LATIN LANGUAGE 333
speech of C. Fannius against C. Gracchus, which Cicero considered the best of all orations of the time. No small part of the urbanitas consisted in a pronunciation equally removed from boorish roughness and from foreign affectations; and the standard of this was found in the language of the women of the upper classes, such as Lælia and Cornelia.
In the earliest continuous prose work which remains to us, the four books De Rhetorica ad Herennium, we find the language already almost indistinguishable from that of Cicero. There has been much discussion as to the authorship of this work, now commonly, without very convincing reasons, ascribed to Q. Cornificius; but, among the numerous arguments which prove that it cannot have been the work of Cicero, none has been adduced of any importance drawn from the character of the language. It is worth while noticing that not only is the style in itself perfectly finished, but the treatment of the subject of style, elocutio (iv. 12, 17), shows the pains which had already been given to the question. The writer lays down three chief requisites – (1) elegantia, (2) compositio, and (3) dignitas. Under the first come Latinitas, a due avoidance of solecisms and barbarisms, and explanatio, clearness, the employment of familiar and appropriate expressions. The second demands a proper arrangement, free from hiatus, alliteration, rhyme, the repetition or displacement of words, and too long sentences. Dignity depends upon the selection of language and of sentiments.
Characteristics of Latin prose.
Hence we see that by the time of Cicero Latin prose was fully developed. We may, therefore, pause here to notice the characteristic qualities of the language at its most perfect stage. The Latin critics were themselves fully conscious of the broad distinction in character between their own language and the Greek. Seneca dwells upon the stately and dignified movement of the Latin period, and uses for Cicero the happy epithet of gradarius. He allows to the Greeks gratia, but claims potentia for his own countrymen. Quiutilian (xii. 10, 27 sq.) concedes to Greek more euphony and variety both of vocalization and of accent; he admits that Latin words are harsher in sound, and often less happily adapted to the expression of varying shades of meaning. But he too claims "power" as the distinguishing mark of his own language. Feeble thought may be carried off by the exquisite harmony and subtleness of Greek diction; his countrymen must aim at fulness and weight of ideas if they are not to be beaten off the field. The Greek authors are like lightly moving skiffs; the Romans spread wider sails and are wafted by stronger breezes; hence the deeper waters suit them. It is not that the Latin language fails to respond to the calls that are made upon it. Lucretius and Cicero concur, it is true, in complaints of the poverty of their native language; but this was only because they had had no predecessors in the task of adapting it to philosophic utterance; and the long life of Latin technical terms like qualitas, species, genus, ratio, shows how well the need was met when it arose. Mr Munro has said admirably of this very period: –
"The living Latin for all the higher forms of composition, both prose and verse, was a far nobler language than the living Greek. During the long period of Grecian pre-eminence and literary glory, from Homer to Demosthenes, all the manifold forms of poetry and prose which were invented one after the other were brought to such exquisite perfection that their beauty of form and grace of language were never afterwards rivalled by Latin or any other people. But hardly had Demosthenes and Aristotle ceased to live when that Attic which had been gradually formed into such a noble instrument of thought in the hands of Aristophanes, Euripides, Plato, and the orators, and had superseded for general use all the other dialects, became at the same time the language of the civilized world and was stricken with a mortal decay. ... Epicurus, who was born in the same year as Menander, writes a harsh jargon that does not deserve to be called a style; and others of whose writings anything is left entire or in fragments, historians and philosophers alike, Polybius, Chrysippus, Philodemus, are little if any better. When Cicero deigns to translate any of their sentences, see what grace and life he instils into their clumsily expressed thoughts, how satisfying to the ear and taste are the periods of Livy when he is putting into Latin the heavy and uncouth clauses of Polybius! This may explain what Cicero means when at one time he gives to Greek the preference over Latin, at another to Latin over Greek; in reading Sophocles or Plato he could acknowledge their unrivalled excellence; in translating Panætius or Philodemus he would feel his own immeasurable superiority."
The greater number of long syllables, combined with
the paucity of diphthongs and the consequent monotony
of vocalization, and the uniformity of the accent, lent a
weight and dignity of movement to the language which
well suited the national gravitas. The precision of
grammatical rules and the entire absence of dialectic forms
from the written literature contributed to maintain the
character of unity which marked the Roman republic as
compared with the multiplicity of Greek states. It was
remarked by Bacon that artistic and imaginative nations
indulge freely in verbal compounds, practical nations in
simple concrete terms. In this respect, too, Latin con
trasts with Greek. The attempts made by some of the
earlier poets to indulge in novel compounds was felt to be
out of harmony with the genius of the language. Com
position, though necessarily employed, was kept within
narrow limits, and the words thus produced have a sharply
defined meaning, wholly unlike the poetical vagueness of
some of the Greek compounds. The vocabulary of the
language, though receiving accessions from time to time in
accordance with practical needs, was rarely enriched by
the products of a spontaneous creativeness. In literature
the taste of the educated town circles gave the law; and
these, trained in the study of the Greek masters of style,
required something which should reproduce for them the
harmony of the Greek period. Happily the orators who
gave form to the Latin prose were able to meet the demand
without departing from the spirit of their own language,
and the periods of Cicero and Livy, though very different
in structure from those of Plato and Demosthenes, are not
less satisfying to the ear, or less adequate to the full
expression of thought.
Cicero and Cæsar.
To Cicero especially the Romans owed the realization of what was possible to their language in the way of artistic finish of style. He represents a protest at one and the same time against the inroads of the plebeius sermo, vulgarized by the constant influx of non-Italian provincials into Rome, and the "jargon of spurious and partial culture" in vogue among the Roman pupils of the Asiatic rhetoricians. His essential service was to have caught the tone and style of the true Roman urbanitas, and to have fixed it in extensive and widely read speeches and treatises as the final model of classical prose. The influence of Cæsar was wholly in the same direction. His cardinal principle was that every new-fangled and affected expression, from whatever quarter it might come, should be avoided by the writer, as rocks by the mariner. His own style for straightforward simplicity and purity has never been surpassed; and it is not without full reason that Cicero and Cæsar are regarded as the models of classical prose. But, while they fixed the type of the best Latin, they did not and could not alter its essential character. In subtlety, in suggestiveness, in many-sided grace and versatility, it remained far inferior to the Greek. But for dignity and force, for cadence and rhythm, for clearness and precision, the best Latin prose remains unrivalled. These qualities make it pre-eminently the language of legislation and of commerce. There is no haziness about a Latin sentence; directness, concreteness, and lucidity stamp it as the utterance of men who knew precisely what they wished to say, and said it with all the force at their command.
