, the rapidity and the completeness with which the Latin language overspread Italy ceases to be a mystery. A map of Spain or of France under the Empire, with its network of roads, is equally illuminating.

The missionaries who carried Roman law, Roman dress, Roman ideas, and the Latin language first through central, southern, and northern Italy, and then to the East and the West, were the colonist, the merchant, the soldier, and the federal official. The central government exempted the Roman citizen who settled in a provincial town from the local taxes. As these were very heavy, his advantage over the native was correspondingly great, and in almost all the large towns in the Empire we find evidence of the existence of large guilds of Roman traders, tax-collectors, bankers, and land-owners.[5] When Trajan in his romantic eastern campaign had penetrated to Ctesiphon, the capital of Parthia, he found Roman merchants already settled there. Besides the merchants and capitalists who were engaged in business on their own account in the provinces, there were thousands of agents for the great Roman corporations scattered through the Empire. Rome was the money centre of the world, and the great stock companies organized to lend money, construct public works, collect taxes, and engage in the s.h.i.+pping trade had their central offices in the capital whence they sent out their representatives to all parts of the world.

The soldier played as important a part as the merchant in extending the use of Latin. Tacitus tells us that in the reign of Augustus there were twenty-five legions stationed in the provinces. If we allow 6,000 men to a legion, we should have a total of 150,000 Roman soldiers scattered through the provinces. To these must be added the auxiliary troops which were made up of natives who, at the close of their term of service, were probably able to speak Latin, and when they settled among their own people again, would carry a knowledge of it into ever-widening circles. We have no exact knowledge of the number of the auxiliary troops, but they probably came to be as numerous as the legionaries.[6] Soldiers stationed on the frontiers frequently married native women at the end of their term of service, pa.s.sed the rest of their lives in the provinces, and their children learned Latin.

The direct influence of the government was no small factor in developing the use of Latin, which was of course the official language of the Empire.

All court proceedings were carried on in Latin. It was the language of the governor, the petty official, and the tax-gatherer. It was used in laws and proclamations, and no native could aspire to a post in the civil service unless he had mastered it. It was regarded sometimes at least as a _sine qua non_ of the much-coveted Roman citizens.h.i.+p. The Emperor Claudius, for instance, cancelled the Roman citizens.h.i.+p of a Greek, because he had addressed a letter to him in Latin which he could not understand. The tradition that Latin was the official language of the world was taken up by the Christian church. Even when Constantine presided over the Council at Nicaea in the East, he addressed the a.s.sembly in Latin.

The two last-mentioned agencies, the Latin of the Roman official and the Latin of the church, were the influences which made the language spoken throughout the Empire essentially uniform in its character. Had the Latin which the colonist, the merchant, and the soldier carried through Italy and into the provinces been allowed to develop in different localities without any external unifying influence, probably new dialects would have grown up all over the world, or, to put it in another way, probably the Romance languages would have come into existence several centuries before they actually appeared. That unifying influence was the Latin used by the officials sent out from Rome, which all cla.s.ses eagerly strove to imitate.

Naturally the language of the provinces did not conform in all respects to the Roman standard. Apuleius, for instance, is aware of the fact that his African style and diction are likely to offend his Roman readers, and in the introduction to his _Metamorphoses_ he begs for their indulgence. The elder Seneca in his _Controversiae_ remarks of a Spanish fellow-countryman "that he could never unlearn that well-known style which is brusque and rustic and characteristic of Spain," and Spartia.n.u.s in his Life of Hadrian tells us that when Hadrian addressed the senate on a certain occasion, his rustic p.r.o.nunciation excited the laughter of the senators. But the peculiarities in the diction of Apuleius and Hadrian seem to have been those which only a cultivated man of the world would notice. They do not appear to have been fundamental. In a similar way the careful studies which have been made of the thousands of inscriptions found in the West[7], dedicatory inscriptions, guild records, and epitaphs show us that the language of the common people in the provinces did not differ materially from that spoken in Italy. It was the language of the Roman soldier, colonist, and trader, with common characteristics in the way of diction, form, phraseology, and syntax, dropping into some slight local peculiarities, but kept essentially a unit by the desire which each community felt to imitate its officials and its upper cla.s.ses.

