Chapter IV: Importation of Greek Words

36. It is convenient, before proceeding to describe the development of the language in its various epochs, to notice briefly the debt of its vocabulary to Greek, since it affords an indication of the steadily increasing influence of Greek life and literature upon the growth of the younger idiom. Corssen (_Lat. Aussprache_, ii. 814) pointed out four different stages in the process, and though they are by no means sharply divided in time, they do correspond to different degrees and kinds of intercourse.

(a) The first represents the period of the early intercourse of Rome
with the Greek states, especially with the colonies in the south of
Italy and Sicily. To this stage belong many names of nations,
countries and towns, as _Siculi_, _Tarentum_, _Graeci_, _Achivi_,
_Poenus_; and also names of weights and measures, articles of industry
and terms connected with navigation, as _mina_, _talentum_, _purpura_,
_patina_, _ancora_, _aplustre_, _nausea_. Words like _amurca_,
_scutula_, _pessulus_, _balineum_, _tarpessita_ represent familiarity
with Greek customs and bear equally the mark of naturalization. To
these may be added names of gods or heroes, like _Apollo_, _Pollux_
and perhaps _Hercules_. These all became naturalized Latin words and
were modified by the phonetic changes which took place in the Latin
language after they had come into it (cf. §§ 9-27 _supra_). (b) The
second stage was probably the result of the closer intercourse
resulting from the conquest of southern Italy, and the wars in Sicily,
and of the contemporary introduction of imitations of Greek literature
into Rome, with its numerous references to Greek life and culture. It
is marked by the free use of hybrid forms, whether made by the
addition of Latin suffixes to Greek stems as _ballistarius_,
_hepatarius_, _subbasilicanus_, _sycophantiosus_, _comissari_ or of
Greek suffixes to Latin stems as _plagipatidas_, _pernonides_; or by
derivation, as _thermopotare_, _supparasitari_; or by composition as
_ineuscheme_, _thyrsigerae_, _flagritribae_, _scrophipasci_. The
character of many of these words shows that the comic poets who coined
them must have been able to calculate upon a fair knowledge of
colloquial Greek on the part of a considerable portion of their
audience. The most remarkable instance of this is supplied by the
burlesque lines in Plautus (_Pers._ 702 seq.), where Sagaristio
describes himself as

Vaniloquidorus, Virginisvendonides,
Nugipiloquides, Argentumexterebronides,
Tedigniloquides, Nummosexpalponides,
Quodsemelarripides, Nunquameripides.

During this period Greek words are still generally inflected according
to the Latin usage.

(c) But with Accius (see below) begins a third stage, in which the
Greek inflexion is frequently preserved, e.g. _Hectora_, _Oresten_,
_Cithaeron_; and from this time forward the practice wavers. Cicero
generally prefers the Latin case-endings, defending, e.g., _Piraeeum_
as against _Piraeea_ (_ad Att._ vii. 3, 7), but not without some
fluctuation, while Varro takes the opposite side, and prefers
_poëmasin_ to the Ciceronian _poëmatis_. By this time also _y_ and _z_
were introduced, and the representation of the Greek aspirates by
_th_, _ph_, _ch_, so that words newly borrowed from the Greek could be
more faithfully reproduced. This is equally true whatever was the
precise nature of the sound which at that period the Greek aspirates
had reached in their secular process of change from pure aspirates (as
in Eng. _ant-hill_, &c.) to fricatives (like Eng. _th_ in _thin_).
(See Arnold and Conway, _The Restored Pronunciation of Greek and
Latin_, 4th ed., Cambridge, 1908, p. 21.)

(d) A fourth stage is marked by the practice of the Augustan poets,
who, especially when writing in imitation of Greek originals, freely
use the Greek inflexions, such as _Arcades_, _Tethy_, _Aegida_,
_Echus_, &c. Horace probably always used the Latin form in his
_Satires_ and _Epistles_, the Greek in his Odes. Later prose writers
for the most part followed the example of his _Odes_. It must be
added, however, in regard to these literary borrowings that it is not
quite clear whether in this fourth class, and even in the unmodified
forms in the preceding class, the words had really any living use in
spoken Latin.