Empires of the Word - Nicholas Ostler [166]
But this respect for tradition did not extend to a particular respect for the older remnants of their language, Latin. Although the Romans’ most ancient code of laws, the famous Twelve Tables, was written in Latin, somehow no authoritative version of them survived until the end of the Republic. The Romans were unsentimental about their own language; even their closest equivalent to Holy Writ, the Sibylline Books, consulted for guidance in time of trouble, were not written in Latin, but Greek hexameter verse.
Latin was simply the language that they had grown up with; when dealing with foreigners, it was practical to use it, since the solid base of the Roman Republic meant that in negotiations foreigners were almost always in the suppliant position. The Greek language created an exception to this preference, since, as the Romans expanded their knowledge of Italy and the world beyond its shores, they discovered Greek colonies everywhere, doing business, and generally projecting a self-confident attitude, derived from an aggressively literate culture, and links with their métropóleis (’mother cities’) back in the eastern Mediterranean. And as the Romans discovered the undreamtof heights to which Greek culture had been developed, they were happy (at first) to use the Greek language for their own intellectual work rather than undertake the onerous task of trying to build up Latin to compete with it. The first known literary production by a Roman, Fabius Pictor’s history of Rome (late third century BC), was in Greek. Although there was an attempt early on to establish a literary tradition that was more traditionally Roman, with Livius Andronicus and Naevius writing their Latin epics in Saturnian metre, they failed to carry the day. Henceforth almost all Latin works were closely modelled on Greek originals.
One aspect of Greek culture found an immediate resonance in Rome. This was the respect for rhetoric, what the Romans called ars ōrātōria, the skills of persuasion, which were just as important as those of fighting and military command in these city-states (both Greek and Roman), where decisions were almost always taken by assemblies, not individuals. Training in oratory became the core of Roman higher education, students working up debates (contrōversiae) and policy speeches (suāsōriae) in the way in which nowadays they turn out essays; and the effect on Latin style was pervasive, lasting long after the decline of free institutions. Even love poetry can sound rather hectoring in Latin, a favourite trick being to turn to an imaginary audience. And poems and speeches were seen as very much the same game: in the second century AD Marcus Aper (’Mark Hogg’), a noted advocate from Gaul, was pointing out how much harder it was to get a name for oneself through poetry than through oratory, especially in the provinces.34
Latin was spread round the empire not least by the army, originally made up of citizens but into which increasingly men were enlisted from all over, and also by the common Roman policy of granting soldiers land on which to settle after their discharge. (We have already noted the role played by the army in Latinising one of their earliest poets, Ennius, originally an Oscan speaker; and how strategically placed colonies ultimately converted Cisalpine Gaul into just another part of Italy.) This never had a major effect in the eastern Mediterranean, where the lingua franca, Greek, was just too well established ever to be shaken. But in Gaul and Iberia the Roman colonies seem to have led to the eventual decline and replacement of their Celtic languages by Latin.
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