Some Very Odd Latin

Extract

The lives of the Emperors from Hadrian to Carus, usually grouped together under the title of Scriptores Historiae Augustae, offer a strange problem to the historian. They purport to be addressed to the Emperors Diocletian and Constantine and to be the work of six distinct writers, Aelius Spartianus, Julius Capitolinus, Vulcacius Gallicanus, Aelius Lampridius, Trebellius Pollio, and Flavius Vopiscus. In fact, they betray occasional evidences of a much later date—whether the age of Julian the Apostate, the age of Theodosius the Great, or one later still. There seems to be a growing agreement that the six independent authors are not to be taken too seriously—at least, that the work, based on material of various dates, finally saw the light through the agency of a single editor. Let us, however, leave the headaches to the historians and see if we can find a laugh for the latinist amid the strange variations of idiom which our mysterious historians permit themselves. The oddest usages probably belong to the hypothetical ‘final’ editor: but even oddity has its variations and I seem to detect such variations here. It should be a serious task for some student of Latin to investigate the problem of date from the linguistic point of view.

There is a strange freedom in the use of cases. Accusative of motion towards is not limited to ‘towns and small islands’: civitatem veniens ‘coming to the city’ (Severus 22. 6), Asiam primum venit (Gallicanus 2. 6), orientem redire (Alexander Severus 63. 5). In with accusative is found where in with ablative is expected: habet in potestatem Thracios (Claudius 15. 2), dispatches quae in urbem ingentem laetitiam fecerunt (Maximinus 24. 6), or we may find ablatives where we expect accusatives: in loco Maximini Gordianus sufficiatus (Maximinus 26. 4).