1.5 Early Latin: Latin before Plautus
Fragments of archaic Latin law are preserved as the Law of the XII Tables. Early inscriptions survive from the 6th Century BCE. Writing was introduced into Southern Italy by Greek colonists in the early 8th Century BCE, Polybius (c. 200-c. 118 BCE), Greek Historian of Rome. Histories 3.22.3 ‘the Ancient Roman language differs so much from the modern that it can only be partially made out, and that after much application, by the most intelligent men.’ (Translation by W.R. Paton)
Some Early Latin forms:
- aurum ‘gold’ from earlier ausom
- iurat ‘he swears’ from earlier iouesat (CIL I² 4).¹º
- Genitive singular of second declension was – osio; CIL I² 2832a (= Lapis Satricanus) popliosio ualesiosio = Publii Valerii.
Audio activity 5
Now listen to the following audio conversation between James Clackson and Geoffrey Horrocks.
Download this audio clip.Audio player: Before Plautus’ Latin
Transcript: Before Plautus’ Latin
James Clackson
What about Latin before Plautus then, do we know anything about that?
Geoffrey Horrocks
Well, unfortunately, the amount of material available is quite small but we do have some scraps of Latin from two hundred or so years before Plautus in inscriptions and in old laws and prayers which were memorised by generations of Roman school children, sort of traditional lore if you like. These very old inscriptions look very different from classical Latin. Greek and Roman historians, people like Dio Cassius, Livy, explicitly state that the earliest Roman inscriptions, treaties between Roman Carthage from the fifth century BC for example, which have survived in their day as documents, couldn’t actually be interpreted by most well-educated Romans because the language was just so different.
JC
Gosh. Do we have any sense of how those differences were…?
GH
Yeah. To some extent, I mean, because the material is limited our knowledge is limited but we can piece quite a bit together. There were lots of changes, for example, in the way in which sounds were pronounced, quite as radical as between the sound of, say, Latin ‘calidus’ and French ‘chaud’ which we mentioned earlier. A good example would be Latin words which have an R between two vowels. Quite a lot of those earlier on, we know from the spellings of these inscriptions and so on, had an S sound there not an R sound. So the word for ‘gold’ was originally not ‘aurum’ but ‘ausom’. And the word for ‘he or she swears’ wasn’t ‘iurat’ but ‘iouesat’. These are actually forms we’ve got on documents. And it’s not just sounds, again, of course, there were changes in grammar too. And, we know that there were some very different endings, for example, for cases, for case endings in noun declensions. A nice example of that is from a very early inscription, probably from the end of the sixth century, called the Lapis Satricanus, it’s from the town of Satricum, south of Rome, and some friends of a chap called Publius Valerius have dedicated something to the guy. What you would expect is friends of Publius Valerius, ‘Publii Valerii’ but what you actually have on the document is ‘Popliosio Ualesiosio’. In other words, early Latin had a genitive ending ‘-osio’ quite distinct from the familiar I ending of the second declension.
JC
That sounds bizarre.
GH
Bizarre.
JC
Yeah.
GH
Quite extraordinary. And that’s the only example of it’s but it’s there on the stone so it’s real.
JC
Mm.
GH
It’s real. But disappeared.
Before Plautus’ Latin
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