Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35-2952

Title: Ancient Greek and Latin in the linguistic context of the Ancient Mediterranean
Series Title: Sprachvergleich
Publication Year: 2024

Publisher: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG
http://www.narr.de/
Book URL: https://www.narr.de/ancient-greek-and-latin-in-the-linguistic-context-of-the-ancient-medit-18585-1/

Editor(s): Carlotta Viti

Reviewer: Victoria Beatrix Fendel

SUMMARY

The volume consists of fifteen chapters, an introduction by the editor, and an index containing languages and keywords. The chapters are written in English (eleven chapters and the introduction), French (three chapters), and German (one chapter). The chapters span a time period ranging from the archaic period (with Homer’s epics) to the medieval period (with the Vandalic language), cover a range of data types (incl. epigraphic data, onomastics as data, literary, technical, and biblical texts as data, and manuscript data), and a range of languages (incl. Greek and Latin at various points in time, Hebrew, Aramaic, Old Church Slavonic, Vandalic, Gothic, Lycian, Lydian, Faliscan, Sabellic, and Etruscan). Thus, the volume is not only an ambitious undertaking but also a strategic publication from the point of view of researching multilingually (cf. Phipps 2022).

The introduction (by Viti) provides a critical evaluation of the comparative method and its family trees from a discourse analytic point of view (although Foucault is never mentioned explicitly) in essence arguing that while language contact is currently the last explanation considered, it should perhaps be the aspect to start from.

The first chapter (by Bile, Hodot, and Vottéro) advocates for the use of sources on different materials, especially in order to assess regional diversification perhaps already present in Mycenaeans times (p. 69). The regionalisms that are shown to exist in the lexicon, morphology, syntax, and phraseology take on not only functional but also symbolic roles for the display of identity.

The second chapter (by Weiss) puts forward the hypothesis that the signature ligatures that are found on tablets 15 and 26 from 4th c. BC Locria Epizephyria are abbreviations of the dialectal form of hieromnemon (a magistrate) while the inscription text in both cases shows a mixed form (Koine and dialectal features) such that we would observe a situation of code-switching between text body and signature.

The third chapter (by Giannakis) discusses, based on the tablets from the oracle in Dodona (in Epirus, north-west Greece, 5th / 4th c. BC), migratory movements, both in the short-term (undertaking a trip) and the long-term (migrating to the colonies in the west). The tablets contain enquiries from common people. In these, we find that the dialects in new territories tend to reflect the dialect used in the founding city but that there may also be independent diatopic developments. Dialect mixing is a common technique for cooperation (p. 124) but may also happen at the surface level only because phrases fossilise in a specific dialect (e.g. DVC35A, p. 125).

The fourth chapter (by García Ramón) looks at onomastics which reflect recognisable, well-attested syntagms. His specific interest lies with Ἀλεξι-τέλης which could either be ‘the one who guards / stands by his company’ or ‘the one who wards off fatal doom’, with the latter reflecting a phraseological collocation that is widely attested in Greek.

The fifth chapter (by Pisaniello and Merlin) discusses Lycian (5th / 4th c. BC), which co-existed with Greek in Lycia, with Greek initially being tied to the poetic genre and gradually spreading top-down into the private sphere, and Lydian (7th–5th/4th c. BC, ca. 100 inscriptions), which shows signs of mutual interference with Greek. The data drawn on primarily are glosses, i.e. any metalinguistic information about a given language. Glosses can be overt, i.e. “the Lydians did X”, or covert, i.e. foreign expressions without any explanation or opaque and implicit metalinguistic information (pp. 190–192). One key issue is that Lydia was used as a generic gloss to refer to the area of the Near East.

The sixth chapter (by De Dekker) discusses -σκ- iteratives in epic Ionic. The epic Ionic -σκ- iteratives are defined clearly (p. 222) – “the aorist or imperfect form in -σκ- of a verb that does not have this suffix in the other tenses or moods and of which there are no relics of this suffix in other Indo-European languages” – and the chapter also provides meticulous counts for the Iliad and Odyssey split by type of text passage which instances appear in. The chapter concludes that the aorist and imperfect are used by aspect, and the -σκ- infix functions on top of this (pp. 232–233).