The one part of the Roman world in which Latin did not gain an undisputed pre-eminence was the Greek East. The Romans freely recognized the peculiar position which Greek was destined to hold in that part of the Empire, and styled it the _altera lingua_. Even in Greek lands, however, Latin gained a strong hold, and exerted considerable influence on Greek[8].

In a very thoughtful paper on "Language-Rivalry and Speech-Differentiation in the Case of Race-Mixture,"[9] Professor Hempl has discussed the conditions under which language-rivalry takes place, and states the results that follow. His conclusions have an interesting bearing on the question which we are discussing here, how and why it was that Latin supplanted the other languages with which it was brought into contact.

He observes that when two languages are brought into conflict, there is rarely a compromise or fusion, but one of the two is driven out of the field altogether by the other. On a.n.a.lyzing the circ.u.mstances in which such a struggle for supremacy between languages springs up, he finds four characteristic cases. Sometimes the armies of one nation, though comparatively small in numbers, conquer another country. They seize the government of the conquered land; their ruler becomes its king, and they become the aristocracy. They const.i.tute a minority, however; they identify their interests with those of the conquered people, and the language of the subject people becomes the language of all cla.s.ses. The second case arises when a country is conquered by a foreign people who pour into it with their wives and children through a long period and settle permanently there. The speech of the natives in these circ.u.mstances disappears. In the third case a more powerful people conquers a country, establishes a dependent government in it, sends out merchants, colonists, and officials, and establishes new towns. If such a province is held long enough, the language of the conqueror prevails. In the fourth and last case peaceful bands of immigrants enter a country to follow the humbler callings. They are scattered among the natives, and succeed in proportion as they learn the language of their adopted country. For their children and grandchildren this language becomes their mother tongue, and the speech of the invaded nation holds its ground.

The first typical case is ill.u.s.trated by the history of Norman-French in England, the second by that of the European colonists in America; the Latinization of Spain, Gaul, and other Roman provinces furnishes an instance of the third, and our own experience with European immigrants is a case of the fourth characteristic situation. The third typical case of language-conflict is the one with which we are concerned here, and the a.n.a.lysis which we have made of the practices followed by the Romans in occupying newly acquired territory, both in Italy and outside the peninsula, shows us how closely they conform to the typical situation.

With the exception of Dacia, all the provinces were held by the Romans for several centuries, so that their history under Roman rule satisfies the condition of long occupation which Professor Hempl lays down as a necessary one. Dacia which lay north of the Danube, and was thus far removed from the centres of Roman influence, was erected into a province in 107 A.D., and abandoned in 270. Notwithstanding its remoteness and the comparatively short period during which it was occupied, the Latin language has continued in use in that region to the present day. It furnishes therefore a striking ill.u.s.tration of the effective methods which the Romans used in Latinizing conquered territory.[10]

We have already had occasion to notice that a fusion between Latin and the languages with which it was brought into contact, such a fusion, for instance, as we find in Pidgin-English, did not occur. These languages influenced Latin only by way of making additions to its vocabulary. A great many Greek scientific and technical terms were adopted by the learned during the period of Roman supremacy. Of this one is clearly aware, for instance, in reading the philosophical and rhetorical works of Cicero. A few words, like rufus, crept into the language from the Italic dialects. Now and then the Keltic or Iberian names of Gallic or Spanish articles were taken up, but the inflectional system and the syntax of Latin retained their integrity. In the post-Roman period additions to the vocabulary are more significant. It is said that about three hundred Germanic words have found their way into all the Romance languages.[11]

The language of the province of Gaul was most affected since some four hundred and fifty Gothic, Lombardic, and Burgundian words are found in French alone, such words as boulevard, homard, and blesser. Each of the provinces of course, when the Empire broke up, was subjected to influences peculiar to itself. The residence of the Moors in Spain, for seven hundred years, for instance, has left a deep impress on the Spanish vocabulary, while the geographic position of Roumanian has exposed it to the influence of Slavic, Albanian, Greek, Magyar, and Turkish.[12] A sketch of the history of Latin after the breaking up of the Empire carries us beyond the limits of the question which we set ourselves at the beginning and out of the domain of the Latinist, but it may not be out of place to gather together here a few of the facts which the Romance philologist has contributed to its later history, because the life of Latin has been continuous from the foundation of the city of Rome to the present day.

