Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T21:36:44.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE LATIN OF THE PASSIONES MARTYRVM OF LATE ANTIQUE ROME

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2020

Michael Lapidge
Michael Lapidge*
Affiliation:
Clare College, Cambridge, UK
*
*Email: ml26@cam.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A substantial number of passiones (some forty) of Roman martyrs was composed at Rome and its environs between the early fifth and late seventh century (c. 425 – c. 675). Although these texts have hitherto been neglected by students of the Latin language (not least because they are only available in early printed editions dating from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, none of which are easily accessible), they provide a valuable witness to changes in the language during that period, when, as a reflex of developments in the spoken language and of deterioration in educational standards, written Latin began to exhibit a rightward shift of verb satellites (change to VO-order in main clauses, placement of the infinitive after the modal auxiliary, placement of the dependent genitive after its noun etc.), as well as a number of associated linguistic features. These changes are illustrated by statistical analyses, the results of which are presented in accompanying tables.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 66 , December 2020 , pp. 96 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Cambridge Philological Society.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works cited

Adams, J. N. (1976a) The text and language of a Vulgar Latin chronicle (Anonymus Valesianus ii), London.Google Scholar
Adams, J. N. (1976b) ‘A typological approach to Latin word order’, Indogermanische Forschungen 81, 70–99.Google Scholar
Adams, J. N. (1977) The Vulgar Latin of the letters of Claudius Terentianus, Manchester.Google Scholar
Adams, J. N. (1991) ‘Some neglected evidence for Latin habeo with infinitive: the order of the constituents’, Transactions of the Philological Society 89, 131–96.10.1111/j.1467-968X.1991.tb00404.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, J. N. (2005) ‘The accusative + infinitive and dependent quod/quia clauses: the evidence of non-literary Latin and Petronius’, in Kiss, S., Mondin, L. and Salvi, G. (eds.), Latin et langues romanes. Etudes de linguistique offerts à József Herman à l'occasion de son 80ème anniversaire, Tübingen, 195–206.Google Scholar
Adams, J. N. (2013) Social variation and the Latin language, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, J. N. (2016) An anthology of informal Latin, 200 BC – AD 900: fifty texts with translations and linguistic commentary, Cambridge.10.1017/9781139626446CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, J. N. and de Melo, W. (2016) ‘Ad versus the dative: from early to late Latin’, in Adams and Vincent (2016) 87–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, J. N. and Vincent, N. (eds.) (2016) Early and late Latin: continuity or change? Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
André, A. (2010) ‘La concurrence entre is et ille dans l’évolution de la langue latine. Etude comparative, de Cicéron à Augustin’, Latomus 69, 313–29.Google Scholar
Bauer, B. (1995) The emergence and development of SVO patterning in Latin and French: diachronic and psycholinguistic perspectives, Oxford.Google Scholar
Bauer, B. (2009) ‘Word order’, in Baldi, P. and Cuzzolin, P. (eds.), New perspectives on historical Latin syntax. Volume i: Syntax of the Sentence, Berlin, 241–316.Google Scholar
Blaise, A. (1994) A handbook of Christian Latin: style, morphology, and syntax, trans. Roti, G. C., Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Burton, P. (2000) The Old Latin Gospels: a study of their texts and language, Oxford.10.1093/0198269889.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burton, P. (2007) Language in the Confessions of Augustine, Oxford.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199266227.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burton, P. (2016) ‘Analytic passives and deponents in classical and later Latin’, in Adams and Vincent (2016) 163–79.10.1017/CBO9781316450826.008CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clackson, J. (ed.) (2011) A companion to the Latin language, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clackson, J. and Horrocks, G. (2007) The Blackwell history of the Latin language, Oxford.Google Scholar
