How the armies of Rome mastered the nations of the world is known to every
reader of history, but the story of the conquest by Latin of the languages
of the world is vague in the minds of most of us. If we should ask
ourselves how it came about, we should probably think of the world-wide
supremacy of Latin as a natural result of the world-wide supremacy of the
Roman legions or of Roman law. But in making this assumption we should be
shutting our eyes to the history of our own times. A conquered people does
not necessarily accept, perhaps it has not commonly accepted, the tongue
of its master. In his "Ancient and Modern Imperialism" Lord Cromer states
that in India only one hundred people in every ten thousand can read and
write English, and this condition exists after an occupation of one
hundred and fifty years or more. He adds: "There does not appear the
least prospect of French supplanting Arabic in Algeria." In comparing the
results of ancient and modern methods perhaps he should have taken into
account the fact that India and Algeria have literatures of their own,
which most of the outlying peoples subdued by Rome did not have, and these
literatures may have strengthened the resistance which the tongue of the
conquered people has offered to that of the conqueror, but, even when
allowance is made for this fact, the difference in resultant conditions is
surprising. From its narrow confines, within a little district on the
banks of the Tiber, covering, at the close of the fifth century B.C., less
than a hundred square miles, Latin spread through Italy and the islands of
the Mediterranean, through France, Spain, England, northern Africa, and
the Danubian provinces, triumphing over all the other tongues of those
regions more completely than Roman arms triumphed over the peoples using
them.
In tracing the story we must keep in our mind's eye the linguistic
geography of Italy, just as we must remember the political geography of
the peninsula in following Rome's territorial expansion. Let us think at
the outset, then, of a little strip of flat country on the Tiber, dotted
here and there with hills crowned with villages. Such hill towns were
Rome, Tusculum, and Præneste, for instance. Each of them was the
stronghold and market-place of the country immediately about it, and
therefore had a life of its own, so that although Latin was spoken in all
of them it varied from one to the other. This is shown clearly enough by
the inscriptions which have been found on the sites of these ancient
towns,[1] and as late as the close of the third century before our era,
Plautus pokes fun in his comedies at the provincialism of Præneste.
The towns which we have mentioned were only a few miles from Rome. Beyond
them, and occupying central Italy and a large part of southern Italy, were
people who spoke Oscan and the other Italic dialects, which were related
to Latin, and yet quite distinct from it. In the seaports of the south
Greek was spoken, while the Messapians and Iapygians occupied Calabria. To
the north of Rome were the mysterious Etruscans and the almost equally
puzzling Venetians and Ligurians. When we follow the Roman legions across
the Alps into Switzerland, France, England, Spain, and Africa, we enter a
jungle, as it were, of languages and dialects. A mere reading of the list
of tongues with which Latin was brought into contact, if such a list could
be drawn up, would bring weariness to the flesh. In the part of Gaul
conquered by Cæsar, for instance, he tells us that there were three
independent languages, and sixty distinct states, whose peoples doubtless
differed from one another in their speech. If we look at a map of the
Roman world under Augustus, with the Atlantic to bound it on the west, the
Euphrates on the east, the desert of Sahara on the south, and the Rhine
and Danube on the north, and recall the fact that the linguistic
conditions which Cæsar found in Gaul in 58 B.C. were typical of what
confronted Latin in a great many of the western, southern, and northern
provinces, the fact that Latin subdued all these different tongues, and
became the every-day speech of these different peoples, will be recognized
as one of the marvels of history. In fact, so firmly did it establish
itself, that it withstood the assaults of the invading Gothic, Lombardic,
Frankish, and Burgundian, and has continued to hold to our own day a very
large part of the territory which it acquired some two thousand years
ago.
That Latin was the common speech of the western world is attested not only
by the fact that the languages of France, Spain, Roumania, and the other
Romance countries descend from it, but it is also clearly shown by the
thousands of Latin inscriptions composed by freeman and freedman, by
carpenter, baker, and soldier, which we find all over the Roman world.
