An vulgus et literati eodem modo per Terentii Tulliique tempora Romae locuti sint: estudio introductorio, traducción y notas

Abstract

In this article, we present our annotated translation proposal of An vulgus et literati eodem modo per Terentii Tulliique tempora Romae locuti sint (1435), by the humanist Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444), preceded by an introductory study. An vulgus discusses the use of Latin in ancient Rome in response to the epistle by Flavio Biondo (1388-1463) titled De verbis Romanae locutionis (1435). In the first half of the 15th century, both humanists initiated a debate about the everyday language of the Romans: Bruni argued that Latin was a language used only in written texts, while iondo maintained that Latin was the language of both writing and daily life in Rome, highlighting three forms of Latin expression: poetic, oratorical, and popular. For our introductory comments, we used the considerations of Tavoni (1984: 3-41), Delle Donne (2008: XV-XLIX) and Schöntag (2017: 553-572). The base text for our translation is the one established by Tavoni (1984: 216-221). Regarding the annotation of the translated text, we have incorporated some notes from Tavoni (1984: 216-221) and Bernard-Pradelle (2014: 148-163), as well as including new notes of our own.