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Metropolitan Latin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2008

Roland Mayer
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Abstract

An insight into the ancient Roman origins of Western attitudes about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ usage and ‘standard’, ‘substandard’, and ‘nonstandard’ language

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , April 1997 , pp. 11 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

Notes and References

1As usual Eduard Norden got to the heart of the matter in Die antike Kunstprosa 2 (1909) i.181–4, but his brief account can be usefully expanded and modified in significant details. There is a good, short note on urbanitas in C. J. Fordyce's commentary on Catullus 39.8 (Oxford 1961), and two excellent studies by E. S. Ramage, ‘Cicero on Extra-Roman speech’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 92 (1961), 481–94, and ‘Early Roman Urbanity’, American Journal of Philology 81 (1960), 65–72.Google Scholar
2litteris doctrinaque (iii.38).Google Scholar
3 This is fragment 1130 in the edition of F. Marx (Leipzig 1904); it is drawn from Varro's treatise on the Latin language, De lingua latina vii.96.Google Scholar
4 The butt of the satire was in fact a distinguished public figure, C. Caecilius Metellus Caprarius (NB the surname means ‘Goaty’), who became consul in 113 BC.Google Scholar
5gaudere mihi uidetur grauitate linguae sonoque uocis agresti et illud quod loquitur priscum uisum iri putat si plane fuerit rusticanum (De oratore iii.42). It is curious that this issue of rusticitas in pronunciation is not to be found in the earlier Ad Herrenium.Google Scholar
6L. etiam Cotta praetorius in mediocrium oratorum numero dicendi non ita multum laude processerat, sed de industria cum uerbis turn etiam ipso sono quasi subrustico persequebatur atque imitabatur antiquitatem (Brutus §137). Further discussion with examples of his unusual pronunciation occurs at De orat, iii. 46 and at Brut. 259. Aulus Gellius, a miscellaneous writer of the second century AD, records that aspiration too was typical of the rustica uox, Noctes Atticae xiii 6.3.Google Scholar
7os urbanum in quo nulla neque rusticitas neque peregrinitas resonet (Institutio Oratoria xi. 3.30).Google Scholar
8praeter unum quod non est eorum urbanitate quadam quasi colorata oratio (Brutus 170).Google Scholar
9 This is fragment 1322 in the edition of Marx (see no. 3 above); it is derived from Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria i.5.56.Google Scholar
10nescio… tantum esse quendam scio. id tu, Brute, iam intelleges cum in Galliam ueneris; audies tum quidem etiam uerba quaedam non trita Romae, sed haec mutari dediscique possunt (Brutus §171).Google Scholar
11confluxerunt… in hanc urbem multi inquinate loquentes ex diversis locis (Brutus §258).Google Scholar
12Caecilium et Pacuvium male locutos videmus (Brutus §258).Google Scholar
13omnes tum fere qui nec extra urbem hanc vixerant… recte loquebantur (Brutus §258).Google Scholar
14malus enim auctor Latinitatis est (Epistulae ad Atticum vii.3.10).Google Scholar
15quod non discedit a communi more verborum (Orator §36).Google Scholar
16qui est iste tandem urbanitatis color? (Brutus §171).Google Scholar
17nam meo quidem iudicio illa est urbanitas in qua nihil absonum, nihil agreste, nihil inconditum, nihil peregrinum neque sensu neque uerbis neque ore gestuve possit deprehendi, ut non tam sit in singulis dictis quam in tot colore dicendi (Instituto Oratoria vi.3.107).Google Scholar
18tacita eruditio sumpta ex conversatione doctorum (Instituto Oratoria vi.3.17).Google Scholar
19quo magis expurgandus est sermo et adhibenda tamquam obrussa ratio, quae mutari non potest, nec utendum pravissima consuetudinis regula (Brutus §258).Google Scholar