Editing Classical Latin (section)

==Stylistic shifts==
[[Style (fiction)|Style]] of language refers to repeatable features of speech that are somewhat less general than the fundamental characteristics of a language. The latter provides unity, allowing it to be referred to by a single name. Thus Old Latin, Classical Latin, [[Vulgar Latin]], etc., are not considered different languages, but are all referred to by the term, [[Latin]]. This is an ancient practice continued by moderns rather than a philological innovation of recent times. That Latin had case endings is a fundamental feature of the language. Whether a given form of speech prefers to use prepositions such as ''ad'', ''ex'', ''de,'' for "to", "from" and "of" rather than simple case endings is a matter of style. Latin has a large number of styles. Each and every author has a style, which typically allows his prose or poetry to be identified by experienced Latinists. Problems in comparative literature have risen out of group styles finding similarity by period, in which case one may speak of Old Latin, Silver Latin, Late Latin as styles or a phase of styles.

The ancient authors themselves first defined style by recognizing different kinds of ''sermo'', or "speech". By valuing Classical Latin as "first class", it was better to write with ''Latinitas'' selected by authors who were attuned to literary and upper-class languages of the city as a standardized style. All ''sermo'' that differed from it was a different style. Thus, in rhetoric, Cicero was able to define sublime, intermediate, and low styles within Classical Latin. St. Augustine recommended low style for sermons.<ref>{{Cite book|page= [https://archive.org/details/literarylanguage0000auer_o1q3/page/33 33]|first= Erich|last= Auerbach |title= Literary Language and its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages|url= https://archive.org/details/literarylanguage0000auer_o1q3|url-access= registration|publisher= [[Pantheon Books]]|year= 1965|orig-year= 1958|series= Bollingen Series LXXIV|translator-first= Ralph |translator-last=Mannheim}}</ref> Style was to be defined by deviation in speech from a standard. Teuffel termed this standard "Golden Latin".

[[John Edwin Sandys]], who was an authority in Latin style for several decades, summarizes the differences between Golden and Silver Latin as follows:<ref>{{Cite book|first=John Edwin|last=Sandys|title=A Companion to Latin Studies Edited for the Syndics of the University Press|edition=3rd|location=Cambridge|publisher=University Press|year=1921|pages=824–26}}</ref>

Silver Latin is to be distinguished by:

* "an exaggerated conciseness and point"
* "occasional archaic words and phrases derived from poetry"
* "increase in the number of Greek words in ordinary use" (the Emperor [[Claudius]] in [[Suetonius]] refers to "both our languages," Latin and Greek<ref>Suetonius, Claudius, 24.1.</ref>)
* "literary reminiscences"
* "The literary use of words from the common dialect" (''dictare'' and ''dictitare'' as well as classical ''dicere'', "to say")