Excerpts from Latin literature

 

Dantius

Homo Sapiens

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
in orbe lacteo
I forget where I left off in H.J. Rose's Handbook of Latin Literature. This excerpt will contain some repeat content, but hopefully also a new chunk.

There were likewise the indigitamenta, concerning whose much-disputed contents this much may be affirmed, that they included the correct formulae in which to address the numerous gods, small and great, of Roman worship. Here again, though certainly an occasional brief fragment shows us the language in a somewhat more archaic condition than that of our earlier surviving authors, we have no proof that anything as ancient as, for instance, the first century of the republic was left in the hands of magistrates or priests of the days of Cicero and Varro. Indeed, Livy complains of the paucity of early records, which he attributes to the damage done by the Gauls when they burned the city in 390 B.C., while Cicero, and not he alone, has something to say of the interpolated and unreliable nature of such documents as were to be had.

I've definitely already sent the (long) footnote on the indigitamenta. The end of this paragraph has another footnote:
Livy, vi, 1, 2. Whether this is a uera causa or not is another matter. Apart from the intrinsic improbability, long ago pointed out by various critics, that the Gauls would burn a city which they were occupying and thus leave themselves without quarters, the archaeological data point to their having respected the few public buildings, at least the temples. which were then standing, see Tenney Frank, Roman Buildings of the Republic, American Academy in Rome, 1924, pp. 83-4. That isolated fires broke out and did considerable damage is likely enough, of course, considering the undisciplined state of the Gaulish horde and the heat and dryness of an Italian summer. For Cicero’s strictures, see Brutus, 62, on the false claims made by individual families to noteworthy exploits in the past, which Livy, viii, 40, 4-5 implies had vitiated the official records also.
 
 

Dantius

Homo Sapiens

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
in orbe lacteo
From the purely literary point of view, the following facts are the most important. We have nothing, or practically nothing, now surviving which can be taken as an extract from a prose record of earlier date than about the third century B.C., so far as at least the language goes, whatever may be held regarding the contents. If we had, we may believe Cicero when he says that the early documents were the driest of the dry, wholly without stylistic merit. But, whether or not the students of classical times in Italy had before them any writings from, say, the beginning of the republic or not, their constant testimony is that such records at all events had existed. We may therefore suppose that at that early date the Romans, and by implication the other Italians, many of whom were at least as civilized as their future masters, had at all events the beginnings of a habit of making records, in writing, in their own tongues but in a script adapted from that of the Greeks, of such things as seemed to them worthy of permanent memorial. In other words, they were past the stage of illiterate barbarism and ready, if the impetus was given and sufficient leisure from immediate and pressing practical activities were obtained, to create some kind of literature.

Footnote after "Cicero":
Cic., de orat., ii, 53; de legg., i, 6.

Footnote after "Greeks":
All the Italian alphabets are either identical with or slightly modified from Greek characters of what is called the Western type, an outstanding feature of which is that X = ks, not kh.
 
From the purely literary point of view, the following facts are the most important. We have nothing, or practically nothing, now surviving which can be taken as an extract from a prose record of earlier date than about the third century B.C., so far as at least the language goes, whatever may be held regarding the contents. If we had, we may believe Cicero when he says that the early documents were the driest of the dry, wholly without stylistic merit. But, whether or not the students of classical times in Italy had before them any writings from, say, the beginning of the republic or not, their constant testimony is that such records at all events had existed. We may therefore suppose that at that early date the Romans, and by implication the other Italians, many of whom were at least as civilized as their future masters, had at all events the beginnings of a habit of making records, in writing, in their own tongues but in a script adapted from that of the Greeks, of such things as seemed to them worthy of permanent memorial. In other words, they were past the stage of illiterate barbarism and ready, if the impetus was given and sufficient leisure from immediate and pressing practical activities were obtained, to create some kind of literature.

Footnote after "Cicero":
Cic., de orat., ii, 53; de legg., i, 6.

Footnote after "Greeks":
All the Italian alphabets are either identical with or slightly modified from Greek characters of what is called the Western type, an outstanding feature of which is that X = ks, not kh.
Thank you for sharing this excerpt.
 
I forget where I left off in H.J. Rose's Handbook of Latin Literature. This excerpt will contain some repeat content, but hopefully also a new chunk.

There were likewise the indigitamenta, concerning whose much-disputed contents this much may be affirmed, that they included the correct formulae in which to address the numerous gods, small and great, of Roman worship. Here again, though certainly an occasional brief fragment shows us the language in a somewhat more archaic condition than that of our earlier surviving authors, we have no proof that anything as ancient as, for instance, the first century of the republic was left in the hands of magistrates or priests of the days of Cicero and Varro. Indeed, Livy complains of the paucity of early records, which he attributes to the damage done by the Gauls when they burned the city in 390 B.C., while Cicero, and not he alone, has something to say of the interpolated and unreliable nature of such documents as were to be had.

I've definitely already sent the (long) footnote on the indigitamenta. The end of this paragraph has another footnote:
Livy, vi, 1, 2. Whether this is a uera causa or not is another matter. Apart from the intrinsic improbability, long ago pointed out by various critics, that the Gauls would burn a city which they were occupying and thus leave themselves without quarters, the archaeological data point to their having respected the few public buildings, at least the temples. which were then standing, see Tenney Frank, Roman Buildings of the Republic, American Academy in Rome, 1924, pp. 83-4. That isolated fires broke out and did considerable damage is likely enough, of course, considering the undisciplined state of the Gaulish horde and the heat and dryness of an Italian summer. For Cicero’s strictures, see Brutus, 62, on the false claims made by individual families to noteworthy exploits in the past, which Livy, viii, 40, 4-5 implies had vitiated the official records also.

I am currently writing several articles on Latin literature, its philological and syntactic features. In my research, I use the university plagiarism checker Fixgerald which helps to make my texts high quality. I try to quote correctly and avoid using other people's opinions in the text.
A very strong passage.
 
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