i was watching a documentary and it said that Trajan had a strong ''Spanish'' accent.is there any descriptions of different accents in the roman empire?

by [deleted]
Celebreth

There is one that comes to mind, but it's unfortunately not the Spanish you're looking for! The translation comes from a rather fantastic book - the only complete, surviving novel from the Roman World, and the caricaturization honestly sounds extraordinarily modern. I'm using Sarah Ruden's translation of The Golden Ass.

A bit of context before the quote (Spoiler alert?): The main character has been transformed into a donkey, and this is one of many misadventures that he has on his way to being transformed back. He's been found by a Greek (The story takes place in Greece) farmer who's planning on using the donkey to help pull some loads - standard procedure for finding a random donkey on the side of the road, right? Well, on the way back from the town...

A towering person, a legionary on the evidence of his clothing and comportment, happened into us, and haughtily and high-handedly asked him where he was taking that donkey with no load on him. But my master, still overwhelmed with woe and ignorant of the Latin language besides, passed the soldier by in silence. This man proved unable to control the bad attitude so often associated with his profession. He was infuriated at the silence, as if it were a taunt, and with the vine-wood staff he carried he pummeled my rider clear off my back.

Then the truck farmer responded in submissive tones that, unacquainted with the language as he was, he couldn't know what the other was saying. So now the soldier asked in Greek: "Where you take ass?" The farmer replied that he was taking it to the nearest town.

"But he need to service me," the soldier said, "for from fort nearby he must bring here luggage of our leader with other beasts." And straightaway he seized me, took hold of my lead, and began to drag me away.

The original is just rendered in really bad Latin (the book was written in Latin, not Greek), and so there is always some lost with translations; the idea, however, is crystal clear. That's honestly probably what I would sound like if I was trying to speak Greek to someone in the ancient world, and the reader can almost HEAR the legionary raising his voice in the vain hope that he would be more understandable. Hope that helps a bit! :)

AllanBz

Book 3 of Cicero's De oratore finds Crassus talking about pronunciations and the practice of adopting a rustic accent amongst his peers as opposed to the true Latin pronunciation that was found in his mother in law, reminiscent of the language of Plautus and earlier playwrights.