This chapter analyses the corpus of epigraphic evidence from the period 400-200 BC (c. 480 inscriptions). The inscriptions present a multifaceted and sometimes mixed situation in relation to graphemic and phonological features, with notable fluctuation between the preservation of fossilised, old-fashioned and innovative traits, sometimes occurring together in the same type of text. Fluctuations between archaic and innovative traits characterise a differentiated level of literacy in the documents from Rome and from the neighbouring towns and districts of old Latium, such as Praeneste, Tusculum, and Ardea. The chapter examines text classes, tendencies, quantitative data and distribution of the inscriptions on the territory (altars, objects,pocola deorum, tabulae triumphales, graffiti on pottery, jars); graphemic innovations/reforms (e.g. rhotacism, gemination of consonants and vowels, diphthongs; omission of final -s); social aspects such as features of urban vs rustic features. The emerging picture is that of a complex situation, the analysis of which is further complicated by the lack of a central Roman control and the persistence of epichoric linguistic and graphic practices.

This chapters examines the motivation and method of reuse of early Latin in the translations from Greek poetry of Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609), the scholar to whom the study of fragmentary Republican Latin owes more than to anyone else in classical scholarship. The analysis focusses on the translations of Sophocles’ Ajax and of Lycophron’s Alexandra, which the young Scaliger produced a decade before his memorable edition of Festus’ De significatu uerborum (1576). The ancient lexicon was the main source of the obscure vocabulary that characterises Scaliger’s archaic Latin, the artificial construct of a style aimed at achieving a high register in the translation of Greek poetry. Recourse to the diction of the early Roman dramatists as a means of elevating the style had an authoritative precedent in Cicero. To latinise Lycophron’s exoteric diction Scaliger drew extensively on Festus’ glosses for rare usages and recondite synonyms. Other early-modern scholars who were engaged in the study of fragmentary Latin texts and their sources also used that variety of Latin for the purpose of translation of the Greek classics, and even for creative versification. ‘Early Latin’ is a style.

The interest in early Latin developed mainly outside the field of normative grammar, particularly in authors who belonged to the tradition of scholarly or antiquarian writing. Varro’s encyclopaedic works testify to a unique effort to save uestigia of the cultural and historical past by means of linguistic operations. His approach soon lost its institutional character and was replaced by curiosity for rare minutiae, as in Pliny’s Dubius Sermo. Grammarians like Probus and Caper, whose orientation was philological rather than didactic, considered that the auctoritas of literary models made divergences from the norm or contemporary usage acceptable, and viewed uetustas as the area of experimental variation, both lexical and morphological, with respect to the usage of Republican writers. The inclusion of an immense corpus of literary quotations in comprehensive works (artes grammaticae) facilitated the adoption of an overall perspective that embraced the evolution of the linguistic system at all levels, and kept alive an awareness of the diachronic dimension of the language, which became increasingly profound in scholars like Priscian who read Terence in sixth-century Constantinople.

This chapter examines the history of the most frequent metres in early Latin comedy, iambic senarii and trochaic septenarii. While persisting into the classical period, these metres become less prominent; early funerary epigrams can still be composed in iambic senarii, but elegiacs predominate, and there are also significant changes in prosody and versification rules. No sharp chronological contrast is observed in the tradition of dramatic iambo-trochaics. The main differences between early and classical iambo-trochaics are not metrical, but prosodic; they consist above all in the elimination or reduction of prosodic variants, such as original length of vowel endings (-āt for -ăt), iambic shortening, sigmatic ecthlipsis; these phenomena are common in Plautus but absent, e.g., from Varro and Phaedrus. Conversely, lengthening with muta cum liquida, which is absent from comedy, is well attested in imperial iambo-trochaics, including e.g. Phaedrus and inscriptions. Even in this respect, however, one should be wary of neat chronological generalisations, especially because the reduction of prosodic variants is already attested in early authors such as Terence.

Cato the Censor is commonly accepted as both the founder of Latin prose and as an outspoken critic of everything Greek. The relationship between these two roles is one that deserves more investigation than it has received, especially in the area of his actual linguistic usage as opposed to his (largely reconstructed) ideology: recent studies have been longer on the latter than on his Latin words and syntax and the way they may have been influenced by the Greek language. Such studies as there are of Greek influence on Catos surviving Latin are few and old, and none are in English. This century’s significant advances in our knowledge of the interaction between Latin and Greek, as well as new editions of Cato, will be taken into account in this proposed study through a reassessment of Catos Latin with respect to his use of Greek-based vocabulary (whether introduced into Latin by him or not) as well as on the possible influence of Greek phonology, morphology and syntax. Conversely, evidence of Catos avoidance of Greek (or shared) elements already in use in Latin will also be examined.

This chapter examines the language of Lucilius’ hexametrical satires, discussing aspects of vocabulary, morphology, syntax and versification. The varied typology of Lucilius’ supposedly early lexicon (obsolete words; words tied to genre, whether high-style or comic; evidence of seemingly spoken usage in various registers) demonstrates that whatever characteristics of earlier diction Lucilius retains are largely motivated by literary purposes, and often innovated upon. Morphological and syntactical features which Classical Latin will discard are also few and coexisting with diachronic or diastratic variants. Pronounced alliteration, synonymic pairs, and persistent reduction of final -s place firmly Lucilius in pre-neoteric poetic diction - but this too is stylised, marked language. The answer to the question ‘How early Latin is Lucilius?’ is, not very much, if we are looking for evidence of a superseded variety of Latin rather than deliberate literary choices for the sake of register, style or genre.

