page_title: Classical Latin
section_title: Authors of the Silver Age
hierarchical_section_title: Classical Latin / Authors of the Silver Age
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Roman Emperor Tiberius in Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. Original. Cast in Rome. Cast in Rome.
context_page_description: Classical Latin is the form of Latin language recognized as a standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. In some later periods, it was regarded as good or proper Latin, with following versions viewed as debased, degenerate, vulgar, or corrupted. The word Latin is now understood by default to mean "Classical Latin"; for example, modern Latin textbooks almost exclusively teach Classical Latin.
  Cicero and his contemporaries of the late republic used lingua latina and sermo latinus versions of the Latin language. Conversely, the Greeks used Vulgar Latin in their vernacular, written as latinitas, or "Latinity" when combined. It was also called sermo familiaris, sermo urbanus, and in rare cases sermo nobilis. Besides latinitas, it was mainly called latine, or latinius.
  Latinitas was spoken and written. It was the language taught in schools. Prescriptive rules therefore applied to it, and when special subjects like poetry or rhetoric were taken into consideration, additional rules applied. Since spoken Latinitas has become extinct, the rules of politus texts may give the appearance of an artificial language.
context_section_description: In his second volume, Imperial Period, Teuffel initiated a slight alteration in approach, making it clear that his terms applied to Latin and not just to the period. He also changed his dating scheme from AUC to modern BC/AD. Though he introduces das silberne Zeitalter der römischen Literatur, (The Silver Age of Roman Literature)  from the death of Augustus to the death of Trajan (14–117 AD), he also mentions parts of a work by Seneca the Elder, a wenig Einfluss der silbernen Latinität (a slight influence of silver Latin). It's clear that his mindset had shifted from Golden and Silver Ages to Golden and Silver Latin, also to include Latinitas, which at this point must be interpreted as Classical Latin. He may have been influenced in that regard by one of his sources E. Opitz, who in 1852 had published specimen lexilogiae argenteae latinitatis, which includes Silver Latinity. Though Teuffel's First Period was equivalent to Old Latin and his Second Period was equal to the Golden Age, his Third Period die römische Kaiserheit encompasses both the Silver Age and the centuries now termed Late Latin, in which the forms seemed to break loose from their foundation and float freely. That is, men of literature were confounded about the meaning of "good Latin." The last iteration of Classical Latin is known as Silver Latin. The Silver Age is the first of the Imperial Period, and is divided into die Zeit der julischen Dynastie (14–68); die Zeit der flavischen Dynastie (69–96), and die Zeit des Nerva und Trajan (96–117). Subsequently, Teuffel goes over to a century scheme: 2nd, 3rd, etc., through 6th. His later editions (which came about towards the end of the 19th century) divide the Imperial Age into parts: 1st century (Silver Age), 2nd century ( the Hadrian and the Antonines), and the 3rd through 6th centuries. Of the Silver Age proper, Teuffel points out that anything like freedom of speech had vanished with Tiberius:
   ...the continual apprehension in which men lived caused a restless versatility...  Simple or natural composition was considered insipid; the aim of language was to be brilliant...  Hence it was dressed up with abundant tinsel of epigrams, rhetorical figures and poetical terms...  Mannerism supplanted style, and bombastic pathos took the place of quiet power.
  The content of new literary works was continually proscribed by the emperor, who exiled or executed existing authors and played the role of literary man, himself (typically badly). Artists therefore went into a repertory of new and dazzling mannerisms, which Teuffel calls "utter unreality." Cruttwell picks up this theme:
   The foremost of these [characteristics] is unreality, arising from the extinction of freedom...  Hence arose a declamatory tone, which strove by frigid and almost hysterical exaggeration to make up for the healthy stimulus afforded by daily contact with affairs. The vein of artificial rhetoric, antithesis and epigram... owes its origin to this forced contentment with an uncongenial sphere. With the decay of freedom, taste sank...
  In Cruttwell's view (which had not been expressed by Teuffel), Silver Latin was a "rank, weed-grown garden," a "decline." Cruttwell had already decried what he saw as a loss of spontaneity in Golden Latin. Teuffel regarded the Silver Age as a loss of natural language, and therefore of spontaneity, implying that it was last seen in the Golden Age. Instead, Tiberius brought about a "sudden collapse of letters." The idea of a decline had been dominant in English society since Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Once again, Cruttwell evidences some unease with his stock pronouncements: "The Natural History of Pliny shows how much remained to be done in fields of great interest." The idea of Pliny as a model is not consistent with any sort of decline. Moreover, Pliny did his best work under emperors who were as tolerant as Augustus had been. To include some of the best writings of the Silver Age, Cruttwell extended the period through the death of Marcus Aurelius (180 AD). The philosophic prose of a good em
caption: The frowning second emperor, Tiberius, limited free speech, precipitating the rise of Silver Latin, with its emphasis on mannerism rather than on solid content, according to Teuffel's model
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