Early Latin – Introduction, Part 1
Pezzini, Giuseppe
Melo, Wolfgang de
Introduction to the early Latin language, its speakers and history.
 Hello and welcome to the first lesson of our series of classes on the early Latin language. My name is Beppe Petzini, I come from the University of San Andrews in Scotland, or better to say I teach there and live there with my family, but I am originally from Italy, but I've been living in the United Kingdom for many years. I did train at the University of Oxford and my daughter came out in 2015 as a book on clitisization on the verb to be in Latin. At the University of San Andrews, pretty town in the north of Edinburgh, I teach mainly Latin language and literature of the Roman Republic and indeed of the early Latin period in particular. My current project at the moment is an edition and commentary on a very important text by the playwright Terence, who is indeed a very important author of the early Latin period. Together with me there is Wolfgang de Mello and I will ask him to introduce himself. He's a dear friend and I've called him for many years. My name is Wolfgang de Mello and I come from southern Germany. I studied in Oxford and that's in fact where I met Beppe and my doctoral dissertation was on the early Latin verb system. It came out as a book in 2007 and since then I have edited and translated Plotus who makes up 60% of early Latin and have since been working on Varo, our first Roman grammarian, who I have edited, translated and commented on and I'm now going to leave the stage to my colleague Beppe Pazzini so he can start with the introduction. Thank you very much Wolfgang. I think we are now ready to begin. I will begin straight away with a general introduction on early Latin. In particular today we'll address some important questions. First of all, what is early Latin? Second, where the users of early Latin? Where he was spoken and where he was spoken? First of all, I need to explain what I mean by early Latin, which is actually a quite problematic level to refer to something which is not so easy to define. By early Latin I refer of course to a variety of Latin that is the language that was originally spoken in the centers before Christ by people living in Latium in central Italy, as you can see here from the map. This is basically what was Latium and in particular this is the language that was spoken by some particular people living in Latium that are of course the Romans from the city of Rome, which is just here. With a gradual expansion of the Roman power from the feet for center-BC in Ours, this language Latin became the standard language spoken and written in a vast territory from Britain to Egypt, but both native and non-native speakers. Even after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and the gradual emerging of Roman languages as the spoken languages of Europe, Latin maintained all its authority and continued to be used as the lingua franca of culture, especially western Europe, roughly this region here, until at least the 16th century AD and in fact beyond then. Text written in Latin are still produced nowadays. In the past decade in particular we have seen a surge in the original production of Latin, both written and spoken, although the users of this language cannot be considered as native speakers. The Latin normally used and produced in the 21st century is normally a restricted stylistic variety of Latin that is classical Latin. Now what is classical Latin? What do I mean by that? By classical Latin I refer to an artificial variety of the language which has been codified by grammars of the centuries, which has been set especially after the Renaissance as the standard of correct Latin. This variety is largely based on a selective number of texts produced in the middle late 1st century BC, including above all the rhetorical and philosophical words of Cicero, this man here on the right. However, even the Latin printed in modern edition of Cicero, the one we read nowadays, has been heavily standardized according to conventions that have been codified all in the following centuries. In the Latin that was actually written by Cicero would indeed have looked very different to us. Moreover, we know that at the time of Cicero, Latin was not a monolithic entity. There was a huge linguistic variety, lexical, phonological, morphological, syntactic. A Cicero himself could use different varieties of this language in different texts with different purposes. Therefore, classical Latin as codified in modern grammars to a certain extent never existed as a real language. The term should be used to refer not to a diachronic periodization. I prefer to use the words late republic and or imperial. Rather, classical Latin should be used as a sort of synchronic label to refer to a variety produced and constrained by artificial standardization, which in fact can get tested at all periods of the history of Latin. Standardization of the language is a process indeed which also takes place in our early period. We forgive me this long preface but without having these things in mind, it is difficult to understand what is the topic of this module that is early Latin. In contrast with classical Latin, I used early Latin in a purely diachronic sense, referring to the Latin used by people living in the territory controlled by the city of Rome between 14041 BC and 8483 BC. The geographical coordinates of this territory varied greatly in this period, even in this relatively short period of time. This was for Rome a period of huge political and I will say also cultural expansion. 