The Monastic Rules of Visigothic Iberia - eTheses Repository ...

his clothes (ηνῖο ἱκαηίνηο) and his habit of speech (ἐλ ηῳ δηαιέθηῳ) back to his old ways.
Whatever the exact meaning of this assertion, it is indicative of the fact that the ancient world
recognised the act of speech to be subject to change. Indeed, Greco-Roman writers were at
times capable of being very acute observers of language variation; 429 these processes in the
ancient world have received increasing attention from modern scholars. 430 In the last century,
modern linguistics has likewise demonstrated language change and variation to occur over
three different aspects: between different geographical areas (diatopic); over time
(diachronic) and contemporarily between different speakers in the same place (sociological).
Since the ancients recognised language change and variation to occur, they possessed
naturally terms to describe it. Augustine, for example, described his ideal of Latinitas as
“obseruatio incorrupte loquendi”; 431 this was one of many discussions found in the Roman
world (Vainio 1999). Included within such a concept were various scales described by
different adjectives: sermo politus, rusticus, uulgaris, cottidianus, and even italianus. All of
these are likely to have possessed different meanings, or at the very least different nuances, to
Latin speakers writing in Republican and Imperial Rome and the early medieval period (Chin
429 For example, Aristotle, On Rhetoric F.1408a 10-32, observed the differing use of language
between gender and social status; Cicero, De oratore 3.45, remarked on the conservatism of female
speech; Boethius, Consolationes 2.7.25-29, noted the diversity of speech over geographical space;
Fabius Planciades Fulgentius, Expositio sermonum antiquorum, noted its variation over time; Aulus
Gellius noted the story of the philosopher Flavorinus, Noctes Atticae 1.10, who was said to have
spoken with such old words, as though he were talking to the mother of Evander, a prominent figure
in early Roman myth.
430 For the Greek world, see Gera (2003). This variation naturally included purposeful stylistic and
literary registers, bilingualism and contemporary variation (Krostenko 2001; Adams 2003, 2007).
The Latin of Praenestine has offered particularly good examples; see Coleman (1990). A useful study
on women‟s speech can be found in Gilleland (1980).
431 Ars breuiata 1.1.
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