lectures on the science of language 12

lectures on the science of language 12

His work thus became one of the principal channels through which the

grammatical terminology, which had been carried from Athens to Alexandria,

flowed back to Rome, to spread from thence over the whole civilized world.

 

Dionysius, however, though the author of the first practical grammar, was

by no means the first “_professeur de langue_” who settled at Rome. At his

time Greek was more generally spoken at Rome than French is now spoken in

London. The children of gentlemen learnt Greek before they learnt Latin,

and though Quintilian in his work on education does not approve of a boy

learning nothing but Greek for any length of time, “as is now the

fashion,” he says, “with most people,” yet he too recommends that a boy

should be taught Greek first, and Latin afterwards.(70) This may seem

strange, but the fact is that as long as we know anything of Italy, the

Greek language was as much at home there as Latin. Italy owed almost

everything to Greece, not only in later days when the setting sun of Greek

civilization mingled its rays with the dawn of Roman greatness; but ever

since the first Greek colonists started Westward Ho! in search of new

homes. It was from the Greeks that the Italians received their alphabet

and were taught to read and to write.(71) The names for balance, for

measuring-rod, for engines in general, for coined money,(72) many terms

connected with seafaring,(73) not excepting _nausea_ or sea-sickness, are

all borrowed from Greek, and show the extent to which the Italians were

indebted to the Greeks for the very rudiments of civilization. The

Italians, no doubt, had their own national gods, but they soon became

converts to the mythology of the Greeks. Some of the Greek gods they

identified with their own; others they admitted as new deities. Thus

_Saturnus_, originally an Italian harvest god, was identified with the

Greek _Kronos_, and as _Kronos_ was the son of _Uranos_, a new deity was

invented, and _Saturnus_ was fabled to be the son of _Cœlus_. Thus the

Italian _Herculus_, the god of hurdles, enclosures, and walls, was merged

in the Greek _Heracles_.(74) _Castor_ and _Pollux_, both of purely Greek

origin, were readily believed in as nautical deities by the Italian

sailors, and they were the first Greek gods to whom, after the battle on

the Lake Regillus (485), a temple was erected at Rome.(75) In 431 another

temple was erected at Rome to Apollo, whose oracle at Delphi had been

consulted by Italians ever since Greek colonists had settled on their

soil. The oracles of the famous Sibylla of Cumæ were written in Greek,(76)

and the priests (duoviri sacris faciundis) were allowed to keep two Greek

slaves for the purpose of translating these oracles.(77)

 

When the Romans, in 454 B. C., wanted to establish a code of laws, the

first thing they did was to send commissioners to Greece to report on the

laws of Solon at Athens and the laws of other Greek towns.(78) As Rome

rose in political power, Greek manners, Greek art, Greek language and

literature found ready admittance.(79) Before the beginning of the Punic

wars, many of the Roman statesmen were able to understand, and even to

speak Greek. Boys were not only taught the Roman letters by their masters,

the _literatores_, but they had to learn at the same time the Greek

alphabet. Those who taught Greek at Rome were then called _grammatici_,

and they were mostly Greek slaves or _liberti_.

 

Among the young men whom Cato saw growing up at Rome, to know Greek was

the same as to be a gentleman. They read Greek books, they conversed in

Greek, they even wrote in Greek. Tiberius Gracchus, consul in 177, made a

speech in Greek at Rhodes, which he afterwards published.(80) Flaminius,

when addressed by the Greeks in Latin, returned the compliment by writing

Greek verses in honor of their gods. The first history of Rome was written

at Rome in Greek, by Fabius Pictor,(81) about 200 B. C.; and it was

probably in opposition to this work, and to those of Lucius Cincius

Alimentus, and Publius Scipio, that Cato wrote his own history of Rome in

Latin. The example of the higher classes was eagerly followed by the

lowest. The plays of Plautus are the best proof; for the affectation of

using Greek words is as evident in some of his characters as the foolish

display of French in the German writers of the eighteenth century. There

was both loss and gain in the inheritance which Rome received from Greece;

