CHAT: Silver Latin (was: CHAT: Re: Ave Maria)

At 2:16 am -0700 5/7/00, DOUGLAS KOLLER wrote:
[...]
>
>It does, thank you (*and* I got my terms screwed up: adverbially vs.
>adjectivally). What is "Silver Latin"?
>
Basically post-Augustan Latin through to the second century - after that we
start moving into Late Latin.  The name is IMO silly, but it's too well
established to change.  It's in contradistinction to the 'Golden Latin' of
the late Republic and early Empire till the death of Augustus.  But to say
that, e.g. Cicero (a 'Golden boy') wrote better Latin than Tacitus (a
'Silver lad') is as meaningless IMHO as saying Shakespeare wrote better
English than Dickens.

Ray.


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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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