Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin. Nicholas Ostler

quality, apparently so important for ancient writers and readers, was a deceptive thing. In essence, language was seen as high quality in itself just because it was associated with writers whose work was judged to be elegant and important. Although the Latin-using world imitated the Greek in taking this cultural stance, the content of the preferred styles for the two languages can hardly be equated, beyond the patterns for periodic sentences that have been described. As different languages they had different stylistic hang-ups, of no more concern universally than the split infinitive is in English. Furthermore, the next great cadre of Latin writers, the Church Fathers, would pride themselves on dispensing with what they saw as artificial classical norms.

      Time, though, would bring a full turn of the wheel of fortune. Ironically, the greatest vogue for classicism in Latin did not occur in the second or third century AD, but over a millennium later, in the Renaissance and the centuries afterward. Then, to achieve liberation from the perceived turgidity of Christian and medieval Latin, the fashion would dictate a return to the classic authors and, in writing, a renewed fidelity to their language.

      The Greeks were extremely lucky to have the Romans as their cultural successors, though they seldom recognized it. (They would naturally have preferred to continue their own tradition, without the need for any alien—i.e., necessarily barbarian—followers or replacements at all.) Although Rome had disabled them militarily, it was content for a good five centuries to be their cultural disciple, and indeed to use its unprecedented power to project aspects of Greek culture to the farthest parts of northern and western Europe: paideía