Languages in the Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was under the Punic Wars to a multi-ethnic state that the Mediterranean dominated. The Romans encountered very different cultures in which they made their Latin language the official language . In the eastern part of the empire, as heirs of Hellenism , they kept the official Greek language. Some regional languages were able to assert themselves as vernacular languages .
Latin
The language of Latium surrounding Rome was adopted after the end of Etruscan rule in the fifth century BC. The official language of the city.
With the victories of Rome over Carthage in the Punic Wars of 264–146 BC And the subsequent expansion of Roman rule, Latin became the official language in the entire Mediterranean region. During this classical phase, Latin literature flourished and Latin was almost on a par with Greek in literature and science.
During the centuries of rule, Latin became the language of the people almost everywhere in the ruled areas, unless Greek remained the administrative language there. After the end of Roman rule, the locally spoken Latin dialects became the Romance languages .
Greek
Greek plays a special role ( Koine , ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος “the general dialect”), which at times was the more important language than Latin due to its cultural superiority. Both were official languages of the Roman Empire. While Latin was spoken more in the West and predominated in the military, Greek was the administrative language in the east of the empire (including Northeast Africa) and was considered the language of education.
In Western Europe, with the end of antiquity and the associated decline in classical education and long-distance trade in the 5th and 6th centuries, knowledge of the Greek language was largely lost. In the remaining eastern part of the empire, Greek became the only official language under Emperor Herakleios in the 7th century.
Aramaic, Coptic
In the Middle East, under Roman rule, the Afro-Asian languages Syriac-Aramaic and Egyptian-Coptic were able to assert themselves as popular languages. Egyptian was still written in Demotic script until the fourth century , although a sharp decline in the written language can be observed as early as the second century AD. It was used almost exclusively in the religious field. Coptic , Egyptian written with Greek letters, prevailed in the 4th century.
The administrative language in Roman Egypt and Syria remained Greek, as in the preceding Hellenistic period. After the Arab conquest in 636–642, the classical languages were only very slowly displaced in the Near East. Greek remained the language of administration until the end of the 7th century, and it was not until many centuries later that Arabic replaced the vernacular languages Aramaic and Coptic. Today these are used almost exclusively in the private or Christian-religious area.
Punic
After the conquest of Carthage in 146 BC. Chr. Belonged to the Punic the major languages of the Roman Empire. The Punic language belonged to the Semitic language family . This language did not go under with the city and its inhabitants, but was spoken under Roman rule not only in north-west Africa but also on the coasts of the western Mediterranean in Hispania and Italy until the 2nd century AD. The administrative language of the former Carthaginian areas became Latin. After the Arab conquest of northwest Africa in 695–709, both languages were completely displaced by Arabic in the early Middle Ages.
Thracian, Illyrian
During Roman rule in the Balkans , Latin and Greek drove back the Indo-European languages Illyrian and Thracian . Latin dominated north of the Jireček line , and Greek to the south. While Thracian was largely displaced in ancient times, it is believed that Illyrian lives on in today's Albanian . From the 6th century onwards, when the Slavs took over the Balkans, South Slavic languages displaced the classical languages from large areas of the Balkans. Successors of the Latin language survived in today's Romanian and the other Balkan Romance languages .
Celtic
On the mainland, the Celtic languages were slowly being replaced by Latin. The use of the Celtic until late antiquity is documented primarily by inscriptions and gravestones on which Celtic personal names can be found. The Gallic language, for example, lived on until the Great Migration Period.
In Britain , the British could hold up throughout Roman times. It was only through the successful expansion of the Anglo-Saxons in post-Roman times that Britannic was pushed back and replaced by Anglo-Saxon . In Ireland, which never belonged to the Roman Empire, Latin was only spread through Christianization.
Basque, Iberian
Basque language has remained in Western Europe on the French-Spanish border to this day . This language is not of Indo-European origin and is considered to be very old and autochthonous . Likewise, an Iberian substratum is also assumed for Spanish , which goes back to the pre-Roman inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula, who, however, were already Celtic.
Etruscan
Etruscan was in the alleged founding years in the 8th century BC. The official language of the city of Rome, in which the Etruscan kings ruled. However, the Romans drove out the Etruscan rulers in the 5th century BC. Until 265 BC All of Etruria came under Roman rule. The Etruscan language was superseded by the Latin language around the turn of the times - at the latest in the 2nd century AD.
Etruscan was a fully developed written language that is not closely related to Latin. The language is documented up to the first century AD, but seems to have been on the decline as early as the first century BC, which is likely to be due primarily to numerous Roman colonies and settlements in the Etruscan region. The Emperor Claudius wrote an Etruscan dictionary, which unfortunately has not been preserved.
Umbrian, Faliskish and Oscar
During their first conquests in Italy, the Romans encountered neighbors with different languages. Umbrian and Faliski were originally spoken in the area north and west of Rome and are related to Latin as Italian languages and are only known from about 30 inscriptions dating from the 7th to the first century BC. To date. Due to the geographical proximity to Rome and linguistic relationship with Latin, these languages were probably completely extinct as early as the first century AD.
The Oscan is the language of the Samnites , mainly engaged in Campania lived. Their language is known from around 650 inscriptions and, like Latin, an Italian language. The last inscriptions come from Pompeii shortly before the fall of the city, which suggests that this language was spoken well into the 1st century AD.
See also
literature
- Günter Neumann; Jürgen Untermann (Hrsg.): The languages in the Roman Empire of the imperial time. (Bonner yearbooks of the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn in the Rhineland Regional Association and the Association of Friends of Antiquity in the Rhineland 40). Cologne: Rheinland-Verlag 1980. ISBN 3-7927-0431-5