How did this extraordinary result come about? It was not the conquest of
the world by the common language of Italy, because in Italy in early days
at least nine different languages were spoken, but its subjugation by the
tongue spoken in the city of Rome. The traditional narrative of Rome, as
Livy and others relate it, tells us of a struggle with the neighboring
Latin hill towns in the early days of the Republic, and the ultimate
formation of an alliance between them and Rome. The favorable position of
the city on the Tiber for trade and defence gave it a great advantage over
its rivals, and it soon became the commercial and political centre of the
neighboring territory. The most important of these villages, Tusculum,
Præneste, and Lanuvium, were not more than twenty miles distant, and the
people in them must have come constantly to Rome to attend the markets,
and in later days to vote, to hear political speeches, and to listen to
plays in the theatre. Some of them probably heard the jests at the expense
of their dialectal peculiarities which Plautus introduced into his
comedies. The younger generations became ashamed of their provincialisms;
they imitated the Latin spoken in the metropolis, and by the second
century of our era, when the Latin grammarians have occasion to cite
dialectal peculiarities from Latium outside Rome, they quote at
second-hand from Varro of the first century B.C., either because they will
not take the trouble to use their own ears or because the differences
which were noted in earlier days had ceased to exist. The first stage in
the conquest of the world by the Latin of Rome comes to an end, then, with
the extension of that form of speech throughout Latium.
Beyond the limits of Latium it came into contact with Oscan and the other
Italic dialects, which were related to Latin, but of course were much
farther removed from it than the Latin of Tusculum or Lanuvium had
been,[2] so that the adoption of Latin was not so simple a matter as the
acceptance of Roman Latin by the villages of Latium near Rome had been.
The conflict which went on between Latin and its Italic kinsmen is
revealed to us now and then by a Latin inscription, into which Oscan or
Umbrian forms have crept.[3] The struggle had come to an end by the
beginning of our era. A few Oscan inscriptions are found scratched on the
walls of Pompeii after the first earthquake, in 63 A.D., but they are late
survivals, and no Umbrian inscriptions are known of a date subsequent to
the first century B.C.
The Social War of 90-88 B.C., between Rome and the Italians, was a
turning-point in the struggle between Latin and the Italic dialects,
because it marks a change in the political treatment of Rome's
dependencies in Italy. Up to this time she had followed the policy of
isolating all her Italian conquered communities from one another. She was
anxious to prevent them from conspiring against her. Thus, with this
object in view, she made differences in the rights and privileges granted
to neighboring communities, in order that, not being subject to the same
limitations, and therefore not having the same grievances, they might not
have a common basis for joint action against her. It would naturally be a
part of that policy to allow or to encourage the retention by the several
communities of their own dialects. The common use of Latin would have
enabled them to combine against her with greater ease. With the conclusion
of the Social War this policy gave way before the new conception of
political unity for the people of Italian stock, and with political unity
came the introduction of Latin as the common tongue in all official
transactions of a local as well as of a federal character. The immediate
results of the war, and the policy which Rome carried out at its close of
sending out colonies and building roads in Italy, contributed still more
to the larger use of Latin throughout the central and southern parts of
the peninsula. Samnium, Lucania, and the territory of the Bruttii suffered
severely from depopulation; many colonies were sent into all these
districts, so that, although the old dialects must have persisted for a
time in some of the mountain towns to the north of Rome, the years
following the conclusion of the Social War mark the rapid disappearance of
them and the substitution of Latin in their place. Campania took little
part in the war, and was therefore left untouched. This fact accounts
probably for the occurrence of a few Oscan inscriptions on the walls of
Pompeii as late as 63 A.D.
We need not follow here the story of the subjugation of the Greek seaports
in southern Italy and of the peoples to the north who spoke non-Italic
languages. In all these cases Latin was brought into conflict with
languages not related to itself, and the situation contains slightly
different elements from those which present themselves in the struggle
between Latin and the Italic dialects. The latter were nearly enough
related to Latin to furnish some support for the theory that Latin was
modified by contact with them, and this theory has found advocates,[4] but
there is no sufficient reason for believing that it was materially
influenced. An interesting illustration of the influence of Greek on the
Latin of every-day life is furnished by the realistic novel which
Petronius wrote in the middle of the first century of our era. The
characters in his story are Greeks, and the language which they speak is
Latin, but they introduce into it a great many Greek words, and now and
then a Greek idiom or construction.
