Horace and the Greek Language: Aspects of Literary Bilingualism

Abstract

While classicists are better informed than ever about the significance of bilingualism in the ancient world, its contribution to Latin literature has not fully benefited from these new linguistic and historical perspectives. Making use of a multidisciplinary body of research on multilingualism, this dissertation investigates Horace's many-sided relationship with Greek and the Greeks. By placing him more fully in the context of the cultural and linguistic diversity of the Late Republic, it reassesses the range of bilingual interaction in Horace's poetry and its contribution to his style and achievement.

Each chapter addresses a distinct form of bilingual interaction that has left its mark on Horace's poetry. Chapter 1 ("<italic>Splendida Verba</italic>: Elevated Borrowings") examines high-style borrowings, including loanwords, calques, and loanshifts. These foreign elements not only extend Horace's semantic range but create oppositions that are central to Latin lyric, such as between proximity and distance, native and foreign, Roman and Greek. Chapter 2 ("<italic>Sordida Verba</italic>: Ordinary and Colloquial Borrowings") studies borrowings at the lower end of the stylistic spectrum that are valuable for creating sudden shifts in register (<italic>tapinosis</italic>), describing everyday life, and personifying low-class speakers. Chapter 3 ("<italic>Verbis Felicissime Audax</italic>: Syntactic Grecisms") studies Greek syntax ("Grecisms")as a form of interference, showing how Horace puts it to use to allude to a foreign presence, elevate his register of speech, and create densely patterned word-images. Finally, Chapter 4 ("<italic>Puris Verbis</italic>: Purism and the Absence of Greek") studies the suppression of Greek in Horace's poetry, especially his avoidance of code-switching, as a manifestation of linguistic purism.