Convivio-Dante Alighieri

For if he be not subject in all his conditions, he ever goeth irksomely and heavily in his service, and seldom continueth therein.

And if he be not obedient, he serveth not save at his own discretion and will, which is rather the service of a friend than of a servant.

Wherefore, to avoid this inversion of order, it behoves this command, which is made to be servant of the oaths hereinafter written, to be subject to them in its whole ordainment.

And it should have acquaintance with the affairs of its lord, and should be obedient to him.

All which dispositions would be lacking to it were it Latin and not vernacular, seeing that the oaths are vernacular.

For firstly, if it were Latin, it would not be subject but sovereign, both by reason of nobility and of virtue and of beauty.

Of nobility, because Latin is stable and uncorruptible, and the vernacular is unstable and corruptible.

Wherefore, we see in the ancient writings of the Latin comedies and tragedies, which cannot be changed, that same speech that we have today.

And this is not the case with the vernacular, which takes fashion at our will and changes.

Whence we see in the cities of Italy, if we choose to look closely, that within fifty years from now many words have been quenched and born and changed.

And if a short time makes so much change, far more change does greater time effect.

So that I assert that if they who parted from this life a thousand years ago were to return to their cities, they would believe them to be inhabited by a strange folk, because of the tongue discordant from their own.

Of this I shall discourse more at large elsewhere in a book which I intend to make, God granting, concerning vernacular discourse.

Further, Latin was sovereign rather than subject by reason of its virtue.

Everything hath virtue of nature which accomplishes that for which it was ordained, and the better it doth it, the more virtue it hath.

Once we call the man virtuous who lives in the life of contemplation or action to which he is naturally ordained.

We speak of the equine virtue of pacing swift and far, whereto the horse is ordained.

We speak of the virtue of a sword which smartly cuts things hard, whereto it is ordained.

Thus speech, which is ordained to manifest human conceptions, hath virtue when it doth this thing, and that speech hath the most virtue which doth it most.

Wherefore, since Latin revealeth many things conceived in the mind which the vernacular may not reveal, as they know who have the habit of the one speech and the other, its virtue is more than that of the vernacular.

Again, it were sovereign rather than subject by reason of its beauty.

Men call that thing beautiful the parts whereof duly correspond because from their harmony pleasure results.

Wherefore we think a man beautiful when his members duly correspond to each other, and we call singing beautiful when the voices correspond mutually according to the requirements of the art.

Therefore that speech is the more beautiful wherein the words correspond more duly, and they correspond more duly in Latin than in the vernacular because the vernacular followeth use and the Latin art.

Wherefore it is admitted to be of more beauty, of more virtue, and of more nobility, and hereby the chief contention of this discourse is established, to wit, that a Latin comment would not have been the subject of the Odes, but their sovereign.