The Language of the Freedmen in Petronius' Cena Trimalchionis

Bibliographic Data

ID9309008
AuthorsBrigitte Boyce (corresponding author)
Year1991
Publication date1991-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueThe Language of the Freedmen in Petronius' Cena Trimalchionis (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/9789004329133
OpenAlexW598219866
ISBN9789004329133
LanguageEN
Citations received14

Realistic representation of the speech of the lower classes in ancient literature is largely confined to the comic genres, and Petronius' realism in this area is more thorough-going than that of any other ancient author. A vast scholarly literature has grown up around the question of how faithfully the speeches of Petronius' freedmen reflect characteristics of actual popular speech; this literature is reviewed and evaluated. A survey of the phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntactic peculiarities in these speeches is then undertaken, in which they are compared with other 'vulgar' Latin sources such as the Pompeian inscriptions; Petronius is in fact one of our most important early sources for the study of popular Latin. The way in which Petronius used specific varieties of non-standard Latin to characterize different freedmen speakers is explored: Petronius has subtly modulated his freedmen's speeches to reflect differing emotional states and the different attitudes of the speakers toward their social position. The present study is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject undertaken in over forty years in any language and the only one in English

Art · Comics · Latin Americans · Linguistics · Literature · Political science · Politics · Representation (politics · Subject (documents · Classical Antiquity Studies · Computer Science · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy

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