Arnold J. Toynbee: “The Creation of a Literature in Latin on the Pattern of the Literature in Greek”
Arnold J. Toynbee: “The Creation of a Literature in Latin on the Pattern of the Literature in Greek”
(March 21, 2016)
Professor Cory Crawford of Brigham Young University writes in his paper “A Brief History of the Italian Language”: “We could write tomes on the changes [from Latin to Italian] undergone in one century alone and, indeed, some have. (http://linguistics.byu.edu/classes/ling450ch/reports/Italian2.html) /// /// Specifically, he is referring to grammatical changes: “phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic changes.” Also, importantly he discussed the sociological causes of such grammatical change; e.g. “invasions from the northern tribes, heavy foreign trading, or a desire for Italian unification”. /// /// However, changes occurring in language are not limited to grammatical evolutions of one language into another, such as the change of Latin into Italian. There are also aesthetic/literary changes within a given language such as those discussed by Prof. Cosetta Seno in her excellent thought-provoking article “Who Did It? The Mysterious Murder of the History of Italian Literature” (see Related Articles #3 & 4). She refers to changes in “tone, style, and imagination”, and changes in “genre” such as “sonnets”, “novels” and “short stories”. In short, she writes: “literature has its own particular language, this language has a history”. /// /// However, while Professors Crawford and Seno limit there history of changes to transitional and post-Latin Italian, the complete history of changes in the ‘literary language’ of the Italian people goes back to the sixth century B.C. Roman writers. And, the causes of those changes down to third century A.D. are largely associated with the sociological and cultural influence of the Italiote and Siceliot Greek culture on Latin writers. Not surprisingly, this history has been largely ignored by the Italian American literati! /// /// Even though the history of the near eighteen million southern-Italian Americans extends fully back, in an unbroken continuum, 3,000 years to the South of Rome, the American university system’s Italian American Studies programs are largely devoid of any references to the Mezzogiorno and Sicily. For example, in a recent collection of excellent scholarly essays published by the Italian American Studies Association (“What is Italian America”), not one of the twenty-one essays makes a titled reference to “the old country”. Also, in the six-page index, there’s not a single reference to a Mezzogiorno or Sicily place-name. In short, these scholars/teachers seemingly have no interest in teaching southern-Italian Americans their pre-Ellis Island history. To them, unlike, English, French, German, Irish, Oriental, African, Hispanic and Jewish Americans, southern-Italian Americans have no history before arriving in America. /// /// This scholarly myopia with post Ellis Island Italian Americana denies Americans of southern Italian descent their profound three-thousand year history. A truly scholarly history, driven by a Muse’s passion for the amazing historical depth of southern-Italian American culture, would include, among many other things, a comprehensive history of their ‘literary language’ back to the Roman Latin and the Hellenistic Greek culture’s affects on that literary language. /// /// Further, as Prof. Cawford cogently points out, the ability to study the history of language changes is “possible only with the help of surviving documents and records;” happily, such a comprehensive corpus of “surviving documents and records” exists and has be critiqued by a large number of classical scholars. The great world historian and classical scholar Arnold J. Toynbee, in his mind boggling two volume scholarly tour de force “Hannibal’s’ Legacy” (a Legacy that comes down directly and intact to the circa 1900 A.D. emigration generation – see Related Articles # 1 & 2); Toynbee has provided a profoundly stimulating introduction of history of Greek influence on Latin literature, and a copious bibliography for more detail research and (should there ever be a mind to) teaching material.
Preface: Ph.Ds Then and Now
The language requirements for PhDs have changed dramatically in the past 40-50 years and have had significant affects on the character of humanities scholarship. For example, Professor Cosetta Seno of the University of Colorado Italian Studies program has commented on the implications that the significant diminished foreign language requirements has had on the study of the history of Italian literature. She writes:
“Until the Eighties PhD candidates in Italian required German and Latin and other major Romance languages, today this requirement has been dropped almost everywhere. (“Who Did It? The Mysterious Murder of the History of Italian Literature”; Italica Vol. 91, # 3, p. 256)
Similarly, Professor Stephen E. Flowers, formerly of the University of Texas Austen Department of English and Germanic Languages, in a radio interview, lamented the negative affects the lack of past required language training has had on Indo-European cultural studies. He notes the elimination of language requirements in PhD programs. He says:
“In the past, to get a PhD in English one had to take course work in Old and Middle English. That is no longer required.
“[His PhD program in the 1970s] required Old Norse and Old Irish. One cannot find those course even offered any longer”
However, the affects on the character of historical scholarship, that the recent changes in language training have had, is nothing compared to the changes in classical studies since early twentieth century England.
