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Codeswitches in Caesar and Catullus*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2015

James Uden*
Affiliation:
Columbia University/Boston University, uden@bu.edu

Abstract

This article analyses two texts, Caesar's Bellum Civile and Catullus' Carmen 12, as a window onto linguistic politics in mid-first century Rome. Both writers use ‘codeswitches’ between Latin and Greek as a means of indirect characterisation of the subjects of their texts. On one hand, isolated switches into Greek in Caesar's text contribute to the sense of foreignness with which Caesar polemically characterises Pompey throughout the Bellum Civile. On the other hand, Catullus' use of the word mnemosynum in his twelfth poem is part of the establishment of a sophisticated language of elite aestheticism from which the napkin-thief Asinius is pointedly excluded. Both these authors have connections to a larger first century controversy that fixated on Latin linguistic purity — a controversy in which politics and language use were inextricably linked.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 2011

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