# Byzantine Latin



## ahvalj

Are there any studies of the fate of Latin among the educated classes of the Byzantine Empire? I mean, how long was Latin studied after Heraclius decree, was it still used in any official or religious functions, what was its phonetic and grammatical evolution?


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## apmoy70

No, the use of Latin died out early. I'm unaware of the study of Latin literature and of the language in the Eastern Roman Empire after Heraclius. All I know is that the first attempt to translate works from the Latin into Greek took place six or seven centuries later (!!) in the 13th c. by Maximos Planoudis who translated Cato, Ovid, Augustine, Cicero, and Boethius into Byzantine Greek. For comparison, the Indian Panchatantra was translated three centuries earlier, and the French La Geurre de Troie (Benoît de Sainte-Maure), in the 12th c CE. Does that mean that the Byzantines read these works in the original language, or that it took a few hundred years for the curriculum to offer Latin studies? 
Interestingly enough on Mount Athos a Latin speaking Monastery was founded in the late 10th c. (985 or 990 CE) with Benedictine monks from Amalfi, Italy, known as «Ἀμαλφηνῶν» (of the Amalfitans), between Karakallou and Great Lavra, that would have become a centre of Latin studies in the Eastern Roman Empire, but after the Great Schism of 1054 it immediately started degenerating until it became vacant a few decades later


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## fdb

apmoy70 said:


> All I know is that the first attempt to translate works from the Latin into Greek took place six or seven centuries later (!!) in the 13th c. by Maximos Planoudis who translated Cato, Ovid, Augustine, Cicero, and Boethius into Byzantine Greek.



The Codex Justinianus and similar law books were surely translated from Latin to Greek at a much earlier date.



apmoy70 said:


> For comparison, the Indian Panchatantra was translated three centuries earlier,



Not from Sanskrit, of course, but from Arabic.


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## ahvalj

I am asking because the capital wasn't totally Greek: I guess, many Romans and other native Latin speakers moved there in the 4th century and later (Justinianus), so Latin may have been spoken at least at home by their descendants for a few more centuries. Plus, since the Empire was and, what is more important, considered itself the continuation of the Roman state, I wonder how was the language shift explained by its educated inhabitants.


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## berndf

The linguae francae of the Eastern Empire had always been Greek and Aramaic, Latin never played an important role in everyday life. Even within the Roman administration, Greek had always been more common than Latin, at least since Mark Antony, if not longer. Educated Romans had always been fluent in Greek, they sometimes even spoke Greek at home. It was a bit like 18th century Europe when French was the language of the aristocracy and many aristocrats spoke better French than their respective native languages.


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## fdb

At least at the time of Justinian, Latin-speaking soldiers formed a large portion of the population of Constantinople, and Latin seems to have been the principal language of administration in the capital. As I mentioned above, Justinian's law book was written in Latin, not in Greek.


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## apmoy70

fdb said:


> The Codex Justinianus and similar law books were surely translated from Latin to Greek at a much earlier date.


Yes, but Justinian reigns one and a half century earlier than Heraclius and do not forget his Novellae was the first Byzantine law book written originally in Greek; so all that Heraclius did was to validate (or confirm) a process of _de-_latinisation (pardon my neologism) in the empire that had started much earlier


ahvalj said:


> I am asking because the capital wasn't totally Greek: I guess, many Romans and other native Latin speakers moved there in the 4th century and later (Justinianus), so Latin may have been spoken at least at home by their descendants for a few more centuries. Plus, since the Empire was and, what is more important, considered itself the continuation of the Roman state, I wonder how was the language shift explained by its educated inhabitants.


The beginning of the gradual Hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire can be traced in the early 5th c. when emperor Theodosius II (a Latin speaker) made as his empress a pagan Greek woman, Aelia Eudocia. The empress was personally involved in the founding of the Pandidacterium of Magnavra (regarded as the first Byzantine university) in 425 CE where the Greek language for the first time gained an an edge on Latin (after her influence perhaps?) since sixteen out of the total thirty-one disciplines were taught in Greek.


