The following is modified from W. Martin Bloomer, 'Latinitas,' chapter 5 in The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic.
Development of Latin prose and verse styles was in great part spurred on by Roman ambitions to have a literary language that emulated Attic Greek, ambitions that largely began with a new third-century BCE Roman school culture arising from the Hellenistic world and with the development of schooltexts in Latin. Many Greek metrics and genres were adopted in Latin.
But Latin prose and new works were not just replacements: not simply variants of the language, but attitudes towards the variance.
When Latin only displaced another Italic language, Oscan, widely spoken south of Rome, after Rome’s victory in the Social Wars (89 BCE), not just because of that conquest, but because of prestige attributed to its use, Latin had become both the dialect of the Latium, the sociolect of the ruling elite, and the language of imperial and military administration.
The term ‘Latinitas’ (Latinity), referring to the quality of writing and speaking in pure Latin, & understood as either a stylistic term or a sociolinguistic term (or at times both), appeared around this time. It both distinguished "good" Latin usage from 'less-good' Latin and afforded confidence.
From the first extant censor of Latin usage, the satirist Lucilius (mid-late 2nd century BCE), through to the literary figures of the Antonine age, the masters of Latin style would claim that they employed taste and judgment and not mere system.
For Cicero, a proper Latin was a prerequisite. Varro and Quintilian provided magisterial sources of and models for Latinitas. Their methods of etymology and strictures about which words were used, and which authors were read and imitated, underpinned the new culture. Aulus Gellius and Fronto, on the other hand, made Latin literature about philology. Gellius depicted his circle walking through Rome and discussing old words found on inscriptions.
The author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium (4.17), in enumerating the three virtues of style, distinguished elegantia, compositio, and dignitas, with elegantia consisting of Latinitas and explanatio.
Development of Latin prose and verse styles was in great part spurred on by Roman ambitions to have a literary language that emulated Attic Greek, ambitions that largely began with a new third-century BCE Roman school culture arising from the Hellenistic world and with the development of schooltexts in Latin. Many Greek metrics and genres were adopted in Latin.
But Latin prose and new works were not just replacements: not simply variants of the language, but attitudes towards the variance.
When Latin only displaced another Italic language, Oscan, widely spoken south of Rome, after Rome’s victory in the Social Wars (89 BCE), not just because of that conquest, but because of prestige attributed to its use, Latin had become both the dialect of the Latium, the sociolect of the ruling elite, and the language of imperial and military administration.
The term ‘Latinitas’ (Latinity), referring to the quality of writing and speaking in pure Latin, & understood as either a stylistic term or a sociolinguistic term (or at times both), appeared around this time. It both distinguished "good" Latin usage from 'less-good' Latin and afforded confidence.
From the first extant censor of Latin usage, the satirist Lucilius (mid-late 2nd century BCE), through to the literary figures of the Antonine age, the masters of Latin style would claim that they employed taste and judgment and not mere system.
For Cicero, a proper Latin was a prerequisite. Varro and Quintilian provided magisterial sources of and models for Latinitas. Their methods of etymology and strictures about which words were used, and which authors were read and imitated, underpinned the new culture. Aulus Gellius and Fronto, on the other hand, made Latin literature about philology. Gellius depicted his circle walking through Rome and discussing old words found on inscriptions.
The author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium (4.17), in enumerating the three virtues of style, distinguished elegantia, compositio, and dignitas, with elegantia consisting of Latinitas and explanatio.
Statistics: Posted by MrMacSon — Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:32 pm