PART
7 –
Ch.XLI.4
The
great Pelasgian empire
(The
Pelasgian language)
XLI.
4. The Latin language considered as a barbarian language.
The same ideas
about the Latin character of the barbarian language were held by the Greeks.
They called the
Romans barbarians, not because they
were inferior to the Geeks in civilization, but because they belonged by origin
and language, to the family of the barbarian peoples.
“The Greeks”,
writes Pliny, “call us barbarians also, and insult us with
words much more disgusting than they do the Opicii” (XXIX. I. 14).
The Pope Nicolas I
says the same in a letter addressed in 865ad to the Byzantine emperor Michail
III, that the Greeks called the Latin
language a barbarian and Scythian language (Du Cange, Gloss. Med. lat.; Jaffe,
Regesta Pontif. Rom. p. 247).
In the history of Polybius, the Romans figure under the
name barbarians (Hist. lib. IX. 38,
5, 7).
Dionysius of Halikarnassus calls the
Sicilians a barbarian people, barbaroi
Sicheloi (lib. II. 1), and according to Diodorus Siculus, the language of the ancient Sicilians was a barbarian language (lib. V. 6. 5).
Not only the
Greeks, but also the Roman authors of classical times considered the popular or rustic Latin language as a barbarian
language.
Plautus (2nd century ad) calls Nevius
“poetam barbarum” (Mil. Glor. II.
258) and uses the words Barbaria for
Quintilianus writes: “it happens often that the mob in
the theaters and circuses exclaim in the barbarian
language” Inst.
The citizens of
Brundusium, writes Gellius, had
brought from
The barbarian
language had therefore, according to Roman authors, the characteristics of the
vulgar or rustic Latin language.
Gellius also states that the barbarian language was the same as the rustic Latin language.
“When we say today”, writes he, “that somebody speaks a barbarian language, it is nothing else but the rustic language”
(XIII. 6).