240 BC is the year following the Roman victory of a cathartic in the first Punic War, which resulted in Rome's annexing of its very first province outside Italy, Sicily. And also the affirmation of its naval power of the Western Mediterranean. This conquest had also important linguistic implications, as we will see, since Sicily was a Greek-speaking territory and a cultural hub in many respects. On the other hand, 84 BC is instead the year following the Roman victorious campaign of a king Mithridates in the first Mithridatic War, which was marked in particular by a momentum siege of the city of Athens. This victory, we may say, definitely the secure Roman control over Greece and the cost of Asia Minor. The chronological boundaries of this period, however, have not just been chosen for political reason, but rather cultural. 240 BC is the official birth date of Latin literature, when, according to tradition, the Greek former slaves Livio Centronicus put on stage at Rome the very first Latin translation of a Greek tragedy. This was the beginning of an albost of literary production in the Latin language, which makes up for us most of the linguistic evidence preserved from that period. I will see better in the next lesson the amount of Latin texts which have been preserved before 240 BC is very very small. On the other end, 84, 83 BC is the probable year in which Cicero, the man we met before, composed his very first work in his early 20s, that is a rhetorical handbook titled Dei wentione. For better or worse, Cicero marks a transition to a new period, because of his later influence on the codification of classical Latin, also because his generation witnessed the end of the previous political system, the end of the republic, but also just because of the fact that the Ciceroan corpus is larger than everything that has been preserved in Latin from earlier ages. Compared to the corpus of Cicero, the corpus of early Latin is relatively small. The periodization underpinning the concept of early Latin is purely artificial, however. It should be approached with three important coverings. First, it is wrong to assume that Latin using the early period is substantially different from that used by Cicero. In fact, there are many linguistic features which have been traditionally associated with early Latin versus classical Latin, which are in fact also well-attested in Cicero, well-attested in imperial sources, often but not always in low register and substandard sources. Second point, it is wrong to take early Latin as a monolithic entity and assume that all the linguistic features described as early are attested in all the early authors, nor that all these features have all the same stylization. For instance, many linguistic features which are normally considered early are found in plotters but are not found, say, in terrenes. Actually, we know that terres avoided these features, but even in plotters himself, we know that some of these early features are often restricted to specific medical positions, where they should probably be constructed as stylized archaisms. Third, the nature of the text presented from the early period presents some particular features, as regard in particular genre and style, and these may distort our linguistic perception. In particular, as Wolfgang already said, the vast majority of the early Latin corpus is made up of the comedies of plotters and terrenes. These are mimetic texts, supposed to imitate lower-registered spoken varieties of Latin with no equivalents in imperial or late period to be compared with. These comedies contain many linguistic features that are not attested, say, in Cicero or Caesar, which are whether, in fact, general features of the spoken, conversational Latin of all times, and were presumably avoided by Cicero and Caesar as too colloquial rather than archaic. Similar, the early Latin author Cato, another important source for the period, was a kind of traditionalist, obsessed with the preservation of the ancient Cossus of Rome. It is not surprised that his works preserve many archaic features which are avoided, say, by his contemporaries. They will presumably have been obsolete in the spoken language of his time. To give one example, which somehow incorporates all the three above consideration, this is the example of the archaic genitive A.I. I say archaic, not early, and there is a reason why. In early Latin, there are many instances of the all-Latin ending of the genitive singular A.I. This, of course, deserves to be noted. Should we consider all these instances as a sign that this particular morphological ending was a specific trait of early Latin? Not really, because for instance in Enius, one of the most important authors of the period, this form, this genitive form, is mostly found at the end of the line, where archaisms normally gather. In Plotus instead, this form is normally found in elevated high-style passages, such as prologues or formal speeches. In Terence, it is only attested twice. The monosyllabic form has become the standard one. In contrast, I find it very interesting, the ending A.I., this archaic feature, is standard in a classical poet or late republican poet like Lucretius, which is more common than the classical form A.I. He also found in many authors after Lucretius, including the portrait of Caesar himself and many others. All that said, I think we are ready to start describing the linguistic features of early Latin with the awareness that many of these are not just early. Many of these are indeed early, but are stylized already as archaic. We will talk more about all these in the next video, in which I'll present to you the writing and the main sources of early Latin. Thank you for your attention, take care, goodbye, and as we say in early Latin, gratia wobeis o gratitibi ago.