In this later period the question of paramount interest is, why did Latin in one part of the world develop into French, in another part into Italian, in another into Spanish? One answer to this question has been based on chronological grounds.[13] The Roman soldiers and traders who went out to garrison and to settle in a newly acquired territory, introduced that form of Latin which was in use in Italy at the time of their departure from the peninsula. The form of speech thus planted there developed along lines peculiar to itself, became the dialect of that province, and ultimately the (Romance) language spoken in that part of Europe. Sardinia was conquered in 241 B.C., and Sardinian therefore is a development of the Latin spoken in Italy in the middle of the third century B.C., that is of the Latin of Livius Andronicus. Spain was brought under Roman rule in 197 B.C., and consequently Spanish is a natural outgrowth of popular Latin of the time of Plautus. In a similar way, by noticing the date at which the several provinces were established down to the acquisition of Dacia in 107 A.D., we shall understand how it was that the several Romance languages developed out of Latin. So long as the Empire held together the unifying influence of official Latin, and the constant intercommunication between the provinces, preserved the essential unity of Latin throughout the world, but when the bonds were broken, the naturally divergent tendencies which had existed from the beginning, but had been held in check, made themselves felt, and the speech of the several sections of the Old World developed into the languages which we find in them to-day.

This theory is suggestive, and leads to several important results, but it is open to serious criticism, and does not furnish a sufficient explanation. It does not seem to take into account the steady stream of emigrants from Italy to the provinces, and the constant transfer of troops from one part of the world to another of which we become aware when we study the history of any single province or legion. Spain was acquired, it is true, in 197 B.C., and the Latin which was first introduced into it was the Latin of Plautus, but the subjugation of the country occupied more than sixty years, and during this period fresh troops were steadily poured into the peninsula, and later on there was frequently an interchange of legions between Spain and the other provinces. Furthermore, new communities of Roman citizens were established there even down into the Empire, and traders were steadily moving into the province. In this way it would seem that the Latin of the early second century which was originally carried into Spain must have been constantly undergoing modification, and, so far as this influence goes, made approximately like the Latin spoken elsewhere in the Empire.

A more satisfactory explanation seems to be that first clearly propounded by the Italian philologist, Ascoli. His reasoning is that when we acquire a foreign language we find it very difficult, and often impossible, to master some of the new sounds. Our ears do not catch them exactly, or we unconsciously subst.i.tute for the foreign sound some sound from our own language. Our vocal organs, too, do not adapt themselves readily to the reproduction of the strange sounds in another tongue, as we know from the difficulty which we have in p.r.o.nouncing the French nasal or the German guttural. Similarly English differs somewhat as it is spoken by a Frenchman, a German, and an Italian. The Frenchman has a tendency to import the nasal into it, and he is also inclined to p.r.o.nounce it like his own language, while the German favors the guttural. In a paper on the teaching of modern languages in our schools, Professor Grandgent says:[14]

"Usually there is no attempt made to teach any French sounds but _u_ and the four nasal vowels; all the rest are unquestioningly replaced by the English vowels and consonants that most nearly resemble them." The subst.i.tution of sounds from one's own language in speaking a foreign tongue, and the changes in voice-inflection, are more numerous and more marked if the man who learns the new language is uneducated and acquires it in casual intercourse from an uneducated man who speaks carelessly.

This was the state of things in the Roman provinces of southern Europe when the Goths, Lombards, and other peoples from the North gradually crossed the frontier and settled in the territory of Latin-speaking peoples. In the sixth century, for instance, the Lombards in Italy, the Franks in France, and the Visigoths in Spain would each give to the Latin which they spoke a twist peculiar to themselves, and out of the one Latin came Italian, out of the second, the language of France, and out of the third, Spanish. This initial impulse toward the development of Latin along different lines in Italy, France, and Spain was, of course, reinforced by differences in climate, in the temperaments of the three peoples, in their modes of life, and in their political and social experiences. These centrifugal forces, so to speak, became effective because the political and social bonds which had held Italy, France, and Spain together were now loosened, and consequently communication between the provinces was less frequent, and the standardizing influence of the official Latin of Rome ceased to keep Latin a uniform thing throughout the Empire.

