We are in ancient Rome, it is summertime, there’s an inferno in the streets. A man hunches over a small table, a scowl to his face, his quill gripped tight, scribbling lines on a papyrus. What prompts his fury? What triggers his long lists and impassioned writing? It is the degradation of language in his great city—he can’t sidestep the depravity, from the misspelled graffiti on every street, to the unlettered proclamations from the loathsome, inadequate officials, who seem, alas, to dominate Rome.
What he sees in the written language of ancient Rome brings tears. It reveals a deficiency in education, a deficiency in manners, even hints as to the problem, in his mind, of contemporary civilization. And we just might call what he writes in response to this depravity a style guide for language—one of the oldest in history, written about 1600 years ago, with more than 200 literary corrections to the local vernacular.
Because of course it is masculus and not musclus, he declares; only fools write colomna when they mean columna, he shouts; and can you believe that bassilica is tossed around casually as basilica, he shrieks. The writer’s name is probably not Marcus Valerius Probus—a good name, incidentally, for a language zealot—but he is someone who insists that the language should remain pure and correct and secure. With this writer’s assistance, its pristine fourth century appearance will endure, preventing a devolution into anything that we might call vulgar.
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