Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World (67 page)

Holders of the top two offices, consuls and praetors, might expect an overseas governorship, to exercise authority
prō cōnsule
, ‘on behalf of the consul’, or
prō praetōre
, ‘on behalf of the praetor’, for a period of years after their term of office ended. These officers undertook many of Rome’s foreign wars. In time of national emergency, the consular system could be suspended for six months at a time, and a (single) dictator appointed. Although there were persistent problems from the later second century BC onwards, with over-mighty generals unwilling to accept the limits the system placed on them, these institutions were all more or less functioning during the acquisition of Rome’s foreign empire, which was largely complete by 44 BC, when Julius Caesar was made dictator for life, and then assassinated, leading to the downfall of the Republic. All the institutions continued to exist for another five hundred years, but henceforth they were always dominated by a
Princēps
, ‘top man’, as the emperor was called, who ruled for life (though this was often cruelly, or mercifully, brief). The term
rēx
, ‘king’, was still avoided, a taboo surviving from 510 BC, but Rome had in fact returned to being a monarchy, however skilled it might be at dissembling.

^*
Senators needed to be at least of equestrian rank, for which the qualification (in landed property) was set at 400,000 sestertii. Taking the 1879 valuation in Lewis and Short’s
Latin Dictionary
, and applying inflation rates since, this would equate to a present (2003) value of €186,000 or $315,000.

This was evidently a very elaborate system, which could only work because of an ingrained respect for tradition and law. It provided a framework in which an expanding city-state could govern itself in an orderly fashion, while keeping the control of organised force, the army, in the hands of the established classes. The Romans preferred predictable principle to charismatic leadership, and as their influence increased (for in fact their disciplined military organisation seemed to give them the edge in most conflicts) they exported this pattern of government into the cities they conquered and then enlisted. Little by little, the benefits of Roman citizenship were extended throughout the expanding empire, giving the new subjects (some of them) a strong motivation for loyalty. In effect, the Roman empire in its day stood for the benefits of globalisation: good communications, access to all that the world could provide, and freedom (usually) from arbitrary government and oppression. To adopt a favourite Roman phrase:
ōtium cum dignitāte
—peace with honour, or (equivalently) leisure with good value.

But this respect for tradition did not extend to a particular respect for the older remnants of their language, Latin. Although the Romans’ most ancient code of laws, the famous Twelve Tables, was written in Latin, somehow no authoritative version of them survived until the end of the Republic. The Romans were unsentimental about their own language; even their closest equivalent to Holy Writ, the Sibylline Books, consulted for guidance in time of trouble, were not written in Latin, but Greek hexameter verse.

Latin was simply the language that they had grown up with; when dealing with foreigners, it was practical to use it, since the solid base of the Roman Republic meant that in negotiations foreigners were almost always in the suppliant position. The Greek language created an exception to this preference, since, as the Romans expanded their knowledge of Italy and the world beyond its shores, they discovered Greek colonies everywhere, doing business, and generally projecting a self-confident attitude, derived from an aggressively literate culture, and links with their
métropóleis
(’mother cities’) back in the eastern Mediterranean. And as the Romans discovered the undreamtof heights to which Greek culture had been developed, they were happy (at first) to use the Greek language for their own intellectual work rather than undertake the onerous task of trying to build up Latin to compete with it. The first known literary production by a Roman, Fabius Pictor’s history of Rome (late third century BC), was in Greek. Although there was an attempt early on to establish a literary tradition that was more traditionally Roman, with Livius Andronicus and Naevius writing their Latin epics in Saturnian metre, they failed to carry the day. Henceforth almost all Latin works were closely modelled on Greek originals.