The Romans, as is well known, used two agencies with great effect in
Romanizing their newly acquired territory, viz., colonies and roads. The
policy of sending out colonists to hold the new districts was definitely
entered upon in the early part of the fourth century, when citizens were
sent to Antium, Tarracina, and other points in Latium. Within this century
fifteen or twenty colonies were established at various points in central
Italy. Strategic considerations determined their location, and the choice
was made with great wisdom. Sutrium and Nepete, on the borders of the
Ciminian forest, were "the gates of Etruria"; Fregellæ and Interamna
commanded the passage of the river Liris; Tarentum and Rhegium were
important ports of entry, while Alba Fucens and Carsioli guarded the line
of the Valerian road.
This road and the other great highways which were constructed in Italy
brought not only all the colonies, but all parts of the peninsula, into
easy communication with the capital. The earliest of them was built to
Capua, as we know, by the great censor Appius Claudius, in 312 B.C., and
when one looks at a map of Italy at the close of the third century before
our era, and sees the central and southern parts of the peninsula dotted
with colonies, the Appian Way running from Rome south-east to Brundisium,
the Popillian Way to Rhegium, the Flaminian Way north-east to Ariminum,
with an extension to Cremona, with the Cassian and Aurelian ways along the
western coast, the rapidity and the completeness with which the Latin
language overspread Italy ceases to be a mystery. A map of Spain or of
France under the Empire, with its network of roads, is equally
illuminating.
The missionaries who carried Roman law, Roman dress, Roman ideas, and the
Latin language first through central, southern, and northern Italy, and
then to the East and the West, were the colonist, the merchant, the
soldier, and the federal official. The central government exempted the
Roman citizen who settled in a provincial town from the local taxes. As
these were very heavy, his advantage over the native was correspondingly
great, and in almost all the large towns in the Empire we find evidence of
the existence of large guilds of Roman traders, tax-collectors, bankers,
and land-owners.[5] When Trajan in his romantic eastern campaign had
penetrated to Ctesiphon, the capital of Parthia, he found Roman merchants
already settled there. Besides the merchants and capitalists who were
engaged in business on their own account in the provinces, there were
thousands of agents for the great Roman corporations scattered through the
Empire. Rome was the money centre of the world, and the great stock
companies organized to lend money, construct public works, collect taxes,
and engage in the shipping trade had their central offices in the capital
whence they sent out their representatives to all parts of the world.
The soldier played as important a part as the merchant in extending the
use of Latin. Tacitus tells us that in the reign of Augustus there were
twenty-five legions stationed in the provinces. If we allow 6,000 men to a
legion, we should have a total of 150,000 Roman soldiers scattered through
the provinces. To these must be added the auxiliary troops which were made
up of natives who, at the close of their term of service, were probably
able to speak Latin, and when they settled among their own people again,
would carry a knowledge of it into ever-widening circles. We have no exact
knowledge of the number of the auxiliary troops, but they probably came to
be as numerous as the legionaries.[6] Soldiers stationed on the frontiers
frequently married native women at the end of their term of service,
passed the rest of their lives in the provinces, and their children
learned Latin.
The direct influence of the government was no small factor in developing
the use of Latin, which was of course the official language of the Empire.
All court proceedings were carried on in Latin. It was the language of
the governor, the petty official, and the tax-gatherer. It was used in
laws and proclamations, and no native could aspire to a post in the civil
service unless he had mastered it. It was regarded sometimes at least as a
_sine qua non_ of the much-coveted Roman citizenship. The Emperor
Claudius, for instance, cancelled the Roman citizenship of a Greek,
because he had addressed a letter to him in Latin which he could not
understand. The tradition that Latin was the official language of the
world was taken up by the Christian church. Even when Constantine presided
over the Council at Nicæa in the East, he addressed the assembly in Latin.
The two last-mentioned agencies, the Latin of the Roman official and the
Latin of the church, were the influences which made the language spoken
throughout the Empire essentially uniform in its character. Had the Latin
which the colonist, the merchant, and the soldier carried through Italy
and into the provinces been allowed to develop in different localities
without any external unifying influence, probably new dialects would have
grown up all over the world, or, to put it in another way, probably the
Romance languages would have come into existence several centuries before
they actually appeared. That unifying influence was the Latin used by the
officials sent out from Rome, which all classes eagerly strove to imitate.