Up to that time ‘classical education’ was modeled on the fifteenth-century Italian standards, and was the principle form of classical studies in much of Europe. It consisted of very intense training in ancient Greek and Latin.
The classical scholar Arnold J. Toynbee, who did original seminal work on Sparta, explained what “very intense” meant:
“The form [of classical education] current in England, during the years 1896 to 1911, when I was receiving my classical education there, had been established, between four and five hundred years back in Italy. (“A Study of History Vol. XII”, p. 575)
“The aim was not merely to read and write Greek and Latin prose, and verse [but also] produce counterfeits of the original literature that an ancient Greek or Latin author, in each genre, might have mistaken for authentic pieces” (p. 577)
This is to say, student competence in the Greek and Latin were such that they composed their own original texts and verses in perfect ancient language and idiom. However, Toynbee reports all that changed in his lifetime:
“My generation was the last in England to be given an education in the Greek and Latin languages and literature.” (p. 577)
Further, it should be noted that classical scholars of Toynbee’s generation and before were also required to demonstrate fluency in modern languages (German, French, etc.).
Thus, beginning in the early twentieth century coming down to the present there has been a continuous general decline in language education for PhDs in English speaking universities. These changes in language education are not to be considered pro forma or perfunctory! They necessarily (invariable) have significant affect on the character of scholarship.
The Historian’s Craft
Historians seek knowledge of past societies based on the remnant ‘documents’ of the past society, which differentiates them from archeologists who seek knowledge of the past based on remnant ‘materials’ (shards, arrowheads, etc.). Accordingly, the ability to read and understand the language written in relevant documents is a necessary prerequisite for historians.
Reading, in this sense, is not to be understood as simple comprehension and denotative translating. Rather, the historian must have mastered fluency in the language of the society being studied, such that the nuances, connotation and entomology of the language allow her/him to grasp cultural implications.
Language the raw material the Historian’s Craft.
As with any craft, the more refine the raw material, the higher the quality of the final product. Similarly, the Historian’s Craft; the better mastery of the language, the more refined the raw material and the higher the quality of the history produced.
Accordingly, given the intensity of language education of Toynbee's and the generations of classical scholars preceding him, much deference must be paid to their work. It is not obvious that contemporary classical scholarship is on a par with that preceding early twentieth century.
Thus, for example, regarding the matter of the present discussion about Greek influence on Latin; in the relevant chapter of his two-volume work “Hannibal’s Legacy”, Toynbee’s 20 page narrative contains 99 footnotes, many annotated in modern and ancient languages with reference to dozens of classic scholars. Consider for example, one page of that text below. Note especially the footnoting for just two sentences.
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In short, given the depth of scholarship brought to bare, Toynbee’s descriptions and inferences about Hellenic influence on Latin literature in these twenty pages is not to be taken lightly.
Hellenic Influence on Roman Culture
Toynbee begins his essay with a definitive and unequivocal statement:
“Latin literature is a product of Hellenization and the Hellenization of Rome began at the beginning of Rome herself” (“Hannibal’s Legacy” vol. ii, p. 416)
There are two facts of history posited in this single sentence:
1) Latin literature is a product of Hellenization
2) Hellenization of Rome began at the beginning of Rome herself
The significance of the second fact is more important than the first. It implies that there was more to Hellenization of Roman society than influence on literature, and that the whole history of Roman culture may be understood as the infusion of Hellenic culture. He writes:
“ The act of synoecism that created the Roman city-state out of a cluster of separate village-communities was, in fact, an Hellenic political operation … (p. 416)
The whole of the subsequent history of Rome from its inception may be understood as a continuous Hellenization process. Toynbee quotes the classical scholar F. Altiem:
“ ‘After the foundation of the City of Rome … there was not ever, and could not ever be, an epoch [of Roman history] in which the Roman way of life was exclusively autochthonous and was entirely untouched by influences from outside’ ” (p. 416)
Toynbee follows on:
“This progressive Hellenization of Roman life, which had begun at the moment of the foundation of the Roman city-state, continued thereafter until the third century of the Christian Era; (p. 418)
Further, the Hellenization of Roman culture was pervasive in all aspects of the culture.
“The Hellenization of the Roman body social made itself felt in so many departments of Roman life that the history of it is virtually identical with Roman history in general…
The essential problem of Roman civilization is the problem of its relations with Hellenism’ …” (p. 416)
The process of the Hellenization of Roman culture may be divided into two periods:
“The history of the reception of Hellenism into the Roman body social falls into two phases. (p. 418)
1) Sixth century B.C (599- 500 B.C) to mid-third century B.C. (circa 250 B.C.),
2) Third century B.C. to the third century A.D. (circa 250 B.C. – 200s A.D.)
