ABSTRACT
From the time of the early Greek sophists, Protagoras and Prodicus, the teaching of the correct use of language had been regarded as an indispensable part of education. [1] It had strong support from the philosophers, for both Peripatetics and Stoics were agreed in recognizing pure Greek (Hellenismos) to be the very fountain-head of good style. [2] In the Hellenistic period, the need for concentration on this aspect of speech and writing became very much more pressing. Although there always remained the fact that Greek was spoken in different dialects, and what was good Greek in one might not be good Greek in another, [3] yet, as a result of the wider mingling of peoples after the conquests of Alexander, it was felt that the language itself was in danger of becoming debased by an admixture of foreign elements. Thus faults of expression, known as ‘barbarisms’ and ‘solecisms’ were more closely analysed, and classified in detail. Under Stoic influence, it became accepted that a barbarism was a fault in the use of a single word, and a solecism was one arising in words in conjunction, that is, an error of syntax. [4] In Greek, the brief resume of a grammatical manual of the Stoic Diogenes of Babylon shows that he defined them both, and evidently discussed them with examples. [5] In Latin, material illustrating the rules of correctness was being used in grammatical teaching in the late Republic, for the author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium proposed to publish a manual of grammar, in which barbarisms would be discussed, and Cicero spoke of ‘the precepts of Latinity, which are communicated in the education of boys’. [6] The subject involved not only diction and grammatical construction, but pronunciation and spelling, in all of which the teacher concentrated in the first instance on explaining types of error. The study of correctness in word-forms, particularly in connection with declension, was a more technical matter, and involved understanding of the various criteria which might be applied. This, and the discussion of alternative possibilities in spelling, formed the more advanced part of the course. A beginning, then, was made with barbarisms.