Naturally the language of the provinces did not conform in all respects to
the Roman standard. Apuleius, for instance, is aware of the fact that his
African style and diction are likely to offend his Roman readers, and in
the introduction to his _Metamorphoses_ he begs for their indulgence. The
elder Seneca in his _Controversiae_ remarks of a Spanish fellow-countryman
"that he could never unlearn that well-known style which is brusque and
rustic and characteristic of Spain," and Spartianus in his Life of Hadrian
tells us that when Hadrian addressed the senate on a certain occasion, his
rustic pronunciation excited the laughter of the senators. But the
peculiarities in the diction of Apuleius and Hadrian seem to have been
those which only a cultivated man of the world would notice. They do not
appear to have been fundamental. In a similar way the careful studies
which have been made of the thousands of inscriptions found in the
West[7], dedicatory inscriptions, guild records, and epitaphs show us
that the language of the common people in the provinces did not differ
materially from that spoken in Italy. It was the language of the Roman
soldier, colonist, and trader, with common characteristics in the way of
diction, form, phraseology, and syntax, dropping into some slight local
peculiarities, but kept essentially a unit by the desire which each
community felt to imitate its officials and its upper classes.
The one part of the Roman world in which Latin did not gain an undisputed
pre-eminence was the Greek East. The Romans freely recognized the peculiar
position which Greek was destined to hold in that part of the Empire, and
styled it the _altera lingua_. Even in Greek lands, however, Latin gained
a strong hold, and exerted considerable influence on Greek[8].
In a very thoughtful paper on "Language-Rivalry and
Speech-Differentiation in the Case of Race-Mixture,"[9] Professor Hempl
has discussed the conditions under which language-rivalry takes place, and
states the results that follow. His conclusions have an interesting
bearing on the question which we are discussing here, how and why it was
that Latin supplanted the other languages with which it was brought into
contact.
He observes that when two languages are brought into conflict, there is
rarely a compromise or fusion, but one of the two is driven out of the
field altogether by the other. On analyzing the circumstances in which
such a struggle for supremacy between languages springs up, he finds four
characteristic cases. Sometimes the armies of one nation, though
comparatively small in numbers, conquer another country. They seize the
government of the conquered land; their ruler becomes its king, and they
become the aristocracy. They constitute a minority, however; they identify
their interests with those of the conquered people, and the language of
the subject people becomes the language of all classes. The second case
arises when a country is conquered by a foreign people who pour into it
with their wives and children through a long period and settle permanently
there. The speech of the natives in these circumstances disappears. In the
third case a more powerful people conquers a country, establishes a
dependent government in it, sends out merchants, colonists, and officials,
and establishes new towns. If such a province is held long enough, the
language of the conqueror prevails. In the fourth and last case peaceful
bands of immigrants enter a country to follow the humbler callings. They
are scattered among the natives, and succeed in proportion as they learn
the language of their adopted country. For their children and
grandchildren this language becomes their mother tongue, and the speech of
the invaded nation holds its ground.
The first typical case is illustrated by the history of Norman-French in
England, the second by that of the European colonists in America; the
Latinization of Spain, Gaul, and other Roman provinces furnishes an
instance of the third, and our own experience with European immigrants is
a case of the fourth characteristic situation. The third typical case of
language-conflict is the one with which we are concerned here, and the
analysis which we have made of the practices followed by the Romans in
occupying newly acquired territory, both in Italy and outside the
peninsula, shows us how closely they conform to the typical situation.