In the first period Hellenic culture came to Rome indirectly through Etruria.
"First period, running from the sixth to the mid-third century B.C. wherein Rome received Hellenism mainly through an Etruscan channel.
"Etruria was part of the Greek World (‘Greek influence in Etruscan Civilization and individual Greek immigration into Etruria begins not later than the first half of the ninth century B.C. [800 - 850 B.C.] and Greek importation perhaps even earlier’)
"Accordingly, Rome’s subjection to Etruria at this period meant subjection to a people half Hellenized and in contact with Greek influence” (p. 418)
In the second period, Hellenism came to Rome directly though Roman conquest of Southern Italy.
“Second period, in the course of the third century B.C. (299-200 B.C.), Rome switched over from her traditional way of imbibing Hellenism indirectly through an Etruscan channel to a direct recourse to native Greek sources.
“This cultural reorientation of Roman life was a result of the political incorporation in the Roman Commonwealth of the surviving Greek colonial communities on the [Southern-] Italian mainland. (p. 420)
Hellenic Influence on Latin Literature
A specific aspect of the general affects of Hellenic culture on Roman culture is the affect on literature. Roman writers responded to the incorporation of southern-Italian Hellenic culture in two ways:
1) Greek Language Phase
Roman writers appealed to Greek readers by writing in the Greek language.
“One Roman literary response to the attractiveness of Hellenism was to try to gain the ear of the great post-Alexandrian Greek public by introducing Rome and her history to this public in works of literature addressed to Greek readers and therefore necessarily written in the Greek language. (p. 421)
2) Latin Language Phase
Writing in Latin in the manner of Greek literature.
“The other Roman response was to try to mold the Latin language into a medium for producing a Latin equivalent of Greek literature, or at least a Latin counterpart of it. (p. 421)
Greek Language Phase of Latin Literature
The utter pervasiveness of Greek language and culture in the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East never ceases to amaze. When the Romans decided to engage the Greek literary language they were following many others in the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern World.
“On the western fringe of the Hellenic World the Sicels, Sicans, and Elymi in Sicily had already Hellenized themselves adopting the Greek language in addition to Greek art and institutions and ideas.
“On the eastern fringe of the Hellenic world on the west coast of Anatolia most of the peoples had now exchanged Persian for Greek rule. So to the Babylonians, Egyptians and Phoenicians producing works in the Greek language to explain themselves in Greek terms to the Greek public … in Central Asia, Iran, and Iraq, as in Magna Gaecia and Sicily, the ascendancy of the Hellenic culture survived the extinction of Greek rule. Even Eurasian nomad invader of the Greek world, like the roman invader of it, became philhellenes. (p. 421-422)
In short, given this pervasiveness of Greek, early Roman writers resorted to the Greek language rather than their indigenous Latin.
"Throughout the Post-Alexandrine Age of Hellenic history, the public that spoke, wrote, and read the Greek language was numerous and widely extended …
"[Accordingly] it is not surprising that, when Romans first came into direct contact with this imposing Hellenic World, they should have wished to communicate with it by writing for it in its Greek lingua franca.
"From the third century B.C. onwards until perhaps halfway through the third century of the Christian Era, every highly-educated Roman was familiar with Greek. (p 422)
"Moreover, from the later years of the Hannibalic War (ca. 200 B.C.) onwards, the bilingual element in the City of Rome itself – and also, no doubt in the other large non-Greek cities of Peninsular Italy – will have been increased… (p. 424)
Roman historians especially found the Greek appealing. In as much as they wanted to convey Roman history to the Greek public, they naturally were obliged to write in the Greek language.
“Historians who were expounding their own country’s history, Greek was, in fact, the language use by the earliest Roman historians.
"Four historians who wrote in Greek:
- Q. Fabius Pictor 225 B.C.;
- L. Cincius Alimentus 210 B.C.;
- C. Acilius 156 B.C.;
- A. Postgumius Albinus 151 B.C. (p 422 - 423)
"Others who were explicitly recorded to have know Greek: Africanus Major, C. Sulpicius Gallus, Cato Major, T. Quinctius Flamininus and L. Aemilius Paullus (p. 424)
Cato and the transition from Greek literary language to Latin
It is important to keep in mind that, while Greek was the lingua franca during this first phase of Roman history, Greek did not replace Latin as the language of the Roman state and society.