 Hello and welcome to the first lesson of our series of classes on the early Latin  language. My name is Beppe Petzini, I come from the University of San Andrews in  Scotland, or better to say I teach there and live there with my family, but I am  originally from Italy, but I've been living in the United Kingdom for many years.  I did train at the University of Oxford and my daughter came out in 2015 as a  book on clitisization on the verb to be in Latin. At the University of San Andrews,  pretty town in the north of Edinburgh, I teach mainly Latin language and literature  of the Roman Republic and indeed of the early Latin period in particular. My  current project at the moment is an edition and commentary on a very important  text by the playwright Terence, who is indeed a very important author of the  early Latin period. Together with me there is Wolfgang de Mello and I will  ask him to introduce himself. He's a dear friend and I've called him for many years.  My name is Wolfgang de Mello and I come from southern Germany. I studied in Oxford  and that's in fact where I met Beppe and my doctoral dissertation was on the  early Latin verb system. It came out as a book in 2007 and since then I have  edited and translated Plotus who makes up 60% of early Latin and have since been  working on Varo, our first Roman grammarian, who I have edited, translated and  commented on and I'm now going to leave the stage to my colleague Beppe Pazzini  so he can start with the introduction. Thank you very much Wolfgang. I think we  are now ready to begin. I will begin straight away with a general introduction  on early Latin. In particular today we'll address some important questions.  First of all, what is early Latin? Second, where the users of early Latin? Where  he was spoken and where he was spoken? First of all, I need to explain what I  mean by early Latin, which is actually a quite problematic level to refer to  something which is not so easy to define. By early Latin I refer of course to a  variety of Latin that is the language that was originally spoken in the  centers before Christ by people living in Latium in central Italy, as you can see  here from the map. This is basically what was Latium and in particular this is the  language that was spoken by some particular people living in Latium that  are of course the Romans from the city of Rome, which is just here. With a  gradual expansion of the Roman power from the feet for center-BC in  Ours, this language Latin became the standard language spoken and written in a  vast territory from Britain to Egypt, but both native and non-native speakers.  Even after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and the  gradual emerging of Roman languages as the spoken languages of Europe, Latin  maintained all its authority and continued to be used as the lingua franca  of culture, especially western Europe, roughly this region here, until at least  the 16th century AD and in fact beyond then. Text written in Latin are still  produced nowadays. In the past decade in particular we have seen a surge in the  original production of Latin, both written and spoken, although the users of  this language cannot be considered as native speakers. The Latin normally used  and produced in the 21st century is normally a restricted stylistic  variety of Latin that is classical Latin. Now what is classical Latin? What do I mean by that?  By classical Latin I refer to an artificial variety of the language which  has been codified by grammars of the centuries, which has been set especially  after the Renaissance as the standard of correct Latin. This variety is largely  based on a selective number of texts produced in the middle late 1st century BC,  including above all the rhetorical and philosophical words of Cicero, this man  here on the right. However, even the Latin printed in modern edition of Cicero,  the one we read nowadays, has been heavily standardized according to  conventions that have been codified all in the following centuries. In the Latin  that was actually written by Cicero would indeed have looked very different to us.  Moreover, we know that at the time of Cicero, Latin was not a monolithic entity.  There was a huge linguistic variety, lexical, phonological, morphological,  syntactic. A Cicero himself could use different varieties of this language in  different texts with different purposes. Therefore, classical Latin as codified  in modern grammars to a certain extent never existed as a real language. The  term should be used to refer not to a diachronic periodization. I prefer to  use the words late republic and or imperial. Rather, classical Latin should  be used as a sort of synchronic label to refer to a variety produced and  constrained by artificial standardization, which in fact can get tested at all  periods of the history of Latin. Standardization of the language is a process  indeed which also takes place in our early period. We forgive me this long  preface but without having these things in mind, it is difficult to understand what  is the topic of this module that is early Latin. In contrast with classical Latin,  I used early Latin in a purely diachronic sense, referring to the Latin used by  people living in the territory controlled by the city of Rome between 14041 BC and  8483 BC. The geographical coordinates of this territory varied greatly in this  period, even in this relatively short period of time. This was for Rome a  period of huge political and I will say also cultural expansion. 240 BC is the  year following the Roman victory of a cathartic in the first Punic War, which  resulted in Rome's annexing of its very first province outside Italy, Sicily.  