470 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



deny that abstracts are common in late Latin, but what is omitted 

 from Ussing's statement is for us the important fact, viz. : that the com- 

 mon use of abstracts began long before the later period of the empire. 

 On this point, see Schmalz, Lat. Gramm., s p. 430 : ' In der Sprache des 

 Volkes waren die Subst. abstr. gerade nicht unbeliebt, wie ein Blick auf 

 dem Wortschatz des Plautus zeigt ; aber immerhin ist erst mit Cicero und 

 zwar infolge seiner philosophischen Studie?ieme Bereicherung eingetreten.' 

 Thus, to illustrate, I may take a single example : the abstract repugnan- 

 tia appears first in Cicero's philosophical writings (T. D. 4, 23; 29; 

 Off. 3, 17 ; 34) ; and it is used in the contemporary Second Philippic, 

 19 (see Sihler ad lac). In the quotation from Schmalz I have italicized 

 certain words because I think it worth observing that Cicero was dealing 

 with Greek ideas and Greek sources at the time when he felt the need of 

 enriching Latin with new abstracts. May not this in large measure 

 account for the great number of abstracts in Vitruvius ? But not alto- 

 gether, for it appears that the Scriptores Rei Rusticae, even the earliest 

 from Cato and Varro to Columella, exhibit a liking for abstracts 4 

 which, in these truly Roman writers, cannot be attributed to exigencies 

 due to the use of Greek sources. The fact is that as new ideas called 

 for expression in Latin prose, the avoidance of abstract substantives in 

 the expression of them was often really a tour de force, and only the best 

 writers struggled very hard to avoid them or, when they used them, 

 apologized for their use. 5 And finally the frequent employment of ab- 

 stracts in the correspondence of Cicero shows that they were also common 

 in the colloquial language of the educated and used as a briefer form of 

 expression of thought than that which the master reserved for his greater 

 works. 6 



Ussing proceeds : ' Among abstract nouns which appear only in his 

 writings 1 will mention ignotitia (64, 4?), indecentia (174, 9), pervoli- , 

 tantia (232, 3), nascentia (232, 17), crescentia (238, 14; 23; 239, 3), 

 commensus = mensura (15, 25 ; 31, 3 ; 65, 25 ; 103, 21 ; 134, 11) ' — Of 

 these, it may in the first place be remarked that Ussing's statement is not 

 exact, for three of them do appear in other writers : ignotitia, Gell. 1 6, 

 13, 9 ; indecentia, Cael. Aurel. Chron. 3, 8 (p. 254, Vicat) ; nascentia, 



4 See Cooper, Word Formation in the Ser??w Plebeius, p. 2, and the lists, pp. 5-50. 

 6 Cooper, ibid. p. xxxiii f. 



6 Cf. Stinner, de eo quo Cicero in Epistolis usus est sermone, p. 7, and such an array 

 as that in Cooper, p. 6, where we have 24 abstracts in -tio occurring earliest in 

 Cicero's letters. 



7 For convenience, I have changed Ussing's references to the pagination of Rose. 



M 