"In Rome, bilingualism had come to stay. However, the Romans did not go, as others in the Hellenic world, to the length of abandoning their ancestral language for Greek (p. 428)
{Note: This is a characteristic that still can be seen in the Italian people on both sides of the Atlantic; the ability to appreciate the virtues of other cultures and the self-confidence to incorporate them into their culture without losing a ‘sense of’ and ‘pride in’ their own identity. For example, southern-Italian Americans have embrace American culture without losing the sense of and pride in being southern-Italian (see for example IASA’s What is Italian America”). This trait can be found throughout the history of Italy ‘South of Rome’ for no less than three thousand years – longer than any other Euro-American culture.}
The renowned Roman writer Cato is a good example of the linguistic (indeed broad cultural) dynamics between the two languages (cultures) and setting the stage for the ascendance of Latin as the primary literary language.
Cato (vivebat 234-149 B.C.) had mastery of the Greek language.
“Cato (probably) acquired his Greek at the age of 20-25 while serving in Sicily from 214 B.C. till 210 B.C., under Marcellus [Roman general during Roman’s Second Punic War with Hannibal]. In this post during this length of time, he can hardly have failed to become fairly fluent in the colloquial Greek.”
"Cato went on to become familiar, not only with contemporary vernacular spoken Greek, but with classical Greek literature.” (p. 426)
However, his knowledge of Greek language and culture did not negate his Roman (southern Italian) identity and pride. Indeed, he became know for his anti-Hellenism.
“When addressing the Athenian people in the course of his official mission to Athens in 191 B.C., though he was capable of making a speech in Greek, he chose to speak in Latin, and have his words translated into Greek” (p. 426)
“He took the initiative in persuading the Roman government to terminate the permets de séjour (permit to stay) of the three Greek philosopher-ambassadors who had been sent to Rome from Athens in 155 B.C. (p. 427)
"He would not entrust is son’s education to a slave of his, with the Greek name Chilon, who was a qualified teacher. He taught his son Greek himself. The advice that he is said to have given his son was to take a taste of Greek literature, but not to devote himself to a thorough study of it. (p. 427)
Most importantly,
“He wrote his books, NOT in Greek, but in Latin… The future of Roman literature lay with Cato and not with those of his older and younger Roman contemporaries who, when they had taken to writing, had chosen the Greek language to serve as their linguistic medium. (p.429)
“Cato’s ‘De Agri Cultura’ was perhaps the first prose work to be written by a Roman author in Latin. (p.427)
Again, Cato’s ability to appreciate Greek culture and language without being subsumed by it, is demonstrated by his work “Origines”.
“Cato’s later and more ambitious work the ‘Origines’ – perhaps the first historical work to be written in Latin.
“It was certainly inspired by Greek models. The very title is a Latin translation of the Greek word denoting a well-established genre of Greek historiography, in which the origins of Greek city states were dealt with on aetiological lines.
“The book was not centered exclusively on Rome … It also included in its purview the origins of the other city-states in Peninsular Italy (p. 428)
Latin Language Phase of Latin Literature
Cato, writing in Latin but in Hellenic cultural terms, acted the role of John the Baptist announcing the coming. In this case, the coming of Latin language literature replacing the Greek.
“Roman literature written in Greek for Greek readers soon proved to be a blind alley (p. 429).
However, as the New Testament was not a replacement for the Old; similarly, the linguistic transition from Greek language to Latin did not represent at a complete break with Hellenic culture. Rather, as noted above, the very act of Rome’s coming into existence was an act of synoecism whereby a cluster of separate village-communities was melded into a single Roman city-state; similarly the evolution of Roman culture was the process of melding of Greek culture with the indigenous Italian. While the language of Roman literary writers change, the Greek literary forms and styles remained the same.
“The future of Roman literature lay with a school of writers whose aim was the more ambitious one of using not the Greek but the Latin language as a vehicle for reproducing Greek literature. (p. 429)
More generally
“The Roman’s decision to create a Roman literature that was to be Greek in Style but not in language was characteristic of their general approach to the problem of what their relation to the Hellenic World was to be. They wanted to be in the Hellenic World, but this on their own terms. (p. 429 fn. 4)
A perfect example of this melding of Hellenic culture into the Italian fold is the Roman adaptation of Homeric mythology.
“This Roman attitude towards Hellenism is also expressed in the Roman’s adoption – and adaptation - of the Greek legend of the Trojan refugee-hero Aeneas’ migration to the West. (p. 429 fn. 4)
The Aeneas rendition is especially interesting to Sicilian-Americans because it links the origins of Rome with Elymian indigenous western-Sicilian people.
