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Roman authors on colloquial language 17
orators have less right to these rare forms than poets, but on occasion a
‘poetic word’ lends grandeur to oratory. 8 The examples Cicero gives are
compatible with the dialogue’s setting in 91 bc, but also with Cicero’s own
time (Innes 1988: 309–11; Wisse, Winterbottom and Fantham 2008: 195):
inusitata sunt prisca fere ac vetuste ab usu cotidiani sermonis iam diu intermissa,
quae sunt poetarum licentiae liberiora quam nostrae; sed tamen raro habet etiam in
oratione poeticum aliquod verbum dignitatem. neque enim illud fugerim dicere,
ut Coelius9 ‘qua tempestate Poenus in Italiam venit’, nec ‘prolem’ aut ‘subolem’
aut ‘effari’ aut ‘nuncupare’ aut, ut tu soles, Catule, ‘non rebar’ aut ‘opinabar’; 10 aut
alia multa, quibus loco positis grandior atque antiquior oratio saepe videri solet.
(Cicero De orat. 3.153; cf. also Varro L. 9.5, 9.114–15)
Unfamiliar words are virtually ancient ones that have long ago passed out of
the usage of everyday conversation through their antiquity; they are more freely
available to the licence of the poets than to ours, but occasionally even in oratory
some poetic word lends grandeur. For I would not shrink from saying, like Coelius,
‘what time the Carthaginian came into Italy’, nor ‘offspring’ or ‘scion’ or ‘utter’ or
‘declare’ or, as you are accustomed to do, Catulus, ‘I deemed not’ or ‘I judged’; or
many others through which, when they are used in the proper place, speech often
seems grander and more ancient.
Oratory here appears to fall somewhere between everyday speech and
poetry in its use of expressions which have passed out of use in everyday
speech. A similar notion appears in a passage in which Quintilian discusses
an opinion that oratory should be as similar as possible to cotidianus sermo:
adhuc quidam nullam esse naturalem putant eloquentiam nisi quae sit cotidiano
sermoni simillima, quo cum amicis coniugibus liberis servis loquamur, contento
promere animi voluntatem nihilique arcessiti et elaborati requirente: quidquid huc
sit adiectum, id esse adfectationis et ambitiosae in loquendo iactatiae, remotum
a veritate fictumque ipsorum gratia verborum, quibus solum natura sit officium
attributum servire sensibus. (Quint. Inst. 12.10.40)
Besides, some think that no eloquence is natural except one that is as similar as
possible to everyday conversation, with which we speak with our friends, wives,
children and slaves, which is content to express the mind’s intention and does not
8 For the Greek background to this notion of poetic licence, and the orators’ licence to participate in
moderation, cf. Jonge 2008: 353. For the differences between prose and poetry according to the Greek
rhetorical tradition see more generally Jonge 2008: 347–55. For artistic prose as falling somewhere
between everyday language on the one hand and poetry on the other see Jonge 2008: 349–50.
9 We print Coelius,notCaelius, although we otherwise follow Wilkins’ text (OCT 1902); on the text
here see Wisse, Winterbottom and Fantham 2008: 195.
10 On these examples see Lebek 1970: 26–32; Innes 1988: 309–11; Wisse, Winterbottom and Fantham
2008: 195–7. The least obviously archaic is opinabar, but the only frequent form of this verb in
Cicero is opinor, while Cicero avoids the imperfect altogether (Innes 1988: 310; Wisse, Winterbottom
and Fantham 2008: 197; cf.Lebek1970: 31–2).