Although Gellius is fully committed to the fashion for pre-classical authors, admiring them as writers and not merely as quarries for striking words or exponents of sound morality, comparison of his quotations with Ciceros shows a shift in taste away from raw power towards greater sophistication. His understanding of the passages cited, in so far as the state of their texts allows us to judge, is generally sound; however, some comments need a closer examination.

The discovery of eleven bronze rams belonging to war-ships off western Sicily, near the Egadi Islands, has produced an invaluable addition to our record of 3rd century BC Latin inscriptions. The archaeological and historical background as well as the palaeography and language of the Latin texts have been examined by J. Prag in three exemplary discussions (2014; 2017), which are expanded in this chapter. The question informing the present inquiry is whether these texts contribute to our knowledge of early Latin, or merely confirm what we know already about early pronunciation, morphology or syntax. The answer is not simple. Palaeographically and orthographically, the texts are very much in line with what one might expect of inscriptions of that time period. The many abbreviations mean that we cannot say much about their morphology. In principle, we should be able to say more about their pronunciation; but again, results are inconclusive. The texts are neither excessively archaic in appearance, nor excessively modern, and already at this early stage it is difficult to deduce pronunciation from orthography. But that in itself is a worthwhile result.

Cato’s de Agricultura was an important source for Pliny’s Naturalis Historia. Cato himself appears sixteen times in Pliny’s lists of sources, and in the text proper (Pliny tells us explicitly more than eighty times that he is reproducing Catonian material; most of it comes from the de Agricultura. A dozen or so passages are or purport to be direct quotations, but most are paraphrases; Catonian content in Plinian words. The present paper is a study of the linguistic features of Cato’s text that Pliny rewrites. Especially interesting features include cases in which concrete expressions are replaced by abstract nouns, simple verbs become compound (or the compounding prefix changes), a term is replaced by a synonym or synonymous expression, or the syntax is made more compact. Pliny’s adaptations of Cato’s language is read in light of his several general remarks about Cato’s style: he comments, for example, on Cato’s verbosity, diction and habitual censoriousness. The discussion shows how one ancient reader reacted to Cato’s early Latin.

This chapter examines the use of ecquis in Roman comedy, especially in Plautus. Although formally belonging to the class of adjectives, pronouns or adverbs, the interrogative markers in ec-, introducing independent as well as subordinate clauses, function as particles introducing “total” questions. The ambiguity needs to be clarified by taking into account the fact that the second constituent qu- plays the role of an indefinite, not of an interrogative element, and that its value tends to fade leaving the prefix ec- as the main semantic determinant of the term. In this respect, it is useful to compare numquis, which, unlike ecquis, is still rarely used in the early period. The controversial etymology of ec- is discussed in the light of the semantic and pragmatic nuances that are revealed in different contexts in relation to the previous or following utterance. While in most cases ec- confers on the question a character of insistence and urgency, thus producing different effects of rhetorical meanings, the value of the questions introduced by ecquis seems fundamentally neutral; ecquis, therefore, does not per se orient the interrogation either in a positive or in a negative sense.

Handbooks of Latin usually draw attention to the presence of Greek loanwords from the very earliest stages of the Latin language. Greek loans feature in texts of all types, in a wide range of different spheres: words for flora and fauna, food and drink, aspects of trade, law and administration. The last major study of the Greek loanwords in Latin (Biville ) concentrated on the ways in which Greek sounds were represented in Latin, but did not have so much to say about the place of Greek loanwords within the vocabulary of Latin as a whole. This chapter gives a survey of Greek loanwords in republican Latin, in both literary and epigraphic documents, with several different research questions in mind. Is it possible to unearth different chronological strata of loanwords? Can learned and vulgar loans be separated in republican Latin, and how well integrated were Greek loans into Latin? Do phonological and semantic aspects of the words reveal anything about the source of the loans? Why do some Greek loanwords make it into the higher registers of Roman poetry (and sometimes prose) and others not, and how do these conventions come about?

Among the most characteristic lexical features of Early Latin drama is its rich system of exclamations and interjections, prominently including expressions based on theonyms: hercle/mehercle ‘by Hercules!’, ēcastor/mēcastor ‘by Castor!’, edepol/pol ‘by Pollux!’, and others. Considerable linguistic interest attaches to these forms, concerning their syntax, their gender-differentiated usage, and in some cases their phonological, morphological, and etymological background. The background of Lat. edepol as an imprecation to Pollux has been clear at least since Varro (ap. Gell. 11.6). Alternative etymologies—e.g. “[m]ed Apoll[o]” (Speyer) and others (see LEW s.v. ēcastor)—can be discarded; but they point to indeterminacies that remain neglected. The modern understanding of edepol assumes a three-part univerbated structure: e- is a particle; -de- is a shortened form of the word for ‘god’ (Class. Lat. deus); and -pol is a shortened form of Pollux (or older Pollūcēs, borrowed from Gk. Πολυδεύκης). Each element incorporates interesting problems, and there is also a problem concerning the word as a whole.