MORGAN. — ON THE LANGUAGE OF VITRUVIUS. 469 



in Latin, corning down to us from antiquity. And even in other fields 

 than science, the amount of Latin prose of the Augustan age that has 

 survived to us, is really quite small, so that for all these reasons a 

 standard or norm of comparison for the prose of that age is hard to 

 obtain. But secondly, I am not concerned in this article to distinguish 

 too exactly between the prose of the Augustan and that of the Sdver 

 age, nor to show that 'Vitruvius de Architectura' was composed under 

 Augustus rather than under Titus. Ussing argues that it is a work 

 of the third century. If I can show that the linguistic and stylistic 

 peculiarities upon winch he relies are found in the writings of the 

 republic and early empire, it will be enough for my present purpose. 

 The decision between the time of Augustus and the time of Titus is a 

 different matter, and whether it is to be reached by means of arguments 

 drawn from the language or from the subject matter 3 does not at this 

 moment concern me, although it will, I hope, be treated before long 

 in another article. Thirdly, the whole gist of the linguistic part of 

 Ussing's argument seems to consist in his belief that if a writer lived in 

 the 'classical period ' his style must therefore be 'classic' This is a 

 pure assumption, and it is confuted by all actual experience. Thus, a 

 man to-day may be an excellent architect or may excel in other technical 

 and scientific pursuits, and he may have received a good general edu- 

 cation, — yet he may not be able to express himself iu writing with 

 polish, or with freedom, clearness, or even always with mere correctness. 

 Very many such men are among the writers of to-day. Why should 

 we think that there were no .such men living and writing in the classical 

 period of Latin literature? We know that there were such men. It 

 is enough to compare the correspondents of Cicero with Cicero him- 

 self, the authors of the Bellum Africum and Bellum Hispaniense with 

 Caesar, to read what is known of die involved and affected style of the 

 great patron of literature, Maecenas, and to remember that Vergilium 

 ilia felicitas ingenii in oratione soluta reliquit (Sen. Contr. 3, praef. 8, 

 p. 243 k). Having made these observations, we are ready to proceed to 

 the consideration of Ussing's criticisms. 



He thus begins (p. 4) : ' One of the peculiarities which occur especially 

 in the authors of the later period of the empire, where they wanted to 

 write nicely and philosophically, is the frequent use of abstract nouns, 

 even in the plural. So also Vitruvius.' — Nobody would be found to 



3 For a few notes on this, see my article in the Harvard Studies in Classical 

 Philology, 17, 9 ft 