The seventh chapter (by Wallace) is a brief commentary on CIL I2, 2780 dating from the 3rd c. BC. Specific attention is paid to the abbreviations in the inscription, the old Latin Apolo (with one l and an o at the end of the stem), the patronymic without the head noun filius (which may be due to space constraints), and the missing vowel in s(e)mo(nio?) at the start, possibly due to syllabic notation. The text indicates worship of Apollo in his therapeutic function in southern Etruria at the time (p. 248).
The eighth chapter (by Rigobianco) considers vowel reduction and deletion in non-initial syllables (e.g. facio vs. conficio), the earliest occurrences of which predate rhotacism (p. 255). The chapter evaluates language contact with Faliscan, Sabellic, and Etruscan (pp. 257–260). It concludes that Latin inherited first-syllable stress from Proto-Italic, and the innovative tendency towards rhythmic compensation would have spread due to imperfect L2 learning by Sabellic and Etruscan speakers (p. 265).

The ninth chapter (by Calboli) considers the situation of Nausistrata’s father bringing home more income from Lemnos than her husband in Terence’s Phormio (ll. 784–1055). This is related to the socio-economic changes to farming on Lemnos over the course of time (p. 281). It is argued that Apollodorus’ original was reworked by Terence as regards the ending and Terence further drew on Plautus’ model of the uxor saeva.

The tenth chapter (by Weiss and Windhearn) discusses in-depth Plautus’ Amphitruo l. 260 (post ob virtutem ero Amphitrioni patera donate est aurea ‘afterwards my master Amphitruo was presented with a golden bowl for his valour’, acc. to the Codex vetus Camerarii). The key issue is that the metre is corrupted in the transmitted version resulting in multiple emendations over time. The authors argue that in archaic Latin a right-T and right-V structure (from a generative perspective) was the standard (p. 302), which the corrupted attested text shows (p. 307). Camerarius’ popular emendation (donata aurea est) does not follow this (p. 309); Pareus’ emendation (‘st patera donata aurea) is likelier with topicalization of ero Amphitrioni, T-to-C movement of the copula, and right-dislocation of the modifier aurea (p. 310).

The eleventh chapter (by Cotticelli-Kurras) considers the development of a grammatical metalanguage in early medieval grammars, especially by Donatus (4th c. AD) and Priscian (4th/ 5th c. AD). Western grammars like the one by the former presuppose knowledge of Latin; Eastern grammars like the one by the latter are written for L2 learners (p. 321). The chapter concludes that Priscian’s grammar was the first step of the convergence of some categories of the Greek / Eastern grammatical tradition and the Latin / Western one and gave rise to commentaries on ancient works written in the 9th c. AD and eventually, fuelled by the diffusion of Aristotle’s works, the grammars of the Modistae in the 13th to 15th c. AD.

The twelfth chapter (by Orlandi and Poccetti) considers negation as the driving force in the evolution of the breakdown of the distinction between inclusive and exclusive disjunction (i.e. disappearance of vel) and equality and inequality in comparative contexts (i.e. disappearance of alter) as the distinction is neutralised under negation from the start (pp. 352–353 and 371).

The thirteenth chapter (by Bubenik) considers verb phrases consisting of a participial and an auxiliary verb, so-called dative absolute constructions, and nominalised infinitive structures in the context of the biblical translation both into Greek and later into Old Church Slavonic. The chapter carefully underlines that patterns can spread in translation contexts for different reasons, e.g. by increasing the use of an existing pattern (e.g. the participle-auxiliary structures), calquing (e.g. articular infinitive structures), and replicating a pattern (e.g. dative absolutes).

The fourteenth chapter (by Aresu and Cabriolu) considers word-order variation of verb-object sequencing in Cicero’s Pro Milone, the biblical books of Ruth, Obadiah, and Jonah, and Cato’s De Agricultura. Word order is assessed in assertive declarative clauses, noun phrases with a genitive, and adpositional phrases. While Cato shows primarily an object then verb placement, the classical corpus is diverse, and the biblical texts show primarily a verb then object ordering. Attributive genitives across periods usually follow their head noun. Postpositional relics exist in the system and seem to be preferred or dispreferred in the biblical translation depending on the translation approach.

The fifteenth chapter (by Cotugno) considers the remnants of the Vandalic language. The vandals held a kingdom in north Africa after sacking Rome in the mid-fifth century. Their language is only shining through in onomastics and Latin treatises as they seem to have adopted the working Roman bureaucratic apparatus. Vandalic seems to have been an East Germanic language. Examples discussed include the name Stilicho and its variants, the phrase froia arme, and the term eils.

