The Apology (Liber Apologeticus)

CHAPTER II.

ON THE LATINITY OF THE AFRICAN FATHERS.

It was my belief, when I commenced investigating this subject, that I should be able to collect certain characteristics from the language of these writers, peculiar to them as a class, but common to all of them amongst themselves, and that, by carefully comparing the dialects of other authors of the same country, such as Apuleius and Macrobius, I might approximate to a general illustration of African Latinity. But, the further I advanced, the less practicable appeared the completion of any such scheme, and the fewer points of character could I finally select which fulfilled the conditions mentioned above, the greater number of them appearing always, when strictly examined, to be either common to writers of other schools, or not common to all writers of this. I cannot therefore offer to the reader such systematic aid as I had hoped in his prosecution of the studies in question, but he may possibly derive advantage from the observations which I made during my researches, and I therefore subjoin some of them, though in a form unconnected and incomplete.

The first point to which our consideration is naturally directed in such enquiries as these, is the influence which the vernacular language of an author's native country may have exerted on the language in which he writes, and if we happen to be acquainted with both of these, we have little difficulty in tracing the operations of the former. The Syro-Chaldaisms of the New Testament Greek are nearly as perceptible and intelligible