Vulgar Latin
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Vulgar Latin
History and Literature | Latin Words and Grammar
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BUST OF HADRIAN, 2ND CENTURY AD, CASTEL SANT’ANGELO (THE MAUSOLEUM OF HADRIAN). PHOTO: VICTOR FRANS.
Funerary inscription, early 2nd. century A‑D- CIL VI.24037. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, photo Victor Frans.
Tile stamped with +REG(NANTE) D(OMINO) N(OSTRO) THEODE + RCO BONO ROME. Case Romane del Celio, Rome. Photo: Victor Frans.
Stefan Bakalowicz, Catullus (1885)
Mosaic in Ostia Antica, 3rd Century AD. “INBIDE, CALCO TE.” ‘Envious one, I step on you!’ Photo: Victor Frans.
Funerary inscription, Porta Mediana, Cumae (2nd century ad). Photo: Victor Frans.
Incised wall-plaster from Herculaneum (CIL IV, 10520), ca 1–79 AD. Photo: Victor Frans.
Bust of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Capitoline Museums, Rome. Phot: Victor Frans.
Victor Frans is currently writing his dissertation on Saxo Grammaticus. He
holds a BA in Latin from Stockholm University and an MA in Medieval Studies from the University of Oslo. He has worked in the Swedish National Archives and on a project on St. Birgitta of Sweden (14th century).
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Exclusive Latin videos, early access, and community.
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Glossary of expressions and word forms, illustrations, and easter eggs.
4 free searchable online Latin dictionaries.
What we believe in and what we offer.
A thrilling crime story in easy Latin set in Augustan Rome.
A novel in Latin relating the journey of a Roman family to the Alps.
Charles Perrault's classic fairytales in Latin.
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What is Vulgar Latin, and how does it differ from Classical Latin? As a Latinist or Latin enthusiast, chances are that you’re going to be asked this question at some point. The answer usually given is that Vulgar Latin was the language of the people, while Classical Latin, coming down to us as a literary language, was closer to how the elite spoke. This, however, is a very simplified—and maybe not altogether accurate—picture of how things were. This article will give a fuller answer and show a few examples of what characterized Vulgar Latin pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.
But first, let me tell you a story.
Early in 101 AD, the young Hadrian, a favourite of Emperor Trajan, had just been appointed quaestor. One of his duties was to convey the emperor’s decisions to the senate and recite his speeches in his absence. Without a doubt, Hadrian had prepared well, sitting at his desk or roaming about the room reading the speech time and again. This was his public debut, his chance of making a good first impression on a mistrustful senate. Historia Augusta, a 4th-century compilation of the lives of the emperors, tells us what happened next:
“Quaesturam gessit Traiano quater et Articuleio consulibus; cum orationem imperatoris in senatu agrestius pronuntians risus esset, usque ad summam peritiam et facundiam Latinis operam dedit. ”
‘He was questor in the fourth consulship of Trajan and Articuleius [101 AD]. After having been laughed at by the senate while reciting a speech by the Emperor in a somewhat unpolished manner, he exerted himself in the study of Latin letters to the point of the highest proficiency and fluency.’
As this account shows, Hadrian spent much time perfecting his Latin before daring to open his mouth in public again. Somehow, I find this very relatable! Of course, nothing is as harmful to authority as laughter, and a future emperor needed to be taken seriously. Language was key to this.
But what about Hadrian’s speech had so amused the senate? He must have been one of the most cultured young men in the empire. Was his accent truly that rustic? Was his oration full of errors in pronunciation? Was it, dare I say, vulgar ? Though Hadrian was likely born in Italica, a Roman colony in Hispania, by the age of 14 he had already been called to Rome by Trajan. Anthony R. Birley ( Hadrian: The Restless Emperor , p. 46) writes that it “is hard to believe that he had picked up a ‘Spanish’ accent in his short stay at Italica a decade earlier. Perhaps, rather, his unusually long spell in the army and association with centurions and rankers affected his diction.” Indeed, Hadrian had spent time in Germania Superior as tribune in the 22nd legion, which was likely to blame for his blunder. Well educated as Hadrian must have been, he had forgotten to whom he was speaking – if only for a moment. Perhaps he had even acquired new habits of speech. It is not rare that a person adapts his speech to his audience, and the one that he was used to addressing was composed of coarse centurions. It was in their company that he had spent a large part of his youth, and as we shall see, the army was a focal point of Vulgar Latin.
By “vulgar”, I mean it in the sense of informal, colloquial or everyday speech. Vulgar can also suggest something that is widely spread. The Latin adjective vulgaris has its origin in vulgus , ’the people/masses’, but this might be misleading. Despite the name, Vulgar Latin was not the language of most people. The downtrodden slaves and day laborers, the orphans, beggars and rural poor have left very little in the way of linguistic evidence. Vulgar Latin was the Latin of the middle class. It was the Latin of people with some, but limited, schooling: the merchants, artisans, lower public officials and army officers, who were required to know how to read and write for practical purposes. The middle class was influential. Army officers serving in every corner of the empire would affect the way their troops spoke. Sometimes this military variant is called sermo castrensis , ‘the language of the army camp.‘ Add to this the far-traveling merchants, who were conversing with all sorts of people in ports, inns, and markets along the trade routes. The middle class was considerably larger than the refined Roman elite who could afford to spend years learning how to write witty epigrams and among whom a linguistic faux pas could be the source of lifelong embarrassment. Sure enough, we still know of Hadrian’s blunder after almost two millennia!
