During this early period the language devel oped almost without extraneous aid or additions. Ilence Cicero called the age of the Scipios the age of the true Latinity.
The second stage is that of literary culture. The literary language had now become something separate and apart from the vulgar dialect, the Senn() plebcius, and it, history may be conven iently traced through three distinct periods, namely, the Ante-Classical. the Classical, and the Post-Classical, the middle period convenient ly subdivided into the Golden Age and the Sil ver Age.
The first period (n.c. 240-84) includes all the writers from Livius Andronicus to Lucilins (d. 10:3). and is rendered conspicuous by such names as Nrevius, Plautus, Entails. Cato, Terentius, Pacuvins, and Att ins, whose language is char acterized not only by the frequent use of archaic forms and expressions, but by a servile imitation of Greek models. The Romans hail been brought by conquest into close contact with the Greek cities of Southern Italy and Sicily, :Macedonia and Achnia, and Greek literature had become a subject of study and imitation. This imitative tendency, how4.ver, is combined with great origi nality and vigor in Plautus. and unlimited free dom of thought and expression in Lueilitis.
The Golden Age (n.c. 84-A.D. 14) is ushered in. as it were, by Varro and Cicero. and may be said to come to an end with the death of Livy. The writings of Lucretius. Cresar, Cat M Ills, Sal lust. Vergil, Horace, Properties, Tihullus, and Ovid lend lustre to this interval, and exhibit the literary language in its fullest maturity, its most perfect stage. The standard of prose was set by Cicero and Cfesar, that of poetic art by Vergil. To Cicero in particular the language of prose owed that elaboration and finish which have rendered it a standard of perfection in style for all time, and evoked the gratitude of his countrymen toward the man who alone among prose-writers had brought to light the utmost capacities of Roman speech. Ilis diction is an exemplification of the true Roman 'urbanites, and a protest against the intrusion of the sermo plcbcius, But the changes wrought by Vergil are more marked even than those which Cicero ac complished, and his language became the norm in poetry. departures from which were accounted irregularities.
Meanwhile the speech of ordinary life may he traced in such writings, of minor character, as the accounts of the African and Spanish wars appended to Ca'sar's commentaries, book viii. of the Dr Bella Gallica, and the story of the Bellum Alesandrinum. To these add many of the let ters of Cicero, the &Talmo's of Horace, the writ ings of Vitruvins, Pompeian inscriptions, and the Satyricon of Petronins, a work remarkable for the number of examples it affords of the sumo cotidianus in use among all sorts and conditions of men both at Rome and in the provinces.
The Silver Age (A.D. 17180) is marked by the gradual disappearance from literature of sim plicity and directness of expression, and a con stant striving after effect by means of rhetorical elaboration and ornament, defects which are not glaring in writers of the first fifty years after the accession of Tiberius, although sufficiently conspicuous in the authors of Nero's age. The
Silver Latinity is most thoroughly represented in the writings of Tacitus. His style and diction are typical, and present this stage of the lan guage in the hest as well as the truest light.
But the language, like the Empire itself, was on the decline. The African Latinity of the time of lladrian (A.D. I17-138)shows a great falling off in refinement and general quality, when compared with the Spanish Latinity of the preceding cen tury. Affected archaisms, wearisome repetitions, and Grfecisms are especially noticeable, as well as numberless newly created forms and extensive drafts on the plebeian dialect, all of which mark an extreme departure from classical usage.
The death of Fronto (A.D. 170) may he con veniently assigned as the close of the classical period. The post-classical period is commen surate with the third and last stage in the his tory of the Latin tongue—the stage which ex hibits the popular speech (which since the time of Plautus had entered as an insiignificant factor into literary expression) as reappearing in lit erature and as developing into the languages of the Romance period. Thus the literary language itself was impoverished and disorganized, for its approximation to the vulgar Latin could no longer be checked even by Claudian and other poets of the revival.
This state of things was clue in no small meas ure to the influence of Tertullian and the other fathers of the Christian Church, who introduced the barbarisms of the people into their religious writings. The transformation begun in the sec ond century was completed in the fifth. The events which mainly eoralueed to it were the transplanting of the seat of the Empire to Con stantinople and the invasions of the barbarians. In the East secular literature again found an organ in the Creek language; in the West the Latin language was flooded with foreign forms and idioms through the inroads of the Goths. Vandals, and Longobards. In this condition it was termed the lingua Romana, and distinguished from the lingua Latina, which was cultivated only by the learned.
From the linyna Romana sprang the eight so called Romance tongues of modern Europe: Por tuguese, Spanish, Catalan (in Northeastern Spain and Roussillon), Provencal. French, Italian, Rhw toromanie (in the Tyrol. Engadine, etc.), and Rumanian or Wallaehian. As perpetuated by Christianity, the Latin language continued to live, though in a state of deterioration, long after the total dismemberment of the Roman Empire. It remained, in fact, the eeelesiastical. political. and official language of Europe for centuries.