1959. Late Latin.pdf

INSTITUTTET

FO R SA�\IE N LI GN E,D E K UL T URFORS K N IN G

EINAR LOFSTEDT

OSLO 195 9

H. ASCHEHO;G & co .. w. NYG_� • \RD)

LONDON

KEGA:" P:\UL, lREXCH

TRUB�ER : co . . L TO.

\VIESBADEN

OITO HARR.\;'OWITZ

PARIS

SOC.T: D'�DITION

.LES DELLES LETTRES.

CAlIBRlDGE. �IASS.

H.\RVARD UXIVER',TV PRE:�

PREFACE

In 1937 the Board of The Institute for Comparative Research in Human

Culture decided to arrange a series of lectures dealing with the �Iigration period

(400-800 A.D.) extending over several years. Because of the war, the exe

cution of the project had to be postponed until 19}6. In connection with the

lectures on the philosophical and linguistic aspects of the period in question,

Professor Einar Lofstedt of Lund University, Sweden, was invited to give a

series of lectures at this Institute in 1951, on Late Latin. The state of his health

prevented him, however, from delivering the lectures, but he agreed most

kindly to the Institute's proposal to have th em published. Professor L6fstedt

worked on the manuscript until his death in 1955. Ccnsidering the care with

which the famous scholar prepared the publication of all his contributions to

classical philology, it was not without apprehension that the Institute accepted

the responsibility of publishing the present work wiThout the author's coopera

tion. We extend out most sincere th anks to Dr. James Willis who has under

taken the translation of the book into English from the Swedish manuscript,

and to Mr. Vegard Skanland, M.A., who has been in charge of the proofreading,

to �lrs. L6fstedt, Professor Harald Hagendahl, and to \Irs. T. B. L. Webster,

for assistance and advice. ,Ve hope that the results of our efforts will not be

judged unworthy of the great scholar whose death was so deeply felt in the

learned world.

CONTENTS

Page

PREFACE • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

CONTEXTS .........•........•...•.....•..•...................•...

Vll

CH. I .

PRELI\II�ARY REMARKS ............................... .

CH. II.

LATE LAT!, VULGAR LATIN, ROMAXCE ...••.•..•.......

CH. Ill.

LOCAL VARIATION I! LATIN ..............•.•..••..••...

3 9

CH. IV.

:MEDIEVAL LATIN .....................•.....•..•.......

CH. V.

THE CHRISTIA! INFLUENCE .........•.•.•.••..••..••...

CH. VI.

THE INFLUENCE OF GREEK .................•..•...•...

CH. VII.

SO)IE CHANGES IN THE NOMIXAL SySTEM ....••.•••••....

120

CH. VIII.

CHANGES IN THE MEANING OF ,YORDS ......•......•....

143

CH. I X .

SO>IE PREPOSITIONS AND PARTICLES .........•..••.•.... 163

CH.

TABOO, EUPHEMISM, AND PRDlITIVE CONCEPTIONS

IN LANGUAGE ... ... ............. . ..... . ........ . ...... 181

LITERATURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 195

INDICES

1. Index rerum ................................................ 202

2. Index verborum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 203

Latin, Romance. Greek

3. Index locorum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 209

CHAPTER 1.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS

To give within a few short chapters any adequate or lively characterization

of what is commonly called La t e La tin, is no easy task. One great dif

ficulty arises from the disparate levels of achievement in late Roman literature,

embracing as it does works of pellIlanent value and retched compilations

- the Confessions of Augustine and the }Iulomedicina Chironis, the Corpus

Juris Civilis and the chronicles of Jordanes, the finest of Prudentius' hymns

together with the artless, often moving, sometimes scarcely intelligible verses

in which workmen, soldiers, and freedmen from all corners of the empire

strove towards self-expression. To bring ll these literary or subliterary cre

ations, ithin the ambit of a single definition is barely possible.

It is no less difficult, and perhaps more important from the historical stand

point, to detelllline when Late Latin begins and ends. In literature the great

Roman tradition ends "�th Tacitus. Apuleius, bon about 125, is already the

representative of a different style: shifting, iridescent, borrowing freely from

poetry, deliberately archaizing, strongly influenced by Greek and, in the

11etamorphoses, by the realistic narrative style of the prose romance, from

which it draws certain popular elements of its language. Whether we are

to make Late Latin start with Apuleius, Gellius, and Fronto, or - perhaps

more plausibly - to refer it to the age of Tertullian and the earliest martyro

logies, that is, around or shortly before 20, is a question of terminology rather

than of substance. In the world of language there are no sudden transitions;

the aphorism of COLLlNGWOOD cuts as sharply here as elsewhere: "There are

in history no beginning, and no endings. History books begin and end, but

the events they describe do not."

CHAPTER O\E

This "salutary warning," as it has been called,' deserves to be borne in

mind particularly when considering the much-disputed and difficult question,

when Late Latin came to an end, that is to say, when Latin ceased to be in

any real sense a living language, and the Romance languages began. That this

development was gradual and very slow is at once apparent, and therefore

it is not possible to draw a sharp dividing line, but only an approximation

to one. The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, taking as its object a comprehensive

presentation - as far as may be - of the great mass of Latin literature, in

general concerns itself only with authors and documents up to about 600.

From a practical viewpoint this procedure seems perfectly appropriate, pro

vided that the fact is never lost from sight, that especially in the popular

living language, but up to a point in the literary style also, strong Romance

tendencies and elements can be detected long before this date and must be

assumed to have existed in even greater quantity. . On the other hand it is

no less certainly established that even in the great mass of texts, letters, laws,

and other documents from the period later than 00, by the side of Romanisms,

barbarisms, and pure blunders there occur widely distributed peculiarities of

idiom that are of interest from the purely Latin point of view, particularly -

though by no means exclusively - for the study of Vulgar Latin. "Ws nun

(i. e. after the sixth century) in Urkunden, Texten und Inschriften begegnet,"

says ROHLFS,' "ist weniger Vulgarlatein als Latinisierung romanischer Vul

garsprache." Certainly this is true in many cases, although to my mind it is

somewhat overstated. In general the rule enunciated by NORBERG is vaid !

when in speaking of the Merovingian period in Gaul, which is particularly well

documented, he observes that before 600 the popular speech may be called

Latin, after 800 Romance. For the intervening period either name will serve,

provided that we bear in mind the fact that no firm frontier in time separates

spoken Latin from the earliest Romance idiom. Particular problems must of

course be left for consideration when their turn comes.

Concerning the language of the 1erovingian documents many diverse the

ories have been proposed. According to some American scholars - H. F.

MULLER and his school - it will have been more or less identical with the

1 B.\Yl\ES and Moss, Byzantium (Oxford 1948). rntrod., p. xv.

. GE R H A R D ROHLFS, Romaische Philoiogie (Heidelberg 1950) I. p. 18.

J ! Synt. Forsch., p. 21. On the development in Gaul cf. also VON WARTBURG, Ein

fUhrung, p. 178. 190; and the same author's E volution et structure de fa langue fran

lis. (Leipzig-Berlin 1934). pp. 21 H.

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