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History and Language At Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

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Extract

The impact of war accelerates many processes in the development of a language that otherwise might have been slow, gradual and imperfect. First and most palpable, the enrichment of the vocabulary—novelties and the new words to describe them. But change may go deeper and further.

The struggle for Sicily in the first Punic War engaged a large proportion of the Roman manpower for more than twenty years. Returning, the soldiers brought with them the words they had used in Sicily day by day. Hence the wide knowledge of Greek revealed by Roman comedy a generation later, before the end of the second war. Then, in a few years Rome became protector of Hellas and arbiter of the civilized world; the language and the literature of the Greeks at once permeated the upper classes.

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Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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