One aspect of Greek culture found an immediate resonance in Rome. This was the respect for rhetoric, what the Romans called
ars ōrātōria
, the skills of persuasion, which were just as important as those of fighting and military command in these city-states (both Greek and Roman), where decisions were almost always taken by assemblies, not individuals. Training in oratory became the core of Roman higher education, students working up debates (
contrōversiae
) and policy speeches (
suāsōriae
) in the way in which nowadays they turn out essays; and the effect on Latin style was pervasive, lasting long after the decline of free institutions. Even love poetry can sound rather hectoring in Latin, a favourite trick being to turn to an imaginary audience. And poems and speeches were seen as very much the same game: in the second century AD Marcus Aper (’Mark Hogg’), a noted advocate from Gaul, was pointing out how much harder it was to get a name for oneself through poetry than through oratory, especially in the provinces.
³⁴

Latin was spread round the empire not least by the army, originally made up of citizens but into which increasingly men were enlisted from all over, and also by the common Roman policy of granting soldiers land on which to settle after their discharge. (We have already noted the role played by the army in Latinising one of their earliest poets, Ennius, originally an Oscan speaker; and how strategically placed colonies ultimately converted Cisalpine Gaul into just another part of Italy.) This never had a major effect in the eastern Mediterranean, where the lingua franca, Greek, was just too well established ever to be shaken. But in Gaul and Iberia the Roman colonies seem to have led to the eventual decline and replacement of their Celtic languages by Latin.

Inscriptions in Gaulish had all died out a hundred years after the Roman conquest, although there are scattered anecdotes indicating some survival of the spoken language for a couple of hundred more years. In the second century St Irenaeus, who came west from Asia Minor to take up a bishopric in Lugdunum (Lyons), reports having to learn ‘a barbarous tongue’ when he arrived there.
³⁵
In the third century, the great lawyer Ulpian stated that certain sworn statements could be made in Gaulish.
³⁶
Then, towards the end of that century, the historian Lampridius mentions that a Druidess had used Gaulish to foretell the death of Alexander Severus (who reigned 222-35). And in a dialogue of Sulpicius Severus (363-425), a Gaul who does not speak Latin well is told: ‘speak to us in Celtic, or if you prefer, in Gaulish’. And even in the fifth century, Sidonius Apollinaris
³⁷
declares that the nobility of the Arverni, a tribe in central southern Gaul, had just recently learnt Latin and cast off the ‘rough scales of Gaulish speech’ (
sermōnis Gallicī squāmam).

But from the evidence of the languages’ progeny (the sorry fact that they had none), it is clear that Gaulish and Celtiberian were effectively finished by the Roman takeover, and its introduction of Latin. Despite the Gaulish respect for eloquence noted by Lucian, Classical culture had nothing positive to say about the value of the Celtic language traditions, and they were allowed to lapse.

This total loss is surprising, since five hundred and more years later so many myths were written down in Irish and Welsh, retelling the adventures of gods such as Nuada of the Silver Hand (Gaulish
Nodens
), Lugh of the Long Arm—or Lieu Skilful Hand—(
Lugus
), Brigid the High (
Brigindona
or
Brigantia
), Goibhniu or Gofannon the Smith (
Gobannio
), Morrigan or Rhiannon the Great Queen (
Rigantona
), and not forgetting Ogma (
Ogmios
) himself; and surviving iconography (for example, on the magnificent cauldron found at Gundestrup) shows that other gods, such as the horned Cernunnos, had complicated myths. This demonstrates that there must have been a wealth of fascinating and unfamiliar subject matter that the Gauls could have retold if they had had the will.

