Chapter 28 - ‘Early Latin’ to Neo-Latin

Summary

This chapters examines the motivation and method of reuse of early Latin in the translations from Greek poetry of Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609), the scholar to whom the study of fragmentary Republican Latin owes more than to anyone else in classical scholarship. The analysis focusses on the translations of Sophocles’ Ajax and of Lycophron’s Alexandra, which the young Scaliger produced a decade before his memorable edition of Festus’ De significatu uerborum (1576). The ancient lexicon was the main source of the obscure vocabulary that characterises Scaliger’s archaic Latin, the artificial construct of a style aimed at achieving a high register in the translation of Greek poetry. Recourse to the diction of the early Roman dramatists as a means of elevating the style had an authoritative precedent in Cicero. To latinise Lycophron’s exoteric diction Scaliger drew extensively on Festus’ glosses for rare usages and recondite synonyms. Other early-modern scholars who were engaged in the study of fragmentary Latin texts and their sources also used that variety of Latin for the purpose of translation of the Greek classics, and even for creative versification. ‘Early Latin’ is a style.