And also the affirmation of its naval power of the Western Mediterranean. This  conquest had also important linguistic implications, as we will see, since  Sicily was a Greek-speaking territory and a cultural hub in many respects. On the  other hand, 84 BC is instead the year following the Roman victorious campaign  of a king Mithridates in the first Mithridatic War, which was marked in  particular by a momentum siege of the city of Athens. This victory, we may say,  definitely the secure Roman control over Greece and the cost of Asia Minor. The  chronological boundaries of this period, however, have not just been chosen for  political reason, but rather cultural. 240 BC is the official birth date of  Latin literature, when, according to tradition, the Greek former slaves  Livio Centronicus put on stage at Rome the very first Latin translation of a  Greek tragedy. This was the beginning of an albost of literary production in the  Latin language, which makes up for us most of the linguistic evidence preserved  from that period. I will see better in the next lesson the amount of Latin  texts which have been preserved before 240 BC is very very small. On the other  end, 84, 83 BC is the probable year in which Cicero, the man we met before,  composed his very first work in his early 20s, that is a rhetorical handbook  titled Dei wentione. For better or worse, Cicero marks a transition to a new  period, because of his later influence on the codification of classical Latin,  also because his generation witnessed the end of the previous political system,  the end of the republic, but also just because of the fact that the Ciceroan  corpus is larger than everything that has been preserved in Latin from earlier  ages. Compared to the corpus of Cicero, the corpus of early Latin is relatively  small. The periodization underpinning the concept of early Latin is purely  artificial, however. It should be approached with three important  coverings. First, it is wrong to assume that Latin using the early period is  substantially different from that used by Cicero. In fact, there are many  linguistic features which have been traditionally associated with early  Latin versus classical Latin, which are in fact also well-attested in Cicero,  well-attested in imperial sources, often but not always in low register and  substandard sources. Second point, it is wrong to take early Latin as a monolithic  entity and assume that all the linguistic features described as early are  attested in all the early authors, nor that all these features have all the same  stylization. For instance, many linguistic features which are normally  considered early are found in plotters but are not found, say, in terrenes.  Actually, we know that terres avoided these features, but even in plotters  himself, we know that some of these early features are often restricted to  specific medical positions, where they should probably be constructed as  stylized archaisms. Third, the nature of the text presented from the early period  presents some particular features, as regard in particular genre and style, and  these may distort our linguistic perception. In particular, as Wolfgang  already said, the vast majority of the early Latin corpus is made up of the  comedies of plotters and terrenes. These are mimetic texts, supposed to imitate  lower-registered spoken varieties of Latin with no equivalents in imperial or  late period to be compared with. These comedies contain many linguistic  features that are not attested, say, in Cicero or Caesar, which are whether, in  fact, general features of the spoken, conversational Latin of all times, and  were presumably avoided by Cicero and Caesar as too colloquial rather than archaic.  Similar, the early Latin author Cato, another important source for the period,  was a kind of traditionalist, obsessed with the preservation of the ancient  Cossus of Rome. It is not surprised that his works preserve many archaic features  which are avoided, say, by his contemporaries. They will presumably have  been obsolete in the spoken language of his time. To give one example,  which somehow incorporates all the three above consideration, this is the example  of the archaic genitive A.I. I say archaic, not early, and there is a reason why.  In early Latin, there are many instances of the all-Latin ending of the  genitive singular A.I. This, of course, deserves to be noted. Should we consider  all these instances as a sign that this particular morphological ending was a  specific trait of early Latin? Not really, because for instance in Enius, one of the  most important authors of the period, this form, this genitive form, is mostly  found at the end of the line, where archaisms normally gather. In Plotus  instead, this form is normally found in elevated high-style passages, such as  prologues or formal speeches. In Terence, it is only attested twice. The  monosyllabic form has become the standard one. In contrast, I find it  very interesting, the ending A.I., this archaic feature, is standard in a  classical poet or late republican poet like Lucretius, which is more common than  the classical form A.I. He also found in many authors after Lucretius, including  the portrait of Caesar himself and many others. All that said, I think we are  ready to start describing the linguistic features of early Latin with the  awareness that many of these are not just early. Many of these are indeed early, but  are stylized already as archaic. We will talk more about all these in the next  video, in which I'll present to you the writing and the main sources of early  Latin. Thank you for your attention, take care, goodbye, and as we say in early  Latin, gratia wobeis o gratitibi ago.
Early_Latin_1_0_2735.png Early_Latin_1_2736_2795.png Early_Latin_1_2796_3911.png Early_Latin_1_3912_7655.png Early_Latin_1_7656_8027.png Early_Latin_1_8028_9023.png Early_Latin_1_9024_13607.png Early_Latin_1_13608_13655.png Early_Latin_1_13656_13775.png Early_Latin_1_13776_14627.png Early_Latin_1_14628_18215.png Early_Latin_1_18216_19482.png
Hello and welcome to the first lesson of our series of classes on the early Latin language. My name is Beppe Petzini, I come from the University of San Andrews in Scotland, or better to say I teach there and live there with my family, but I am originally from Italy, but I've been living in the United Kingdom for many years. I did train at the University of Oxford and my daughter came out in 2015 as a book on clitisization on the verb to be in Latin. At the University of San Andrews, pretty town in the north of Edinburgh, I teach mainly Latin language and literature of the Roman Republic and indeed of the early Latin period in particular. My current project at the moment is an edition and commentary on a very important text by the playwright Terence, who is indeed a very important author of the early Latin period. Together with me there is Wolfgang de Mello and I will ask him to introduce himself. He's a dear friend and I've called him for many years. My name is Wolfgang de Mello and I come from southern Germany. I studied in Oxford and that's in fact where I met Beppe and my doctoral dissertation was on the early Latin verb system. It came out as a book in 2007 and since then I have edited and translated Plotus who makes up 60% of early Latin and have since been working on Varo, our first Roman grammarian, who I have edited, translated and commented on and I'm now going to leave the stage to my colleague Beppe Pazzini so he can start with the introduction. Thank you very much Wolfgang. I think we are now ready to begin. I will begin straight away with a general introduction on early Latin. In particular today we'll address some important questions. First of all, what is early Latin? Second, where the users of early Latin? Where he was spoken and where he was spoken? First of all, I need to explain what I mean by early Latin, which is actually a quite problematic level to refer to something which is not so easy to define. By early Latin I refer of course to a variety of Latin that is the language that was originally spoken in the centers before Christ by people living in Latium in central Italy, as you can see here from the map. This is basically what was Latium and in particular this is the language that was spoken by some particular people living in Latium that are of course the Romans from the city of Rome, which is just here. With a gradual expansion of the Roman power from the feet for center-BC in Ours, this language Latin became the standard language spoken and written in a vast territory from Britain to Egypt, but both native and non-native speakers. Even after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and the gradual emerging of Roman languages as the spoken languages of Europe, Latin maintained all its authority and continued to be used as the lingua franca of culture, especially western Europe, roughly this region here, until at least the 16th century AD and in fact beyond then. Text written in Latin are still produced nowadays. In the past decade in particular we have seen a surge in the original production of Latin, both written and spoken, although the users of this language cannot be considered as native speakers. The Latin normally used and produced in the 21st century is normally a restricted stylistic variety of Latin that is classical Latin. Now what is classical Latin? What do I mean by that? By classical Latin I refer to an artificial variety of the language which has been codified by grammars of the centuries, which has been set especially after the Renaissance as the standard of correct Latin. This variety is largely based on a selective number of texts produced in the middle late 1st century BC, including above all the rhetorical and philosophical words of Cicero, this man here on the right. However, even the Latin printed in modern edition of Cicero, the one we read nowadays, has been heavily standardized according to conventions that have been codified all in the following centuries. In the Latin that was actually written by Cicero would indeed have looked very different to us. Moreover, we know that at the time of Cicero, Latin was not a monolithic entity. There was a huge linguistic variety, lexical, phonological, morphological, syntactic. A Cicero himself could use different varieties of this language in different texts with different purposes. Therefore, classical Latin as codified in modern grammars to a certain extent never existed as a real language. The term should be used to refer not to a diachronic periodization. I prefer to use the words late republic and or imperial. Rather, classical Latin should be used as a sort of synchronic label to refer to a variety produced and constrained by artificial standardization, which in fact can get tested at all periods of the history of Latin. Standardization of the language is a process indeed which also takes place in our early period. We forgive me this long preface but without having these things in mind, it is difficult to understand what is the topic of this module that is early Latin. In contrast with classical Latin, I used early Latin in a purely diachronic sense, referring to the Latin used by people living in the territory controlled by the city of Rome between 14041 BC and 8483 BC. The geographical coordinates of this territory varied greatly in this period, even in this relatively short period of time. This was for Rome a period of huge political and I will say also cultural expansion. 240 BC is the year following the Roman victory of a cathartic in the first Punic War, which resulted in Rome's annexing of its very first province outside Italy, Sicily. And also the affirmation of its naval power of the Western Mediterranean. This conquest had also important linguistic implications, as we will see, since Sicily was a Greek-speaking territory and a cultural hub in many respects. On the other hand, 84 BC is instead the year following the Roman victorious campaign of a king Mithridates in the first Mithridatic War, which was marked in particular by a momentum siege of the city of Athens. This victory, we may say, definitely the secure Roman control over Greece and the cost of Asia Minor. The chronological boundaries of this period, however, have not just been chosen for political reason, but rather cultural. 240 BC is the official birth date of Latin literature, when, according to tradition, the Greek former slaves Livio Centronicus put on stage at Rome the very first Latin translation of a Greek tragedy. This was the beginning of an albost of literary production in the Latin language, which makes up for us most of the linguistic evidence preserved from that period. I will see better in the next lesson the amount of Latin texts which have been preserved before 240 BC is very very small. On the other end, 84, 83 BC is the probable year in which Cicero, the man we met before, composed his very first work in his early 20s, that is a rhetorical handbook titled Dei wentione. For better or worse, Cicero marks a transition to a new period, because of his later influence on the codification of classical Latin, also because his generation witnessed the end of the previous political system, the end of the republic, but also just because of the fact that the Ciceroan corpus is larger than everything that has been preserved in Latin from earlier ages. Compared to the corpus of Cicero, the corpus of early Latin is relatively small. The periodization underpinning the concept of early Latin is purely artificial, however. It should be approached with three important coverings. First, it is wrong to assume that Latin using the early period is substantially different from that used by Cicero. In fact, there are many linguistic features which have been traditionally associated with early Latin versus classical Latin, which are in fact also well-attested in Cicero, well-attested in imperial sources, often but not always in low register and substandard sources. Second point, it is wrong to take early Latin as a monolithic entity and assume that all the linguistic features described as early are attested in all the early authors, nor that all these features have all the same stylization. For instance, many linguistic features which are normally considered early are found in plotters but are not found, say, in terrenes. Actually, we know that terres avoided these features, but even in plotters himself, we know that some of these early features are often restricted to specific medical positions, where they should probably be constructed as stylized archaisms. Third, the nature of the text presented from the early period presents some particular features, as regard in particular genre and style, and these may distort our linguistic perception. In particular, as Wolfgang already said, the vast majority of the early Latin corpus is made up of the comedies of plotters and terrenes. These are mimetic texts, supposed to imitate lower-registered spoken varieties of Latin with no equivalents in imperial or late period to be compared with. These comedies contain many linguistic features that are not attested, say, in Cicero or Caesar, which are whether, in fact, general features of the spoken, conversational Latin of all times, and were presumably avoided by Cicero and Caesar as too colloquial rather than archaic. Similar, the early Latin author Cato, another important source for the period, was a kind of traditionalist, obsessed with the preservation of the ancient Cossus of Rome. It is not surprised that his works preserve many archaic features which are avoided, say, by his contemporaries. They will presumably have been obsolete in the spoken language of his time. To give one example, which somehow incorporates all the three above consideration, this is the example of the archaic genitive A.I. I say archaic, not early, and there is a reason why. In early Latin, there are many instances of the all-Latin ending of the genitive singular A.I. This, of course, deserves to be noted. Should we consider all these instances as a sign that this particular morphological ending was a specific trait of early Latin? Not really, because for instance in Enius, one of the most important authors of the period, this form, this genitive form, is mostly found at the end of the line, where archaisms normally gather. In Plotus instead, this form is normally found in elevated high-style passages, such as prologues or formal speeches. In Terence, it is only attested twice. The monosyllabic form has become the standard one. In contrast, I find it very interesting, the ending A.I., this archaic feature, is standard in a classical poet or late republican poet like Lucretius, which is more common than the classical form A.I. He also found in many authors after Lucretius, including the portrait of Caesar himself and many others. All that said, I think we are ready to start describing the linguistic features of early Latin with the awareness that many of these are not just early. Many of these are indeed early, but are stylized already as archaic. We will talk more about all these in the next video, in which I'll present to you the writing and the main sources of early Latin. Thank you for your attention, take care, goodbye, and as we say in early Latin, gratia wobeis o gratitibi ago.
Hello and welcome to the first lesson of our series of classes on the early Latin language. My