The loss was not inevitable, for the transformation that Latin had undergone to incorporate prestigious Greek shows that it was quite possible for one ancient language to take on board another’s culture without being capsized;
^*
and the survival of Greek in the east itself shows that even Latin was not invincible, in the face of a self-confident tradition. But neither Gauls nor Celtiberians made any attempt that we know of to recast Roman culture in their own Celtic terms. Rather, they seem to have adopted the new Roman, and Latin-speaking, ways with alacrity, since it is precisely the areas of western Europe that spoke Celtic in the ancient world which now have Latin-derived languages: French, Occitan, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, as well as a few other smaller languages derived from Latin. This is doubly surprising when we contrast the nature of Roman society with what the Gauls and Celtiberians had previously known. A civic, centralised, urban society replaced the more scattered, and sometimes more mobile, village life of the past. Evidently, for the Celts, it felt like progress. The Romans must have won the loyalty of the rising generation, for Vercingetorix, the organiser of Gaul’s last struggle for independence, was never invoked as a heroic inspiration (until Napoleon III took him up 1900 years later), and there were only a couple of revolts, fairly easily put down, in the generation following the Roman conquest of Gaul. Gaul had fallen to Caesar in a blitzkrieg taking just eight years. By contrast, it had taken Rome almost two centuries to completely establish its control of Spain (from the expulsion of the Carthaginians in 206 to Augustus’s Cantabrian Wars ending in 19 BC). Nevertheless, Spain too quietened down about the same time, and at last accepted as its fate the
Pāx Romāna.

^*
And just about the same time, Armenian was doing much the same thing with an infusion of Persian.

Surrender, then, or perhaps even enthusiastic take-up, was the majority option when the inhabitants of ancient western Europe were brought into the Roman empire. But it is worthwhile sparing a moment to consider two cases where this option was not taken.

One was Basque, presumably the language of the Aquitanians of southwest Gaul
^*
(and the Vascones in Iberia) in Caesar’s time, which survived the influx of Latin to replace its Gaulish and Celtiberian neighbours, as it has survived everything else that history has thrown at it in the last two thousand years. It is the special case, par excellence, of European language history, since it pre-dates all the Indo-European languages. There are records of Basques serving in the Roman army (indeed, a group of them travelling with the over-mighty general Marius allowed him to mount a brief reign of terror in Rome in 86 BC;
³⁸
others are known to have served on Hadrian’s Wall in Britain), but their identity proved equal to the challenge of Roman rule. They borrowed the words for ‘olive’ and ‘oil’ (
oliva, olio
), and ‘statue’ (
estatu
), showing the acceptance of certain aspects of Roman life that had been new to them, but otherwise show no effect from five hundred years of presence in the Roman empire.

The more complicated case is that of language survival in Britain. We have already seen from the evidence of place names that a language either very like Gaulish, or a dialect of it, was spoken here at the time of the Roman invasions. Personal names tell the same story: among the names of noted kings and queens among the Britons we have
Cassi-vellaunos
(’oak-dominator’),
Tascio-vanos
(’badger-slayer’),
Cuno-belinos
(’dog of the god Belinos’—Shakepeare’s Cymbeline),
Caratacos
(’beloved’),
Boudicca
(’Victoria’—cf. Irish
búadach
, ‘triumphant’).

^*
Names mentioned in Aquitanian inscriptions appear to have Basque roots, e.g. Cison, Andere, Nescato and Bihoxvs beside Basque
gizon
, ‘man’,
andere
, ‘lady’,
neskato
, ‘girl’, and
bihotz
, ‘heart’ (Gorrochategui 1995: 38).

After the conquest of AD 43, which led to full-scale permanent occupation, the Romans made a conscious effort to spread Latin, and indeed Roman education, among the British elite. Tacitus comments cynically on the education plans of Agricola (governor of Britain from 77 to 84 and, as it happened, his father-in-law):

he instructed the sons of the chiefs in liberal arts, and expressed a preference for the native wit of the British over the studies of the Gauls, so as to plant a desire for eloquence in people who had previously rejected the Roman language altogether. So they took to our dress, and wearing the toga. Gradually they were drawn off into decadence, with colonnades and baths and
chic
parties. That was called a civilized life [
humānitās
] by these innocents, whereas it was really part of their enslavement.
³⁹

In a bitter irony, these studies were initiated in the winter after Agrícola had finally obliterated, with much carnage, the centre of Druidical learning on the Isle of Anglesey.

Although they had started from the same language, we can detect, from the odd remark made by Romans, that the British were bracketed with, but not quite up to, the continental Gauls in their adoption of Latin. In a satire on the way the world had gone mad, Juvenal (a contemporary of Tacitus in the second century AD) wrote: