Editing Classical Latin (section)

===Ages of Latin===
[[File:Wilhelm Siegmund Teuffel - Imagines philologorum.jpg|thumb|Wilhelm Sigismund Teuffel]]
In 1870, [[Wilhelm Siegmund Teuffel|Wilhelm Sigismund Teuffel]]'s ''Geschichte der Römischen Literatur'' (''A History of Roman Literature'') defined the philological notion of classical Latin through a typology similar to the [[Ages of Man]], setting out the Golden and Silver Ages of classical Latin. Wilhem Wagner, who published Teuffel's work in German, also produced an English translation which he published in 1873. Teuffel's classification, still in use today (with modifications), groups classical Latin authors into periods defined by political events rather than by style.

Teuffel went on to publish other editions, but the English translation of ''A History of Roman Literature'' gained immediate success.

In 1877, [[Charles Thomas Cruttwell]] produced a similar work in English. In his preface, Cruttwell notes "Teuffel's admirable history, without which many chapters in the present work could not have attained completeness." He also credits Wagner.

Cruttwell adopts the time periods found in Teuffel's work, but he presents a detailed analysis of style, whereas Teuffel was more concerned with history. Like Teuffel, Cruttwell encountered issues while attempting to condense the voluminous details of time periods in an effort to capture the meaning of phases found in their various writing styles. Like Teuffel, he has trouble finding a name for the first of the three periods (the current [[Old Latin]] phase), calling it "from [[Lucius Livius Andronicus|Livius]] to [[Sulla]]." He says the language "is marked by immaturity of art and language, by a vigorous but ill-disciplined imitation of Greek poetical models, and in prose by a dry sententiousness of style, gradually giving way to a clear and fluent strength..." These abstracts have little meaning to those not well-versed in Latin literature. In fact, Cruttwell admits "The ancients, indeed, saw a difference between [[Ennius]], [[Pacuvius]], and [[Lucius Accius|Accius]], but it may be questioned whether the advance would be perceptible by us."

In time, some of Cruttwell's ideas become established in Latin philology. While praising the application of rules to classical Latin (most intensely in the Golden Age, he says "In gaining accuracy, however, classical Latin suffered a grievous loss. It became cultivated as distinct from a natural language... Spontaneity, therefore, became impossible and soon invention also ceased... In a certain sense, therefore, Latin was studied as a dead language, while it was still a living."{{Sfn|Cruttwell|1877|p=3}}

Also problematic in Teuffel's scheme is its appropriateness to the concept of classical Latin. Cruttwell addresses the issue by altering the concept of the classical. The "best" Latin is defined as "golden" Latin, the second of the three periods. The other two periods (considered "classical") are left hanging. By assigning the term "pre-classical" to Old Latin and implicating it to post-classical (or post-Augustan) and silver Latin, Cruttwell realized that his construct was not accordance with ancient usage and assertions: "[T]he epithet classical is by many restricted to the authors who wrote in it [golden Latin]. It is best, however, not to narrow unnecessarily the sphere of classicity; to exclude [[Terence]] on the one hand or [[Tacitus]] and [[Pliny the Elder|Pliny]] on the other, would savour of artificial restriction rather than that of a natural classification." The contradiction remains—Terence is, and is not a classical author, depending on the context.{{Sfn|Cruttwell|1877|p=142}}