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## ahvalj

I see, but I still find it rather strange that the country that was the heir of Rome and that called itself Romania and its inhabitants Romaeans (Romans) said goodbye to such a crucial element of the Roman identity so soon.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> I see, but I still find it rather strange that the country that was the heir of Rome and that called itself Romania and its inhabitants Romaeans (Romans) said goodbye to such a crucial element of the Roman identity so soon.


The question is how much the Latin language still contributed to the Roman identity. Rome had long been more an idea than a place.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> At least at the time of Justinian, Latin-speaking soldiers formed a large portion of the population of Constantinople,


If this were the case, we should find Latin graffiti in remains of military installations. I have never heard of that anywhere in the Eastern Empire while Greek graffiti is quite common. Do you know any examples?


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## wtrmute

There was a strong pressure for Latin speakers to switch to Greek ever since the Classical era, so I'm fairly certain that Latin speakers which move to Constantinople probably lost their Latin in a generation or two.  By the time Heraclius did away with Latin, all the law codes were already translated into Greek, and we have good evidence that the _Rhōmaioi_ came to see Latin as a barbarous tongue and its speakers suspicious foreigners, which they came to call by the exonym _Vlachs_.

Obviously, there were regions in the Balkans where Latin survived enough to evolve into Dalmatian, Istro-, Daco-, Megleno- and Aromanian languages.  Dalmatian died out in the late 19th Century, and except for Daco-romanian (Rumanian), the other languages have fairly limited official recognition as minority languages.  In Medieval times, the situation was no better, particularly after the Great Schism: Latin was the language of the heretical Westerners, and even today many Aromanians resent being viewed as a minority.


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## ahvalj

wtrmute said:


> There was a strong pressure for Latin speakers to switch to Greek ever since the Classical era, so I'm fairly certain that Latin speakers which move to Constantinople probably lost their Latin in a generation or two.  By the time Heraclius did away with Latin, all the law codes were already translated into Greek, and we have good evidence that the _Rhōmaioi_ came to see Latin as a barbarous tongue and its speakers suspicious foreigners, which they came to call by the exonym _Vlachs_.
> 
> Obviously, there were regions in the Balkans where Latin survived enough to evolve into Dalmatian, Istro-, Daco-, Megleno- and Aromanian languages.  Dalmatian died out in the late 19th Century, and except for Daco-romanian (Rumanian), the other languages have fairly limited official recognition as minority languages.  In Medieval times, the situation was no better, particularly after the Great Schism: Latin was the language of the heretical Westerners, and even today many Aromanians resent being viewed as a minority.


I suspect this was the attitude not towards Latin itself, but rather towards the barbaric, diverging Latin spoken by the western neighbors. It would be great if some user in the coming years could provide citations from early Byzantine authors with their opinion on this matter.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> I suspect this was the attitude not towards Latin itself, but rather towards the barbaric, diverging Latin spoken by the western neighbors.


No. The attitude of regarding Latin as the language of the plebs and Greek the language of the elite existed already in the late republic. I can only repeat what I said before:


berndf said:


> It was a bit like 18th century Europe when French was the language of the aristocracy and many aristocrats spoke better French than their respective native languages.


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## ahvalj

But again, my question is not about the attitude among ethnic Greeks, but among the yesterday Romans, the native speakers of Latin who moved to Constantinople. Did they suddenly acquire the same snobbish attitude towards the language of their parents?


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> But again, my question is not about the attitude among ethnic Greeks


I never mentioned any ethnic Greeks. I spoke about the Roman elite in Rome itself as early as the late republic. All the members of the Roman aristocracy had Greek teachers to educate their kids, in Greek of course, much like the kids of European aristocrats were raised by French _gouvernantes_.


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## fdb

There is serious scholarly literature on all these questions, for example this: http://www.jstor.org/stable/412522?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Also this: http://www.akademiai.com/doi/abs/10.1556/AAnt.43.2003.1-2.16


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## ahvalj

fdb said:


> There is serious scholarly literature on all these questions, for example this: http://www.jstor.org/stable/412522?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
> 
> Also this: http://www.akademiai.com/doi/abs/10.1556/AAnt.43.2003.1-2.16


Many thanks.


