INTRODUCTION

There is evidence from an early period pointing to regional variation in the Latin of Italy, much of which has been discussed in chapters II–IV. I concentrate in this chapter on textual evidence, but also comment briefly on Pompeian graffiti. Italian inscriptions will come up again in Chapter X. A comprehensive study of all the texts written in Italy would be out of the question, and I have had to be selective. Texts that might be expected to show a regional flavour include the fragments of Atellan farce (but for farce the best evidence is metalinguistic: see III.6.1), the Cena Trimalchionis of Petronius and curse tablets. Varro was from outside Rome and not averse from admitting non-standard usages. Virgil himself wrote on country life. In the late period there is a corpus of medical texts (translated from Greek originals) now conventionally attributed to Ravenna, and these provide material for a case study concerning the question whether and on what criteria the provenance of a late text might be identified. I have treated the ‘Ravenna school’ as a subject of study in its own right, and this occupies a good part of the chapter, but some principles relevant to the themes of this book will emerge.

There is an important topic to which I will only allude here, as it is a familiar one in the history of the language.