(2) The period of archaic Latin (from c. 250 to c. 90 B.c.) is represented not only by numerous inscriptions of all kinds, but also by considerable literary remains (of Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, the elder Cato, Terence, Pacuvius, Accius and Lucilius). Speaking broadly, we may say that the written still reflected with fidelity the spoken language, which is the reason why certain idioms of old Latin, judged by the stand ards of the classical language to be "incorrect," reappear in late Latin and Romance; e.g., the use of the present instead of the future tense in an if-clause such as si venis, te videbo, "if you come, I shall see you" (in classical Latin, si venies, "if you [shall] come"), like French si tu viens, je te verrai, although Italian has the literary idiom, se tu verrai (fut.), io te vedro. Similarly, the versification of Plautus is intelligible only if it is recognized that the diction of his plays was in accord with popular usage (e.g., note the loss of final -s and-m, as in Romance, or the scansion of ille as a monosyllable, cf . Fr. and Ital. il); orthography was not yet standardized (thus consonants really pronounced double, or prolonged, were commonly written single, as in habuise for -isse—at least in inscriptions—the manuscripts of Plautus have hau their spelling continually modernized, like texts of Shakespeare) ; and old verbal and nominal forms still, though precariously, held their own (e.g., the future perfect in -[s]so and perfect subjunctive in -[s]sim, the passive infinitive in -ier, the ablative singular in -d, the dissyllabic genitive singu lar of a-stems in -di, and, in a few words, the genitive plural of o-stems in -urn instead of -orurn). Finally, Greek words imported during the period were, as a rule, completely Latinized in form and sound ; no attempt was made to preserve rigorously their native shape. But already there was in process of development a national prose style, not very well represented, however, by Cato's treatise on agriculture. For its most characteristic fea tures show that Latin prose had its springs in oratory.
(3) In the classical period, roughly contemporary with the Golden Age of Latin literature, c. 90 B.C. to A.D. 14, we may note of the poets, Lucretius, who was old-fashioned in language as well as in style, Catullus representing the new school, Virgil and Horace with their finished style and highly elaborated language; and in prose, the archaizing Sallust, the simple and direct Caesar, and the polished Cicero. Inscriptions of this period are reckoned in thousands from Rome alone. The cleft between the popular and the literary language can be shown to have become wide by the end of the Republic. Steadily increasing Greek influence is marked, though in syntax its extent has certainly been exagger ated by commentators and grammarians. But viewed as a whole, in respect of vocabulary, accent, sounds, forms and syntax, the Latin language had, by the last century B.C., developed all the characteristics which may be regarded as typical of it : of these the salient features are indicated below.
(4) Silver Latin: from Tiberius to Trajan (A.D. 14 to In earlier ages often not Roman, Latin authors were now seldom even Italian by birth. Of Livy it was said by a contemporary that marks of his Paduan origin were discernible in his language, though modern criticism cannot claim to be able to recognize them. But into the language of later writers provincialisms and
vulgarisms creep in increasing numbers and frequency. Ovid's diction is at times distinctly artificial. Characteristic, too, is the straining after effect which reveals itself in writers like Tacitus, trained as rhetoricians, and which was responsible for many a queerly turned sentence ; archaisms and Graecisms are both of them needlessly frequent ; and prose was invaded by expressions and style hitherto considered proper to verse. Seneca, Lucan, Martial, Quintilian—these all Spaniards—the elder and the younger Pliny, and Juvenal, are the other outstanding writers of this period.
(5) Archaism is so pronounced in the succeeding age (A.D. 117 to c. 18o, Gellius, Fronto, Apuleius) that we may even speak of an archaizing period. But it is accompanied by daring innovation, especially in the creation of new forms and in the admission of popular ones.
(6) To the period of decadence which followed belong the Christian writers, among them the famous Africans, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius and Augustine. The classical standard was gradually and unconsciously being lost. The written Latin of learned ecclesiastics of still later date—Gregory of Tours (6th century) may be taken as a fair sample—was an artificial survival, full of corruptions, and remote from the living dialects into which the spoken Latin of the Empire was developing wherever it had really taken root, that is, except in Dacia and Illyricum, mainly in the West.