﻿178 THE AGE OF PETROXIUS ARBITER. 



they are now found. Another weighty consideration is suggested by a fact of which 

 the history and development of every language furnish examples. I refer to the re- 

 ciprocal influence of the written and spoken language. "While it is unquestionably 

 true that the writers of a nation by their genius indent and introduce new words and 

 forms, which by degrees pass over into the spoken language of theu- countrymen, it is 

 equally true that the creative mind of the people itself forms new words, which, if they 

 really satisiEy' the constantly increasing wants of the language, and intelligibly and in 

 accordance with the genius of the language express new objects and new ideas and 

 relations of ideas, soon make then- way from the spoken into the written language. 

 This fact suggests the reason why it should not at once be concluded that a word used 

 for the first time, so far as our literary monuments reach, by Tacitus or Quintilian or 

 Seneca, did not previously exist in the spoken language of the educated and refined, as 

 well as of the large mass of the people, even if we had irrefutable evidence, which we 

 have not, that those authors were the first to use it in writing. Petronius, or his hero, 

 Encolpius, in using throughout the whole of his narrative, with few exceptions, the 

 easy, simple language of conversation, employed some terms which occur for the first 

 time in the works of somewhat later writers, although they may have been for a gen- 

 eration in the mouth of everybody. Not much more than that length of time, in al- 

 most every instance, need have elapsed between the time which the preceding examina- 

 tion has led me to adopt as the age of Petronius, and the period of those WTriters who, 

 so far as our present literary means enable us to judge, Avere the fii'st to use the ex- 

 pressions in writing. 



"While these expressions, considered by themselves, would undoubtedly lead us to 

 the conclusion that Petronius belonged to a period posterior to the time of those wiit- 

 ers in whose works we meet them for the first time, the great body of evidence, both 

 historical and linguistic, is opposed to that conclusion. Under these cu-cumstances, it 

 becomes necessary to allow due weight to the above-stated considerations, that either 

 the non-occurrence of those few words in earlier writers may be accidental, or that, 

 although in general use in conversation, it was not until a later period that they were 

 introduced into the written language. 



The investigation into the age of Petronius is thus completed. The historical evi- 

 dence points distinctly to the period between 6 and S-t A. D. as the time in which 

 Petronius lived and wrote; the great body of the linguistic evidence does not only 

 not militate against, but strongly corroborates, this result ; and the small number of 

 expressions which at first view are inconsistent with it are capable of an explanation, 

 at once natural and in conformity with the history of language, which removes this 

 only and slight objection. 