Coleman, R. G. G. (1971) ‘The origin and development of Latin habeo + infinitive’, Classical Quarterly n.s. 21, 215–32.10.1017/S0009838800028974CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coleman, R. G. G. (1976) ‘Further observations on habeo + infinitive as an exponent of futurity’, Classical Quarterly n.s. 26, 151–9.10.1017/S0009838800033930CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cuzzolin, P. (1994) Sull'origine della costruzione dicere quod: aspetti sintatti e semantici, Florence.Google Scholar
Dalès, J. (1976–7) ‘Voix, temps et aspect dans les périphrases médiopassives -us sum, -us fui’, Revue des études anciennes 78–9, 129–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danckaert, L. (2017) The development of Latin clause structure, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franchi de’ Cavalieri, P. (1953) Note agiografiche. Volume ix, Studi e testi 175, Rome.Google Scholar
Grandgent, C. H. (1907) An introduction to Vulgar Latin, Boston.Google Scholar
Halla-aho, H. (2016) ‘Left-detached constructions from early to late Latin (accusatiuus pendens and attractio inuersa)’, in Adams and Vincent (2016) 367–89.10.1017/CBO9781316450826.017CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herman, J. (1989) ‘Accusativus cum infinitivo et subordonnée à quod, quia en latin tardif. Nouvelles remarques sur un vieux problème’, in Calboli, G. (ed.), Subordination and other topics in Latin: proceedings of the Third colloquium on Latin linguistics, Bologna, 1–5 April 1985, Amsterdam, 133–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herman, J. (2000) Vulgar Latin, trans. Wright, R., University Park, PA.Google Scholar
Hofmann, J. B. and Szantyr, A. (1965) Lateinische Syntax und Stilistik, Munich.Google Scholar
Koll, H.-G. (1965) ‘Zur Stellung des Verbs im spätantiken und frühmittelalterlichen Latein’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 2, 241–72.Google Scholar
Lapidge, M. (2018) The Roman Martyrs, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lapidge, M. (forthcoming) ‘Problems in editing the passiones martyrum of late antique Rome’, in Farmhouse Alberto, P. and Chiesa, P. (eds.), Understanding hagiography and its textual tradition, Florence.Google Scholar
Ledgeway, A. (2012) From Latin to Romance, Oxford.Google Scholar
Leumann, M. (1921) ‘Part. perf. pass. mit fui in späteren Latein’, Glotta 11, 192–4.Google Scholar
Linde, P. (1923) ‘Die Stellung des Verbs in die lateinische Prosa’, Glotta 12, 153–78.Google Scholar
Löfstedt, E. (1956) Syntactica: Studien und Beiträge zur historischen Syntax des Lateins, 2nd edn, 2 vols., Lund.Google Scholar
Mari, T. (2016) ‘Third person possessives from early Latin to late Latin and Romance’, in Adams and Vincent (2016) 47–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marouzeau, J. (1949) L'ordre des mots dans la phrase latine. Volume iii: Les articulations de l’énoncé, Paris.Google Scholar
McLachlan, K. (2012) ‘Verborum ordo – ordo verborum: the placement of the dependent genitive in Classical Latin’ (DPhil diss., University of Oxford).Google Scholar
Moretti, P. F. (2006) La ‘Passio Anastasiae’. Introduzione, testo critico, traduzione, Rome.Google Scholar
Panhuis, D. G. J. (1982) The communicative perspective in the sentence: a study of Latin word order, Amsterdam.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Panhuis, D. G. J. (1984) ‘Is Latin an SOV language? A diachronic perspective’, Indogermanische Forschungen 89, 140–59.Google Scholar
Pinkster, H. (1991) ‘Evidence for SVO in Latin?’, in Wright, R. (ed.), Latin and the Romance languages in the early Middle Ages, London, 69–82.Google Scholar
Plater, W. E. and White, H. J. (1926) A grammar of the Vulgate: an introduction to the study of the Latinity of the Vulgate Bible, Oxford.Google Scholar
Spevak, O. (2010a) Constituent order in Classical Latin prose, Amsterdam.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spevak, O. ed. (2010b) Le syntagme nominal en latin, Paris.Google Scholar
Viti, C. (2010) ‘Observations on genitive word order in Latin’, in Spevak (2010b) 77–96.Google Scholar