It is in the context of the middle class that we find the most evidence for everyday speech: inscriptions, graffiti and sometimes curse tablets ( defixiones ) and fragments of letters in papyrus or wood. There are also many colloquial traits in the comedies of Plautus, in the letters of Cicero and in later Latin, often that of Christian authors who were addressing a wide audience. Furthermore, some compilations by grammarians contain corrections of certain words and mistakes, but the fact is that many of these errors did not survive into the Romance languages that developed after the fall of the Western Empire. Those errors may have been local or more common with the less influential lower classes.
Before we begin in earnest to explore what kind of mistakes Hadrian could have made, it should be mentioned that the term Vulgar Latin is not without its critics. The Blackwell History of the Latin Language (p. 231) states that the idea of Vulgar Latin as a common tongue for the lower classes is “discredited among linguists but still tenacious among non-specialists.” Certainly, we’d make a grave error if we used the term in the way that many earlier scholars have done, positing a clear distinction between Vulgar and Classical Latin, the standard form of the language found in literary works and official inscriptions. They were not two different languages and they were not isolated from each other. If this had been the case, we’d have more testimony on this from the written sources. Though classical writers sometimes contrast Latinitas , the highest ideal of Latin, with sermo vulgaris or cottidianus , everyday speech, this seems to be a difference in quality , not necessarily in the essence of the language. The quality or—to use a more unfashionable word—the purity of your Latin, as understood by Cicero and other classical authors, was linked to your social standing. To prove your blue-blooded background, you needed to speak in a certain way. You’d be laughed out of the senate if you mispronounced your h ’s!
The Blackwell History is right that Vulgar Latin was not uniform, but not even Classical Latin—as a literary language—was as rigid as is sometimes believed. Take as an example one of the most basic features of Latin grammar, the sequence of tenses. No one clings to it as firmly as Caesar, not even Cicero. Livy has his own traits, often preferring primary tenses in indirect speech where others would have used secondary tenses. Considering this and many other variations in what are regarded as the paragons of Golden Age prose, the spoken language must have been even less standardized. In fact, this is part of what is typical for Vulgar Latin, in the sense of colloquial, non-elite, Latin: it was not fixed in the way that Classical Latin was, whether in spelling, grammar or vocabulary. There must have been more variation between the different provinces and cities of the empire, between the different social classes and professions, and even between the older and younger generations.
So why is it still a useful term?
The answer is that the Romance languages of today have many traits which are rare or completely missing in Classical Latin literature but are common for what has been called Vulgar Latin. Though earlier definitions of Vulgar Latin may have been flawed, perhaps the solution is not to stop using the term, but to be more precise in what we mean by it. Vulgar Latin was a sociolect (or group of sociolects) mainly of the middle class from the time of Plautus to a century or so after the fall of the Western Empire. It was less standardized in its grammar and vocabulary than Classical Latin, but many of its distinctive traits were common throughout the Latin-speaking part of the empire. The reason for this was that its speakers were highly mobile and influential. Many other scholars, including the authors of The Blackwell History of the Latin Language, prefer the somewhat wider term sub-elite Latin. This is worth committing to memory, but for the purposes of this article, I will continue referring to the language as Vulgar Latin, seeing as this term is in wider use.
Before we delve deeper into any vulgar traits, one question is especially important to consider: How can we know how Latin was pronounced? Besides the Latin alphabet itself, which was created on the basis of the spoken language, the primary sources are literary references, loanwords and spelling mistakes (in graffiti and inscriptions) as well as the modern Romance languages. Cicero himself discusses pronunciation in many of his private letters. Other writers, such as Aulus Gellius (2nd century AD), can also give valuable information, as can later grammarians complaining about common mistakes. A work of some interest for our inquiry into Vulgar Latin is Appendix Probi (3rd or 4th century), which is found in the same manuscript as the grammatical work Instituta artium , ascribed to a certain Probus (possibly Marcus Valerius Probus). Appendix Probi contains a list of common mistakes in vocabulary and pronunciation together with the correct forms.
As stated above, loanwords from Latin into other ancient languages, mainly Greek, but also Gothic, are another source that linguists can use. For instance, the Greek Καῖσαρ and Gothic 𐌺𐌰𐌹𐍃𐌰𐍂 ( Kaisar ) show that Latin Caesar must have been pronounced with a hard /k/ in antiquity.