One naturally asks why Latin survived at all, why the languages of the victorious Germanic peoples gave way to it. In reply to this question it is commonly said that the fittest survived, that the superiority of Roman civilization and of the Latin language gave Latin the victory. So far as this factor is to be taken into account, I should prefer to say that it was not so much the superiority of Latin, although that may be freely recognized, as it was the sentimental respect which the Germans and their leaders had for the Empire and for all its inst.i.tutions. This is shown clearly enough, for instance, in the pride which the Visigothic and Frankish kings showed in holding their commissions from Rome, long after Rome had lost the power to enforce its claims upon them; it is shown in their use of Latin as the language of the court and of the official world.

Under the influence of this sentiment Germanic rulers and their peoples imitated the Romans, and, among other things, took over their language.

The church probably exerted considerable influence in this direction. Many of the Germans had been converted to Christianity before they entered the Empire, and had heard Latin used in the church services and in the hymns.

Among cultivated people of different countries, it was the only medium of communication, and was accepted as the lingua franca of the political and ecclesiastical world, and the traditional medium of expression for literary and legal purposes.

Perhaps, however, one element in the situation should be given more weight than any of the facts just mentioned. Many of the barbarians had been allowed to settle in a more or less peaceful fas.h.i.+on in Roman territory, so that a large part of the western world came into their possession by way of gradual occupation rather than by conquest.[15] They became peasant proprietors, manual laborers, and soldiers in the Roman army. Perhaps, therefore, their occupation of central and southern Europe bears some resemblance to the peaceful invasion of this country by immigrants from Europe, and they may have adopted Latin just as the German or Scandinavian adopts English.

This brings us to the last important point in our inquiry. What is the date before which we shall call the language of the Western Empire Latin, and after which it is better to speak of French, Spanish, and Italian?

Such a line of division cannot be sharply drawn, and will in a measure be artificial, because, as we shall attempt to show in the chapter which follows on the "Latin of the Common People," Latin survives in the Romance languages, and has had a continuous life up to the present day. But on practical grounds it is convenient to have such a line of demarcation in mind, and two attempts have been made to fix it. One attempt has been based on linguistic grounds, the other follows political changes more closely. Up to 700 A.D. certain common sound-changes take place in all parts of the western world.[16] After that date, roughly speaking, this is not the case. Consequently at that time we may say that unity ceased. The other method of approaching the subject leads to essentially the same conclusion, and shows us why unity ceased to exist.[17] In the sixth century the Eastern Emperor Justinian conceived the idea of reuniting the Roman world, and actually recovered and held for a short time Italy, southern Spain, and Africa. This attempt on his part aroused a national spirit among the peoples of these lands, and developed in them a sense of their national independence and individuality. They threw off the foreign yoke and became separate peoples, and developed, each of them, a language of its own. Naturally this sentiment became effective at somewhat different periods in different countries. For France the point may be fixed in the sixth century, for Spain and Italy, in the seventh, and at these dates Latin may be said to take the form of French, Spanish, and Italian.

The Latin of the Common People

Unless one is a professional philologist he feels little interest in the language of the common people. Its peculiarities in p.r.o.nunciation, syntax, phraseology, and the use of words we are inclined to avoid in our own speech, because they mark a lack of cultivation. We test them by the standards of polite society, and ignore them, or condemn them, or laugh at them as abnormal or illogical or indicative of ignorance. So far as literature goes, the speech of the common people has little interest for us because it is not the recognized literary medium. These two reasons have prevented the average man of cultivated tastes from giving much attention to the way in which the ma.s.ses speak, and only the professional student has occupied himself with their language. This is unfortunate because the speech of the common people has many points of interest, and, instead of being illogical, is usually much more rigid in its adherence to its own accepted principles than formal speech is, which is likely to be influenced by convention or conventional a.s.sociations. To take an ill.u.s.tration of what I have in mind, the ending _-s_ is the common mark in English of a plural form. For instance, "caps," "maps," "lines," and "places" are plurals, and the corresponding singular forms are "cap,"

"map," "line," and "place." Consequently, granted the underlying premise, it is a perfectly logical and eminently scientific process from the forms "relapse" (p.r.o.nounced, of course, "relaps") and "species" to postulate a corresponding singular, and speak of "a relap" and "a specie," as a negro of my acquaintance regularly does. "Scrope" and "lept," as preterites of "sc.r.a.pe" and "leap," are correctly formed on the a.n.a.logy of "broke" and "crept," but are not used in polite society.