but what would Rome have been without her Greek masters? The very fathers

of Roman literature were Greeks, private teachers, men who made a living

by translating school-books and plays. Livius Andronicus, sent as prisoner

of war from Tarentum (272 B. C.), established himself at Rome as professor

of Greek. His translation of the Odyssey into Latin verse, which marks the

beginning of Roman literature, was evidently written by him for the use of

his private classes. His style, though clumsy and wooden in the extreme,

was looked upon as a model of perfection by the rising poets of the

capital. Nævius and Plautus were his cotemporaries and immediate

successors. All the plays of Plautus were translations and adaptations of

Greek originals; and Plautus was not even allowed to transfer the scene

from Greece to Rome. The Roman public wanted to see Greek life and Greek

depravity; it would have stoned the poet who had ventured to bring on the

stage a Roman patrician or a Roman matron. Greek tragedies, also, were

translated into Latin. Ennius, the cotemporary of Nævius and Plautus,

though somewhat younger (239-169), was the first to translate Euripides.

Ennius, like Andronicus, was an Italian Greek, who settled at Rome as a

teacher of languages and translator of Greek. He was patronized by the

liberal party, by Publius Scipio, Titus Flaminius, and Marcus Fulvius

Nobilior.(82) He became a Roman citizen. But Ennius was more than a poet,

more than a teacher of languages. He has been called a neologian, and to a

certain extent he deserved that name. Two works written in the most

hostile spirit against the religion of Greece, and against the very

existence of the Greek gods, were translated by him into Latin.(83) One

was the philosophy of _Epicharmus_ (470 B. C., in Megara), who taught that

Zeus was nothing but the air, and other gods but names of the powers of

nature; the other the work of _Euhemerus_, of Messene (300 B. C.), who

proved, in the form of a novel, that the Greek gods had never existed, and

that those who were believed in as gods had been men. These two works were

not translated without a purpose; and though themselves shallow in the

extreme, they proved destructive to the still shallower systems of Roman

theology. Greek became synonymous with infidel; and Ennius would hardly

have escaped the punishment inflicted on Nævius for his political satires,

had he not enjoyed the patronage and esteem of the most influential

statesmen at Rome. Even Cato, the stubborn enemy of Greek philosophy(84)

and rhetoric, was a friend of the dangerous Ennius; and such was the

growing influence of Greek at Rome, that Cato himself had to learn it in

his old age, in order to teach his boy what he considered, if not useful,

at least harmless in Greek literature. It has been the custom to laugh at

Cato for his dogged opposition to everything Greek; but there was much

truth in his denunciations. We have heard much of young Bengál—young

Hindus who read Byron and Voltaire, play at billiards, drive tandems,

laugh at their priests, patronize missionaries, and believe nothing. The

description which Cato gives of the young idlers at Rome reminds us very

much of young Bengál.

 

When Rome took the torch of knowledge from the dying hands of Greece, that

torch was not burning with its brightest light. Plato and Aristotle had

been succeeded by Chrysippus and Carneades; Euripides and Menander had

taken the place of Æschylus and Sophocles. In becoming the guardian of the

Promethean spark first lighted in Greece, and intended hereafter to

illuminate not only Italy, but every country of Europe, Rome lost much of

that native virtue to which she owed her greatness. Roman frugality and

gravity, Roman citizenship and patriotism, Roman purity and piety, were

driven away by Greek luxury and levity, Greek intriguing and self-seeking,

Greek vice and infidelity. Restrictions and anathemas were of no avail;

and Greek ideas were never so attractive as when they had been reprobated

by Cato and his friends. Every new generation became more and more

impregnated with Greek. In 131(85) we hear of a consul (Publius Crassus)

who, like another Mezzofanti, was able to converse in the various dialects

of Greek. Sulla allowed foreign ambassadors to speak Greek before the

Roman senate.(86) The Stoic philosopher Panætius(87) lived in the house of

the Scipios, which was for a long time the rendezvous of all the literary

celebrities at Rome. Here the Greek historian Polybius, and the

philosopher Cleitomachus, Lucilius the satirist, Terence the African poet

(196-159), and the improvisatore Archias (102 B. C.), were welcome

guests.(88) In this select circle the master-works of Greek literature

were read and criticised; the problems of Greek philosophy were discussed;

and the highest interests of human life became the subject of thoughtful

conversation. Though no poet of original genius arose from this society,

it exercised a most powerful influence on the progress of Roman

literature. It formed a tribunal of good taste; and much of the

correctness, simplicity, and manliness of the classical Latin is due to

that “Cosmopolitan Club,” which met under the hospitable roof of the

Scipios.