With the exception of Dacia, all the provinces were held by the Romans for
several centuries, so that their history under Roman rule satisfies the
condition of long occupation which Professor Hempl lays down as a
necessary one. Dacia which lay north of the Danube, and was thus far
removed from the centres of Roman influence, was erected into a province
in 107 A.D., and abandoned in 270. Notwithstanding its remoteness and the
comparatively short period during which it was occupied, the Latin
language has continued in use in that region to the present day. It
furnishes therefore a striking illustration of the effective methods which
the Romans used in Latinizing conquered territory.[10]
We have already had occasion to notice that a fusion between Latin and
the languages with which it was brought into contact, such a fusion, for
instance, as we find in Pidgin-English, did not occur. These languages
influenced Latin only by way of making additions to its vocabulary. A
great many Greek scientific and technical terms were adopted by the
learned during the period of Roman supremacy. Of this one is clearly
aware, for instance, in reading the philosophical and rhetorical works of
Cicero. A few words, like rufus, crept into the language from the Italic
dialects. Now and then the Keltic or Iberian names of Gallic or Spanish
articles were taken up, but the inflectional system and the syntax of
Latin retained their integrity. In the post-Roman period additions to the
vocabulary are more significant. It is said that about three hundred
Germanic words have found their way into all the Romance languages.[11]
The language of the province of Gaul was most affected since some four
hundred and fifty Gothic, Lombardic, and Burgundian words are found in
French alone, such words as boulevard, homard, and blesser. Each of the
provinces of course, when the Empire broke up, was subjected to
influences peculiar to itself. The residence of the Moors in Spain, for
seven hundred years, for instance, has left a deep impress on the Spanish
vocabulary, while the geographic position of Roumanian has exposed it to
the influence of Slavic, Albanian, Greek, Magyar, and Turkish.[12] A
sketch of the history of Latin after the breaking up of the Empire carries
us beyond the limits of the question which we set ourselves at the
beginning and out of the domain of the Latinist, but it may not be out of
place to gather together here a few of the facts which the Romance
philologist has contributed to its later history, because the life of
Latin has been continuous from the foundation of the city of Rome to the
present day.
In this later period the question of paramount interest is, why did Latin
in one part of the world develop into French, in another part into
Italian, in another into Spanish? One answer to this question has been
based on chronological grounds.[13] The Roman soldiers and traders who
went out to garrison and to settle in a newly acquired territory,
introduced that form of Latin which was in use in Italy at the time of
their departure from the peninsula. The form of speech thus planted there
developed along lines peculiar to itself, became the dialect of that
province, and ultimately the (Romance) language spoken in that part of
Europe. Sardinia was conquered in 241 B.C., and Sardinian therefore is a
development of the Latin spoken in Italy in the middle of the third
century B.C., that is of the Latin of Livius Andronicus. Spain was brought
under Roman rule in 197 B.C., and consequently Spanish is a natural
outgrowth of popular Latin of the time of Plautus. In a similar way, by
noticing the date at which the several provinces were established down to
the acquisition of Dacia in 107 A.D., we shall understand how it was that
the several Romance languages developed out of Latin. So long as the
Empire held together the unifying influence of official Latin, and the
constant intercommunication between the provinces, preserved the essential
unity of Latin throughout the world, but when the bonds were broken, the
naturally divergent tendencies which had existed from the beginning, but
had been held in check, made themselves felt, and the speech of the
several sections of the Old World developed into the languages which we
find in them to-day.
This theory is suggestive, and leads to several important results, but it
is open to serious criticism, and does not furnish a sufficient
explanation. It does not seem to take into account the steady stream of
emigrants from Italy to the provinces, and the constant transfer of troops
from one part of the world to another of which we become aware when we
study the history of any single province or legion. Spain was acquired, it
is true, in 197 B.C., and the Latin which was first introduced into it was
the Latin of Plautus, but the subjugation of the country occupied more
than sixty years, and during this period fresh troops were steadily poured
into the peninsula, and later on there was frequently an interchange of
legions between Spain and the other provinces. Furthermore, new
communities of Roman citizens were established there even down into the
Empire, and traders were steadily moving into the province. In this way it
would seem that the Latin of the early second century which was originally
carried into Spain must have been constantly undergoing modification,
and, so far as this influence goes, made approximately like the Latin
spoken elsewhere in the Empire.
A more satisfactory explanation seems to be that first clearly propounded
by the Italian philologist, Ascoli. His reasoning is that when we acquire
a foreign language we find it very difficult, and often impossible, to
master some of the new sounds. Our ears do not catch them exactly, or we
unconsciously substitute for the foreign sound some sound from our own
language. Our vocal organs, too, do not adapt themselves readily to the
reproduction of the strange sounds in another tongue, as we know from the
difficulty which we have in pronouncing the French nasal or the German
guttural. Similarly English differs somewhat as it is spoken by a
Frenchman, a German, and an Italian. The Frenchman has a tendency to
import the nasal into it, and he is also inclined to pronounce it like his
own language, while the German favors the guttural. In a paper on the
teaching of modern languages in our schools, Professor Grandgent says:[14]
"Usually there is no attempt made to teach any French sounds but _u_ and
the four nasal vowels; all the rest are unquestioningly replaced by the
English vowels and consonants that most nearly resemble them." The
substitution of sounds from one's own language in speaking a foreign
tongue, and the changes in voice-inflection, are more numerous and more
marked if the man who learns the new language is uneducated and acquires
it in casual intercourse from an uneducated man who speaks carelessly.
