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

eflected in the ancient sources. Cicero, for example, had noted the “uerborum uetustas
prisca” of old legal texts. 435 Isidore, meanwhile, gives a detailed description of the four
„ages‟ of Latin in his Etymologies:
“Latinas autem linguas quattuor esse quidam dixerunt, id est Priscam, Latinam,
Romanam, Mixtam. Prisca est, quam uetustissimi Italiae sub Iano et Saturno sunt usi,
incondita, ut se habent carmina Saliorum. Latina, quam sub Latino et regibus Tusci et ceteri
in Latio sunt locuti, ex qua fuerunt duodecim tabulae scriptae. Romana, quae post reges
exactos a populo Romano coepta est, qua Naeuius, Plautus, Ennius, Uergilius poetae, et ex
oratoribus Gracchus et Cato et Cicero uel ceteri effuderunt. Mixta, quae post imperium latius
promotum simul cum moribus et hominibus in Romanam ciuitatem inrupit, integritatem uerbi
per soloecismos et barbarismos corrumpens”. 436
Much of the Latin written in and around the period of the monastic rules has found
itself traditionally to be at the bottom of a value-laden list of Latinity. Even for Isidore, the
latina mixta of his time was corrupt with barbarisms and solecisms. Many traditional
histories of Latin employed an elitist view of the development of the language, along the lines
of „Old Latin‟, „Classical Latin‟, Silver Latin‟ and „Late Latin‟ (Rettig 1963: v). This
immediately creates a somewhat biased view of decline into “one of the darkest ages of
Latinity” (Coleman 1987: 50) that needs to be avoided.
In describing the language of texts from the period of the monastic rules, various
options have traditionally been available to modern scholars. Some of the most common of
these include: post-Classical Latin, Late Latin, and Christian Latin. Sometimes, more
435 De oratore 1.193.
436 Etymologies 9.6-7.
173