 

The religious life of Roman society at the close of the Punic wars was

more Greek than Roman. All who had learnt to think seriously on religious

questions were either Stoics or followers of Epicurus; or they embraced

the doctrines of the New Academy, denying the possibility of any knowledge

of the Infinite, and putting opinion in the place of truth.(89) Though the

doctrines of Epicurus and the New Academy were always considered dangerous

and heretical, the philosophy of the Stoics was tolerated, and a kind of

compromise effected between philosophy and religion. There was a

state-philosophy as well as a state-religion. The Roman priesthood, though

they had succeeded, in 161, in getting all Greek rhetors and philosophers

expelled from Rome, perceived that a compromise was necessary. It was

openly avowed that in the enlightened classes(90) philosophy must take the

place of religion, but that a belief in miracles and oracles was necessary

for keeping the large masses in order. Even Cato,(91) the leader of the

orthodox, national, and conservative party, expressed his surprise that a

haruspex, when meeting a colleague, did not burst out laughing. Men like

Scipio Æmilianus and Lælius professed to believe in the popular gods; but

with them Jupiter was the soul of the universe, the statues of the gods

mere works of art.(92) Their gods, as the people complained, had neither

body, parts, nor passions. Peace, however, was preserved between the Stoic

philosopher and the orthodox priest. Both parties professed to believe in

the same gods, but they claimed the liberty to believe in them in their

own way.

 

I have dwelt at some length on the changes in the intellectual atmosphere

of Rome at the end of the Punic wars, and I have endeavored to show how

completely it was impregnated with Greek ideas in order to explain, what

otherwise would seem almost inexplicable, the zeal and earnestness with

which the study of Greek grammar was taken up at Rome, not only by a few

scholars and philosophers, but by the leading statesmen of the time. To

our minds, discussions on nouns and verbs, on cases and gender, on regular

and irregular conjugation, retain always something of the tedious

character which these subjects had at school, and we can hardly understand

how at Rome, grammar—pure and simple grammar—should have formed a subject

of general interest, and a topic of fashionable conversation. When one of

the first grammarians of the day, Crates of Pergamus, was sent to Rome as

ambassador of King Attalus, he was received with the greatest distinction

by all the literary statesmen of the capital. It so happened that when

walking one day on the Palatian hill, Crates caught his foot in the

grating of a sewer, fell and broke his leg. Being thereby detained at Rome

longer than he intended, he was persuaded to give some public lectures, or

_akroaseis_, on grammar; and from these lectures, says Suetonius, dates

the study of grammar at Rome. This took place about 159 B. C., between the

second and third Punic wars, shortly after the death of Ennius, and two

years after the famous expulsion of the Greek rhetors and philosophers

(161). Four years later Carneades, likewise sent to Rome as ambassador,

was prohibited from lecturing by Cato. After these lectures of Crates,

grammatical and philological studies became extremely popular at Rome. We

hear of Lucius Ælius Stilo,(93) who lectured on Latin as Crates had

lectured on Greek. Among his pupils were Varro, Lucilius, and Cicero.

Varro composed twenty-four books on the Latin language, four of which were

dedicated to Cicero. Cicero, himself, is quoted as an authority on

grammatical questions, though we know of no special work of his on

grammar. Lucilius devoted the ninth book of his satires to the reform of

spelling.(94) But nothing shows more clearly the wide interest which

grammatical studies had then excited in the foremost ranks of Roman

society than Cæsar’s work on Latin grammar. It was composed by him during

the Gallic war, and dedicated to Cicero, who might well be proud of the

compliment thus paid him by the great general and statesman. Most of these

works are lost to us, and we can judge of them only by means of casual

quotations. Thus we learn from a fragment of Cæsar’s work, _De analogia_,

that he was the inventor of the term _ablative_ in Latin. The word never

occurs before, and, of course, could not be borrowed, like the names of

the other cases, from Greek grammarians, as they admitted no ablative in

Greek. To think of Cæsar fighting the barbarians of Gaul and Germany, and

watching from a distance the political complications at Rome, ready to

grasp the sceptre of the world, and at the same time carrying on his

philological and grammatical studies together with his secretary, the

Greek Didymus,(95) gives us a new view both of that extraordinary man, and

of the time in which he lived. After Cæsar had triumphed, one of his

favorite plans was to found a Greek and Latin library at Rome, and he

offered the librarianship to the best scholar of the day, to Varro, though

Varro had fought against him on the side of Pompey.(96)