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Literary Review
Names and addresses
THE degree of formality with which we address each other may no longer seem a major issue in the 21st Century. All the same, modern British reference books such as Whitaker's Almanack still contain highly prescriptive sections on forms of address for titled persons (different of course for oral and epistolary address), while other major European languages still maintain what sociolinguistics call the T/V distinction, differentiating between the intimate T(u) and the more formal (V)ous, to the extent of causing lawsuits when the "wrong" alternative is used. Even everyday employment of English forms of address is likely to show considerable differentiation, depending on the relative status of the persons concerned or the relative intimacy of the relationship between them ("Alright, mate?", "Good morning, Sir Humphrey"). Such a context of careful calibration of mutual position in social relations offers a neat window on the cultural values of the Romans, whose lively sense of competitiveness, social hierarchy and relative status would make Victorian Britain look like an egalitarian commune.
In Latin Forms of Address: From Plautus to Apuleius, Eleanor Dickey catalogues and describes with admirable scholarly thoroughness the forms of address used by Romans, to each other, to non-Romans, and even to non-humans. The evidence naturally comes largely from literary texts, though "sub-literary" texts also play an important role in attempting to recover a key feature of spoken Latin. These include numerous unpretentious inscriptions, graffiti from Pompeii and preserved real letters of modest culture such as the charming party-invitations sent to each other by the wives of Roman officers.
Dickey applies the methods of modern sociolinguistics to her material. A key element is the distinction between address and referential use — thus the Roman Senate is referred to as senatus but usually addressed as patres conscripti, "fathers enrolled as senators", and many terms can be used in one way but not the other. This dichotomy can show cultural assumptions as well as linguistic convention: in the case of the senate, recognition that it is composed of distinct prestigious individuals physically present may be one reason why a simple collective singular was felt to be an inappropriate address, and perhaps reflects the intensely individualistic competitiveness of the Roman elite.
Names were (unsurprisingly) the most important mode of address. The elite male Roman citizen in Dickey's period usually had three names: Marcus (praenomen) Tullius (gentilicium or family name) Cicero (cognomen). This theoretically allowed eight possibilities of their combination in address. In fact, Dickey calculates, 90 per cent of all name-addresses use a single name, and of these 78 per cent used the cognomen, perceived as the most honourable name and originally the preserve of noble families. Most women, by contrast, had only one name, the gentilicium, and were thus in principle homonymous with their sisters, which was one reason for the habit in Latin love-poets of generating a unique pseudonym, metrically equivalent to the woman's actual gentilicium, for addressing their beloved: Catullus' Lesbia, Propertius' Cynthia, Tibullus' Delia. Address by the intimate praenomen was usually used only by close friends and family, but could also be encouraged by ex-slaves who wished to show off the praenomen which they also received with their status as free citizens, as in the monstrously exhibitionist ex-slave Trimalchio in Petronius's Satyrica, who loves to be called "Gaius".
Towards the end of the period studied in Latin Forms of Address, address by names tended to be replaced by honorific salutations such as domine, "lord"; this may have been connected with increased ceremoniousness, but also reflected a much larger imperial society where a person's nomenclature (by then often more elaborate than the traditional three names) was no longer common knowledge as it had been in the narrow elite of an earlier Rome. Dickey's clear analysis of the Roman address system shows that these titles of respect had remarkable influence on Romance languages: for example, senior, "older person", showing deference to age, yields señor, senhor, signore, monseigneur/monsieur, and "sir". At the other end of the politeness spectrum she has a splendid catalogue of insults. This shows that metaphorical maledictions, often connected with slaves and their treatment (e.g. verbero, "fit for a beating"), were stronger and more wounding than literal ones (e.g. sceleste, "wicked man"), suggesting a strong sociological dimension: to address a man in servile language implied servile character or status. One might add the idea of objectification and depersonalisation which often underlies such metaphorical usage.
Eleanor Dickey is alive to the issues of power, gender and prestige in forms of address, although it would have been even more interesting to have some more comparative material and more engagement with theories of power-relations more generally. But she deserves congratulation for her meticulous, well-written and clearly argued work of reference which provides a remarkable collection of one type of evidence for the Roman obsession with hierarchy and status.
Latin Forms of Address: From Plautinus to Apuleius, Eleanor Dickey, Oxford University Press, p.414, £45. 0 19 924287 9
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STEPHEN HARRISON
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