Inscriptions in stone are also an important source, but since they are so formulaic, clues to pronunciation are mostly found in unconscious mistakes—what Leonard Palmer calls “the occasional inadvertencies.” As such, they often contain one or only a few errors, but can otherwise be without fault. The stone carvers who made these inscriptions are the perfect example of people who had limited education in the Roman world. Like the merchants and officers, their use of the written language was for practical reasons only, not for high literature.
To pick up where we left off: What kind of vulgar pronunciation did Hadrian acquire during his time in the Roman army? If it was an intonation or a rhythm that seemed rough to the learned ear, then it is almost impossible to say what it sounded like. However, there are many traits, common in his army camp, that could have occurred in his speech.
One that comes to mind concerns the diphthong /ae/. There was a tendency already during the late republic to pronounce it as a monophthong, probably as [ɛː], if it stood in an unaccented position. This development continued during the 1st century AD, spreading to the pronunciation of /ae/ in accented positions. It is unsure to what extent the cultured elite tried to retain the diphthong. They certainly did so in writing, and it would not be surprising if they had made an effort in the spoken language as well. Nevertheless, inscriptions reveal the confusion of non-elite Latin speakers. Hypercorrections (i.e. mistaken corrections) like “baene” for “bene” (‘well’), though rare, are evidence of this. Some also show enclitic - que (‘and’) spelled like “quae”, as in the funerary monument of Petronia Hedone, now located in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
ET L[VCIO] PETRONIO PHILEMONI FILIO
‘Petronia Hedone made this for herself and for Lucius Petronius, son of Philemon, and for her freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants.’
Another example that I happened to see in the Gregoriano Profano Museum in the Vatican last Autumn had “aeorum” for “eorum” (‘their’, CIL , VI, 2365 & 2366), of which there are several other examples from around the time of Hadrian ( AE 1983, 0086, AE 1984, 0129, CIL III, 01808). A number of curse tablets ( defixiones ) found in Roman Africa, in what is today Tunisia, disregard the diphthong in “daemon”, several of them beginning with the words “adiuro te demon quicunque es…” (‘I entreat you, spirit, whoever you are…’; Audollent, Defix . Tab . 265, 286, 290, 291, 293–295).
Despite the sound change having taken place many centuries before, the digraph spelling remained in use for a long time in official inscriptions. But by the 5th century AD, even these show an . A case in point is the following tile from the reign of the Gothic king Theoderic the Great (ruled 493–526 AD), who tried to show his good will to the people of Rome by restoring public works.
This tile has the stamp: “Regnante domino nostro Theoder[i]co, bono Rome”, ‘In the reign of our lord Theoderic, for the good of Rome.’ “Rome” would naturally be “Romae” (dativus commodi) in Classical Latin!
When it came to other vowels, long /eː/ and short /i/ coalesced into a sound somewhere in between the two, usually written [ẹ] in phonetic notation. In some instances this is evidenced by the confusion of and , as in the following inscription on a 1st century AD sepulchre ( CIL VI, 35337) in the Capitoline Museums:
‘To the Manes. For Fructus, the servant of Domitian’s wife Domitia. He lived six years and twenty days. His mother made it for her well-deserving son and for herself and her kinsmen and their descendants.’
This example shows the carver’s uncertainty in how to reproduce [ẹ], which led to the spelling of ficit for fecit . This is quite an early example, but the trait is recurring all throughout Roman imperial history. A later 4th century AD inscription features the word tribunus (‘tribune’) spelled as ( AE 1907, 0143).
A trait which most certainly existed among Hadrian’s soldiers was the dropping of initial /h/. Already in the late republic it was pronounced “leniter et leviter” (‘gently and softly’, from the poem below) by the elite, but certain people were inclined to drop it altogether. A few tried to overcompensate for this tendency, as is evidenced by Catullus ridiculing a certain Arrius for putting an /h/ where it didn’t belong, saying “hinsidias” (‘hambush’) for “insidias” (‘ambush’), pronouncing it with the same vigor as his rustic forebears:
Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet dicere, et insidias Arrius hinsidias , et tum mirifice sperabat se esse locutum, cum quantum poterat dixerat hinsidias . Credo, sic mater, sic Liber avunculus eius, sic maternus avus dixerat atque avia. Hoc misso in Syriam requierant omnibus aures; audibant eadem haec leniter et leviter, nec sibi postilla metuebant talia verba, cum subito affertur nuntius horribilis: Ionios fluctus, postquam illuc Arrius isset, iam non Ionios esse sed Hionios .
‘Arrius said “ghains”, if he ever wanted to say “gains”, and “hambush” for “ambush”, and hoped he had spoken admirably well, having said “hambush” as vigorously as possible. The same way, I think, did his mother, his uncle Liber [or ‘freedman uncle’] and his maternal grandfather and grandmother speak. When he was sent to Syria, our ears could finally rest! They heard the same words spoken gently and softly, and did not fear them, when suddenly a terrible message was brought: The Ionian waves, after Arrius had gone there, were no longer “Ionian”, but “Hionian!” ’
Though the elite might have tried to maintain in
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