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 Italy and barbaricae urbes for the Italians.
Quintilianus writes: “it happens often that the mob in the theaters and circuses exclaim in the barbarian language” Inst. I. 6), meaning rustic. Cicero also calls barbaries domestica the rustic language spoken in the houses of the Roman citizens (Brutus, s. 74).
The citizens of Brundusium, writes Gellius, had brought from Rome a teacher of Latin language; but this one read Virgil in a barbarian and ignorant mode (Noct. Att. XVI. 6; Cicero, Tusc. II. 4).
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).
XLI. 5. The peregrine language.
The barbarian language was completely different from the language so-called peregrine (peregrinitas).
According to the ideas of Roman authors, the barbarian language was a language which was not grammatical, a rustic language spoken by the native populations of the other provinces of Europe, Africa and Asia, which had the same national origin as the Romans.
The peregrine language though was the language of a people foreign of Roman nationality.
Cicero characterizes these two types of language with the words: “rustica asperitas” and “peregrina insolentia” (De orat. III. 12).
The Greeks were not counted among the Barbarians. They and their language were “peregrine”.
So, Quintilianus makes a distinction between the rustic language and the peregrine language. He attributes the first to the Barbarians, and the second to the Greeks (Inst. I. 5; XI. 3. 30).
Ovid (Trist. V. 10. 27) makes the same separation between the Greeks (Graii) and the Barbarians (Barbara turba).
The same writes Plato: the Greeks are all from the same family and related among themselves, but they are foreigners relative to the barbarians, not being of the same people, genos othneion chai allotrion (Civitas. Lib. V. p. 97)
It is to be noted that, according to Herodotus, the Pelasgians were not part of the same ethnic family of the Greeks, and he considered the language of the Pelasgians entirely different from that of the Greeks (lib. I. c. 58).
:pos2:
kako odgovaralo na golemite sili pred se avstro ungarija germanija anglija francija ......taka ja pisuvale po naredba