This was the state of things in the Roman provinces of southern Europe
when the Goths, Lombards, and other peoples from the North gradually
crossed the frontier and settled in the territory of Latin-speaking
peoples. In the sixth century, for instance, the Lombards in Italy, the
Franks in France, and the Visigoths in Spain would each give to the Latin
which they spoke a twist peculiar to themselves, and out of the one Latin
came Italian, out of the second, the language of France, and out of the
third, Spanish. This initial impulse toward the development of Latin along
different lines in Italy, France, and Spain was, of course, reinforced by
differences in climate, in the temperaments of the three peoples, in
their modes of life, and in their political and social experiences. These
centrifugal forces, so to speak, became effective because the political
and social bonds which had held Italy, France, and Spain together were now
loosened, and consequently communication between the provinces was less
frequent, and the standardizing influence of the official Latin of Rome
ceased to keep Latin a uniform thing throughout the Empire.
One naturally asks why Latin survived at all, why the languages of the
victorious Germanic peoples gave way to it. In reply to this question it
is commonly said that the fittest survived, that the superiority of Roman
civilization and of the Latin language gave Latin the victory. So far as
this factor is to be taken into account, I should prefer to say that it
was not so much the superiority of Latin, although that may be freely
recognized, as it was the sentimental respect which the Germans and their
leaders had for the Empire and for all its institutions. This is shown
clearly enough, for instance, in the pride which the Visigothic and
Frankish kings showed in holding their commissions from Rome, long after
Rome had lost the power to enforce its claims upon them; it is shown in
their use of Latin as the language of the court and of the official world.
Under the influence of this sentiment Germanic rulers and their peoples
imitated the Romans, and, among other things, took over their language.
The church probably exerted considerable influence in this direction. Many
of the Germans had been converted to Christianity before they entered the
Empire, and had heard Latin used in the church services and in the hymns.
Among cultivated people of different countries, it was the only medium of
communication, and was accepted as the lingua franca of the political and
ecclesiastical world, and the traditional medium of expression for
literary and legal purposes.
Perhaps, however, one element in the situation should be given more weight
than any of the facts just mentioned. Many of the barbarians had been
allowed to settle in a more or less peaceful fashion in Roman territory,
so that a large part of the western world came into their possession by
way of gradual occupation rather than by conquest.[15] They became peasant
proprietors, manual laborers, and soldiers in the Roman army. Perhaps,
therefore, their occupation of central and southern Europe bears some
resemblance to the peaceful invasion of this country by immigrants from
Europe, and they may have adopted Latin just as the German or Scandinavian
adopts English.
This brings us to the last important point in our inquiry. What is the
date before which we shall call the language of the Western Empire Latin,
and after which it is better to speak of French, Spanish, and Italian?
Such a line of division cannot be sharply drawn, and will in a measure be
artificial, because, as we shall attempt to show in the chapter which
follows on the "Latin of the Common People," Latin survives in the Romance
languages, and has had a continuous life up to the present day. But on
practical grounds it is convenient to have such a line of demarcation in
mind, and two attempts have been made to fix it. One attempt has been
based on linguistic grounds, the other follows political changes more
closely. Up to 700 A.D. certain common sound-changes take place in all
parts of the western world.[16] After that date, roughly speaking, this is
not the case. Consequently at that time we may say that unity ceased. The
other method of approaching the subject leads to essentially the same
conclusion, and shows us why unity ceased to exist.[17] In the sixth
century the Eastern Emperor Justinian conceived the idea of reuniting the
Roman world, and actually recovered and held for a short time Italy,
southern Spain, and Africa. This attempt on his part aroused a national
spirit among the peoples of these lands, and developed in them a sense of
their national independence and individuality. They threw off the foreign
yoke and became separate peoples, and developed, each of them, a language
of its own. Naturally this sentiment became effective at somewhat
different periods in different countries. For France the point may be
fixed in the sixth century, for Spain and Italy, in the seventh, and at
these dates Latin may be said to take the form of French, Spanish, and
Italian.