EVALUATION

Shortcomings regarding presentation should be set against the ambitious multilingual and content-related background of the volume: translations of passages in a language other than the language of the chapter are not consistently provided (e.g. pp. 317–338), formatting of examples is inconsistent (e.g. pp. 425–426), and typos appear regularly (e.g. p. 298) along with unexpected lexical choices (e.g. p. 414).

Viti’s introduction, without mentioning Foucault’s discourse analysis, showcases the necessity to embed in and evaluate against the discourse of their time even methodologies as influential as the comparative method (see similarly Doody, Föllinger & Taub 2012). Her call to action is taken aboard in the sense of considering different source types spread out diachronically, diatopically, and diastratically but the chapters do not all reflect to the same extent her critical evaluation of the methodology. However, several chapters feed perfectly into Viti’s call to action: De Dekker’s chapter on the -σκ- epic Ionic iteratives highlights the importance of meticulously coded quantitative datasets. Wallace’s chapter on CILI2, 2780 showcases the interplay between material and linguistic realities. Rigobianco’s chapter on vowel reduction in non-initial syllables in Latin exemplifies the complexity of language-contact situations and the multifactorial analysis needed. Weiss and Windhearn’s chapter on l. 260 of Plautus’ Amphitruo illustrates the interplay between the editorial and linguistic realities.

Bile, Hodot, and Vottéro’s chapter on the dialectal diversity, while emphasising the diversity of sources, faces the issue of multicausality, i.e. especially in documentary sources, variations in the spelling of items may be caused by diverse developments--either mechanical (e.g. space constraint, writing utensil, spelling error), social (e.g. educational background), or diatopic, diastratic, and idiosyncratic (e.g. Bentein 2024) (see Wallace in this volume).

In Weiss’ chapter on the hieromnemon’s signature the question of why the code-switch, if the hypothesis is correct, from mixed to fully dialectal happens is left open. Is this due to fossilisation of an older form or the symbolic value of names? (see Giannakis in this volume).In Giannakis’ chapter on the Dodona tablets the link between onomastics and regions (p. 128) is difficult or even impossible to prove given not only the special status of onomastics in the lexicon and grammar (Anderson 2007) but also the fact that names are chosen for a variety of reasons including personal preference or fashion (e.g. Depauw & Coussement 2014; Fendel 2022: chap. 2).

García Ramón’s chapter is a brilliant example of the pervasiveness of verbal multi-word expressions in all aspects of the Greek lexicon and grammar throughout time (see esp. p. 141 n. 11) (Fendel 2024). However, the equations that Hesychius puts forward (p. 139 ft. 2) are possibly rather approximations than absolutes and to be taken in the context of Hesychius’ larger project (see also Cotticelli-Kurras in this volume and Pisaniello and Merlin, p. 185 n. 88 in this volume).Pisaniello and Merlin’s chapter on Lycian and Lydian in contact with Greek, while coming to the very plausible conclusion of minor use patterns becoming major use patterns under the influence of language contact (p. 185) (Matras & Sakel 2007), seems to cover an impressive range of examples, yet the link to the conclusion is inferential.
Calboli’ chapter on Terence’ Nausistrata is difficult to read due to many orthographic, lexical, and morphosyntactic errors in German. It is not entirely clear how the chapter fits into the volume although cultural contact seems a plausible approach in the sense of reworking earlier writings and incorporating common motives (see also Finnegan 2011).

Cotticelli-Kurras’ chapter on the development of a grammatical metalanguage in early medieval grammars is very rich in examples, often quoted verbatim from Schad’s (2007) lexicon, but they lack a detailed discussion of what to take away. There are several formatting issues in the chapter which complicate the situation.

Orlandi and Poccetti’s chapter on negation as a driving force claims that formations with -τερο- like οὐδέτερος, μηδέτερος, πότερος, and ἑκάτερος are almost unknown in the New Testament and papyri (with reference to the grammars by Debrunner-Blass and Mayser, see similarly Bubenik in this volume). A string search in the Duke Database of Documentary Papyri relativises this claim already (ἑκατερ 316 instances, οὐδετερ 21 instances, μηδετερ 12 instances, ποτερ 177 instances, 20 March 2025). Note that string searches like this miss many examples for reasons of mark-up and the like. It shows however that our descriptive grammars for these text types have gradually become outdated.
Bubenik’s chapter on translation phenomena seems to omit a clear-cut definition of periphrasis (compare e.g. Haspelmath 2000; vs. Aerts 1965) and reference to Markopoulos’ (2009) extensive study of future periphrastics when discussing them. It is not clear what the dataset is and how statements like “increased” are justified against the dataset.