“Thucydides credits the Elymi with a Trojan origin…
“The legend was then taken up, and was linked specifically, with the origins of Rome, by at least four of the founding fathers of a Greek-style literature in Latin: Naevius, Ennius, Pictor, and Cato {who spent four years in Sicily} in his ‘Origines’. (p. 429 fn. 4)
The extent to which the Romans believed that their roots lay in Sicily is indicated not only in their literature but in their behavior as well.
“The Romans showed their appreciation of the legend by acting on it politically, besides making a literary use of it. After the Roman conquest of Sicily the Roman Government gave special privileges to the Elymian city Egesta, and paid honor to the Temple of Venus at Elymian Eryx. A temple for Venus Erycina on the Capitol at Rome was vowed in 217 B.C. and was deicated in 215 B.C. (p.429 fn.4)
(Note: Toynbee posits a theory of Sicilian origins of Rome in his “A Study of History” vol. 8 p. 704-709. For a detailed discussion of his thesis see this blog Here, Here, and Here)
Again, this example of the legend of Aeneas illustrated the Roman propensity for melding with the Hellenic culture while maintaining their individuality. They took the Greek legend translated it into their Latin language and expanded the legend to include their the own origins in western Sicily.
Poetics of Translation from Greek to Latin
Rendering Greek into Latin is not a simple denotative process. Especially with poetry and literary language, issues such a rendering Greek meter and rhyme for example into Latin entails some creativity. Again, we see how on the one hand the Roman’s adopted the Greek literature and then rendered it uniquely Italian.
To fully appreciate the history of this transition from Greek into Latin, entails the scholarly mastery of both languages discussed above. Toynbee is definitely up to the challenge. Consider, for example his commentary on Livius Androuoicus’ translation of the Odyssey into Latin. Note, the specificity of the comparative poetic linguistic characteristics.
“When the Greek-speaker Livius Andronicus took the new departure of translating the “’Odyssey’ into Latin, he couched his translation in the Latin language’s native Saturnian verse. This was logical; and, if in fact it is true that the Saturnian meter was at least partly accentual, it was, in fact, a more congenial meter for Latin poetry than any of the quantitative meter that were native to the Greek language.
“However, works of Roman poetry written by non-Romans in Latin Saturnian verse had no better future than works of Roman history written by Romans in Greek prose.
"The future of Latin poetry lay with Latin poems couched in Greek meter, this queer compromise was made possible by Planutus’s and Ennius’s pioneer work in adapting the classical Greek meter to an uncouth foreign language. (p. 432)
Toynbee proceeds, demonstrating his prowess in both classical languages, showing in detail linguistic poetic minutia how the transition from predominate Greek literary writing evolved into the Latin.
In short, he writes so cogently and to the point (a point southen-Italian Americans should dwell on):
“A literature has seldom been conjured into existence, as Latin literature suddenly was. [Classical scholar P. Grimal writes:] ‘ in the creation of a literature, the ground that it had taken Greece four centuries to cover was covered by Rome in three generations.’ ” (p. 432)
The social implications of this “conjured Latin literature” are as profound as its “three generation creation.”
“Hellenic literature in Latin achieved two remarkable triumphs …
1) Latin literature compelled the Greeks themselves to take account of it. As the corpus of literature in Latin increased in volume and improved in quality, parts of it, at least – especially the standard Latin works on Roman history and institutions – became ‘required reading’ for any Greek scholar who was proposing to do serious research into Roman affairs.
2) The inspiration of a new crop of younger literatures, derived from it, in all the vernaculars of the medieval and modern West. (p. 432 – 433)
Toynbee reference to modern West is consistent with this blog's relentless theme that there is a direct and continuous history of southern-Italian Americans from ancient time down to the present.
Toynbee sums up:
Toynbee sums up:
“The creation of a Latin literature was an extraordinary achievement – and the more so, considering that this was an achievement in a field which, unlike the fields of war and law, was not specially congenial to the Roman national genius.
“The Roman People jumped, at one bound, from being barely literate in the Latin language to the acquisition of a literature written in the Latin language in the Greek style. (p. 433)
Further, and again very importantly from the point of view of this blogs persistent theme, Toynbee writes:
“Rome’s Latin literature was launched for her by the co-operation efforts of writers born and brought up in all parts of Italy.” (p. 434)
The word ‘Italy’ during the period in question denoted the area South of Rome. North of Rome at the time was largely frontier. In Tuscany, for example, people were running around with blue paint on their bodies.
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