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## killerbee256

Latin continued to be used in the byzantine army, even after they switched the language used in administration to Greek, the now fossilized Latin military commands were still used up until the fourth crusade. I also believe there was a small group of people that could read and write Latin, because Latin was used for diplomatic correspondence between western kingdoms. The Byzantines would need to have some of those people when sending diplomatic communication to western kingdoms. Also Latin was still used on byzantine coins.


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## sotos

ahvalj said:


> Are there any studies of the fate of Latin among the educated classes of the Byzantine Empire?


There are several in greek. If you can read Gr., I could indicate some, like this:

http://helios-eie.ekt.gr/EIE/bitstream/10442/1771/1/M01.034.07.pdf

It focuses on the "class" of the law-people who started using greek in legal texts from Theodosius II , but preserved Latin at least till 11th c., for practical and ideological reasons. Even natural greek speakers had the opinion that every law-educated person should know latin apart from greek.


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## Outsider

In the eastern half of the Empire, Latin had no doubt always been used only by a tiny minority. It had official standing, but wasn't actually much spoken or known, aside from a minority of migrants in the classical period. As the western half broke apart, Latin became increasingly irrelevant, except for ceremonial purposes, or in certain limited regions, or a handful of technical terminology.
By contrast, remember that Greek, while equally foreign to most of the Middle East, had been used as a lingua franca in the region continuously and for a longer time, ever since hellenistic times (before the Empire). Add to this the greater prestige of Greek classical culture, which endured to some extent, and the later association of Greek with Christianity, and you can see how much more Greek had going for it in the East compared to Latin.
I think the decline in the use of Latin in the Byzantine Empire goes back farther than Heraclius, at least to the time of Justinian. Although he personally originated in a Latin-speaking region, that was by no means typical in 6th century Constantinople (or 5th, or 4th century; the name of the city itself is Greek!), as you can tell from the mostly Greek names of many of the emprerors who preceded him -- not to mention the bulk of the East. If I'm not mistaken, even Justinian often wrote in Greek, though his legislation was published in Latin for obvious reasons of tradition, ceremony, and practicality (he was ammending and adding to prior Roman law, so it was easier to use terms that legislators were already familiar with). Heraclius merely acknowledged the facts on the ground.


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## Villeggiatura

Outsider said:


> Although he personally originated in a Latin-speaking region, that was by no means typical in 6th century Constantinople (or 5th, or 4th century; the name of the city itself is Greek!), as you can tell from the mostly Greek names of many of the emprerors who preceded him -- not to mention the bulk of the East. If I'm not mistaken, even Justinian often wrote in Greek, though his legislation was published in Latin for obvious reasons of tradition, ceremony, and practicality (he was ammending and adding to prior Roman law, so it was easier to use terms that legislators were already familiar with). Heraclius merely acknowledged the facts on the ground.


I always wonder what a thoroughly Hellenized name for Constantinopolis would be (since _constans_ is clearly translatable).
The juxtaposition of Latin and Greek elements (which were fashionable back then, e.g. Gratianopolis, Hadrianopolis, Marcianopolis) seems to suggest Latin wasn't viewed as inferior.
In contrast, some intellectuals in the Middle Ages would thoroughly classicize indigenous personal names, such as Melanchthon (originally Schwartzerdt), Regiomontanus (originally von Königsberg).


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## apmoy70

^Eὐσταθιούπολις (Eustaceople) perhaps? the Greek translation of Constantinus is Εὐστάθιος (Eustace).
The capital was originally named Nova Roma (or Νέα Ῥώμη by its Greek speaking population) and Roma Orientalis (Ἑῴα Ῥώμη). The name Constantinople was a colloquialism, until the reign of Theodosius II when it becomes the one and only official name of the city (despite the fact that since 451 CE until today, New Rome is still part of the full title of the Metropolitan (Ecumenical Patriarch) of Constantinople)


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