Aresu and Cabriolu’s chapter on word order in preclassical, classical, and biblical Latin is difficult to evaluate because it is based on a corpus selection that is not further justified. The results coming from the text selection are thus difficult to interpret. It would also have been necessary to explain Greenberg’s typological word order universals that are relied upon (p. 416) and why the authors chose to rely on them.

Cotugno’s chapter on the Vandalic language struggles against the scarcity of sources (for issues with onomastics see similarly on Giannakis above). The chapter provides a good foundation in the historical context which is necessary given the audience of the volume. The chapter offers a completely revised translation of epigram 285 from the Anthologia Latina in the Codex Parisinus Latinus 10318, which thus describes an author wanting to distance himself from drinking and toasting Vandals in a tavern (p. 450). This may be a specific group of Vandals and not apply to all of them indiscriminately (p. 451), yet the text hints at an attitude towards a group that is different from the author and his group identity (see also Perrino & Wortham 2022). The chapter showcases how re-evaluation of an established translation can change the interpretation of a text and its embedding in its context (see similarly on well-known texts Rusten 2020; Willi 2017).

REFERENCES

Aerts, Willem. 1965. Periphrastica: an investigation into the use of εἶναι and ἔχειν as auxiliaries or pseudo-auxiliaries in Greek from Homer up to the present day. Amsterdam: AMHakkert.

Anderson, John. 2007. The grammar of names. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bentein, Klaas. 2024. Documentary papyri as ‘multimodal’ texts. Aspects of variation in the Nepheros archive (IV CE). In Martti Leiwo, Marja Vierros, Sonia Dahlgren & Hilla Halla-aho (eds.), Scribes and Language Use in the Graeco-Roman World. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press.

Depauw, Mark & Sandra Coussement. 2014. Identifiers and identification methods in the ancient world: Legal Documents in Ancient Societies III. Leuven: Peeters.

Doody, Aude, Sabine Föllinger & Liba Taub. 2012. Structures and strategies in ancient Greek and Roman technical writing: An Introduction. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 43(2). 233–236.

Fendel, Victoria. 2022. Coptic interference in the syntax of Greek letters from Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fendel, Victoria. 2024. Celebrating diversity: The origins and pathways of three support-verb constructions. Lexis.

Finnegan, Ruth. 2011. Why do we quote?: the culture and history of quotation. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.

Haspelmath, Martin. 2000. Periphrasis. In Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann & Joachim Mugdan (eds.), Morphologie / Morphology. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung / An international handbook on inflection and word-formation, vol. 1, 654–664. Berlin; Boston: Mouton De Gruyter.

Markopoulos, Theodore. 2009. The future in Greek: from ancient to medieval. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Matras, Yaron & Jeanette Sakel. 2007. Investigating the mechanisms of pattern replication in language convergence. Studies in Language 31(4). 829–865.

Perrino, Sabina & Stanton Wortham. 2022. Narrating Heterogeneous Identities in Multilingual Communities. In Linda Fisher & Wendy Ayres-Bennett (eds.), Multilingualism and Identity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 239–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Phipps, Alison. 2022. Decolonizing Languages in Rural Settings: Towards Equatorial Epistemologies. In Linda Fisher & Wendy Ayres-Bennett (eds.), Multilingualism and Identity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 155–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rusten, Jeffrey. 2020. τὴν ἐκβολὴν τοῦ λόγου ἐποιησάμην: Thucydides’ chronicle in the Pentekontaetia (1.97–117) is not a digression. Histos 14. 230–254.

Schad, Samantha. 2007. A lexicon of Latin grammatical terminology. Pisa; Rome: Fabrizio Serra Editore.

Willi, Andreas. 2017. Krieg und Frieden im frühen Rom: Altes und Neues zum carmen Arvale. In Andreas Willi (ed.), Sprachgeschichte und Epigraphik: Festgaben für Rudolf Wachter zum 60. Geburtstag, 147–233. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Victoria B. Fendel (D.Phil. Oxford, 2018) is a research associate at the University of Oxford, one of the editors of the Classics section of the Literary Encyclopedia, and language leader for Ancient Greek in the PARSEME/UniDive COST initiative. Her research focusses on language contact (Oxford University Press, 2022) and multi-word expressions (Brill, 2025) in literary, epigraphic, and papyrological sources.