CUP (2016) h/b 479pp £74.99 (ISBN 9781107132252)
This substantial and intensely scholarly work, written by specialists and designed for specialists, resulted from a ‘workshop’ held at Manchester University in 2014. Its ‘guiding idea’ was to explore the traditional view that there are connections between early and late Latin which ‘go underground’ during the classical period, though in practice some contributors to the book’s eighteen chapters broadened the discussion to ‘deal with more general issues of change within the history of Latin’. Some of the work here goes beyond what we normally think of as ‘late Latin’—not that that term can be pinned down with any precision—up to more modern times (note the mention of Erasmus in the title of G. Pezzini’s Chapter 2, Comic lexicon: searching for ‘submerged’ Latin from Plautus to Erasmus, though in fact he makes only a fleeting appearance).
Some of the chapters are so technical as to defy comprehensible summary or analysis in this forum, and the brief account which follows concentrates upon a few of them whose content—or at least some of it—could well be of interest to the non-specialist reader. It might be unwise for a schoolteacher to let a Latin class see Chapter 3, by Tommaso Mari, since it concentrates on ‘third person possessives’, i.e. suus. The author tells us that he ‘embrace(s) a morphosyntactic approach with semantic/pragmatic adaptations’, but what it means is that he examines cases where suus occurs in which eius or eorum would be expected. Thus, he finds 15 (out of 448) irregular usages in Plautus, only occasionally to be accounted for by colloquial speech. Caesar, Nepos and Sallust also furnish examples, and we read that Cicero and Livy are also occasionally guilty, while ‘not even poetry of the golden age is exempt’, though here distaste for eius plays a part, as do metrical considerations. He notes 27 irregular cases (out of 119) in Seneca, and 8 (out of 158) in Tertullian. Mari gives syntactical/semantic explanations (or excuses) for each example that he gives, but the reviewer hopes that he will be forgiven if he observes that in each cited case the use of suus, however ‘improper’, does not seem unnatural in the context of a living language.
What is the Latin for ‘I have done it’? And the French? Obviously, id feci and ‘je l’ai fait’. Perhaps, however, matters are not quite so straightforward. In Chapter 8, Gerd V.M. Haverling considers the use of habeo and the perfect participle in earlier and later Latin. For example, in Plautus, Mercator 360, we find nequiquam abdidi abscondidi, abstrusam habebam (one of many similar Plautine examples cited), where the use of habeo implies ‘keeping’ rather than the simple act, abstrusi. In Cicero the same construction occurs, but typically with concentration on the state of affairs, rather than the agent (De Caesare satis hoc dictum habebo, Philippic 5.52), and in other examples there are cases where the usage comes close to the function of the ‘synthetic perfect’, or where there is a ‘difference between current relevance and resultativity’. The range of examples cited, in a number of different usages/constructions, is impressive, and Haverling seems justified in concluding that only some of them have the ‘resultative’ function, which may have paved the way for the creation of the Romance compound perfects. The chapter as a whole, despite some technical language, gives a useful insight into the (perhaps unsuspected) flexibility of Latin, and is well worth reading on that account.
By contrast, chapter 5, by James Adams and Wolfgang de Melo on ‘Ad versus the dative’, has more to offer to scholars of late Latin (e.g. the Peregrinatio Aetheriae, Jerome, or Gregory of Tours) than to students of classical Latin, though it is noteworthy that Lindsay’s view of the ‘equivalence’ between ‘do with the dative’ and ‘do with ad’ in Plautus comes under heavy fire.
In chapter 12 Adams and Nigel Vincent discuss infinitives with verbs of motion, notably the infinitive to express purpose, a concept which itself of course can be expressed in many different ways—eight other ones are listed here. After Plautus and Terence, where this usage occurs, if not very frequently, it seems most helpful for the purpose of this notice to observe the examples given in classical poetry. Munro on Lucretius 3.895 gives a ‘small’ collection from Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Propertius; Virgil Aen 1.527 (non nos aut ferro Libycos populare penatis/venimus) and Horace Carm. 3.21.7 (descende, Corvino iubente/promere languidiora vina) are noteworthy examples and the possibility of ‘partial Grecism’ is not ignored, given the frequency of the construction in Greek poets from Homer onward (cf. Od. 9.88). By contrast, the usage is not found in Livy, nor, seemingly, in Cicero. (The remainder of the chapter is less germane to this notice).
It will be understood that the reviewer has intentionally passed over both very late Latin and Romance usages, though those who are interested in these areas will find much to hold their attention here; chapter 1 by N. Vincent (‘Continuity and change from Latin to Romance’) and chapter 18 (‘Epilogue: some patterns of change’) by James Adams may help to fill the gaps. There is a bibliography and an Index Verborum.
Colin Leach