Classical Latin - Stylistic Shifts

Stylistic Shifts

The style of language refers to repeatable features of speech that are somewhat less general than the fundamental characteristics of the language. The latter give it a unity allowing it to be referenced under a single name. Thus Old Latin, Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin, etc., are not considered different languages, but are all referenced under the name of Latin. This is an ancient practice continued by moderns rather than a philological innovation of recent times. That Latin had case endings is a fundamental feature of the language. Whether a given form of speech prefers to use prepositions such as ad, ex, de for "to", "from" and "of" rather than simple case endings is a matter of style. Latin has a large number of styles. Each and every author has a style, which typically allows his prose or poetry to be identified by experienced Latinists. The problem of comparative literature has been to group styles finding similarities by period, in which case one may speak of Old Latin, Silver Latin, Late Latin as styles or a phase of styles.

The ancient authors themselves first defined style by recognizing different kinds of sermo, or "speech." In making the value judgement that classical Latin was "first class" and that it was better to write with Latinitas they were themselves selecting the literary and upper-class language of the city as a standard style and all sermo that differed from it was a different style; thus in rhetoric Cicero was able to define sublime, intermediate and low styles (within classical Latin) and St. Augustine to recommend the low style for sermons (from sermo). Style therefore is to be defined by differences in speech from a standard. Teuffel defined that standard as Golden Latin.

John Edwin Sandys, for many decades an authority on Latin style, summarizes the differences between Golden and Silver Latin as follows. Silver Latin is to be distinguished by

• "an exaggerated conciseness and point"
• "occasional archaic words and phrases derived from poetry"
• "increase in the number of Greek words in ordinary use" (Claudius Suetonius refers to "both our languages", Latin and Greek)
• "literary reminiscences"
• "The literary use of words from the common dialect" (dictare and dictitare as well as classical dicere, "to say")