nants maintained themselves in the proper names of towns (Roma for Romai, Corinthi, Carthagini), and in local adverbs (ibi and ubi). The literary dependence on the Greeks, to which the Romans early submitted themselves, was shown by admitting nearly all the Greek terminations of Greek proper names unaltered into the Latin. 2. The adjective is either of 3 endings, one for each gender, or of 2, one ending being common to the masculine and the feminine (generis communis), or of only one for all 3 genders (generis omnis). All adjectives are declined after one of the first 3 declensions, and most of them admit of 2 higher degrees, the comparative, ending in ior for the masculine and feminine, and ius for the neuter, and the superlative, ending in imus, ima, imum. The participles and ordinal numerals share all the peculiarities of the adjective. 3. The pronouns are personal, of very irregular inflection; possessive, which are declined like the adjectives; demonstrative (hic, ille, is), relative (qui), interrogative (quis? qui?), indefinite (aliquis), and reflective (se). The personal pronouns are nearly identical with the Greek, as ego, eyw, tu, σv, nos, vw, vos, opw. There is no separate form for the pronoun of the 3d person, the demonstrative and reflective pronouns being used to express it. 4. The verb is in its inflection inferior to the Sanscrit and Greek, having only two voices, active and passive, and 6 tenses, present, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, future, and future anterior. The active voice comprises two classes of verbs, transitive and intransitive or neuter, to which sometimes a third is added, that of verba neutralia passiva, verbs with active form and passive signification (fio, vapulo, veneo). A large class of verbs, called deponents (i. e., laying aside passive signification), agree entirely with the passive in form, though they seem to have an active (partly transitive, partly intransitive) signification. No special form has been developed for the middle voice, though many facts (double forms, such as verto and vertor, I return; past participles construed with an accusative, as adopertus vultum, having covered to himself the countenance; the signification of most deponents, &c.) show that to the passive form the middle or reflective signification was no less inherent than the passive. The Latin also lacks special forms for the optative mode and the aorist tense; and its participle is but imperfectly developed, only two participles being found in each voice, the present and future in the active, and preterite and future in the passive. The use of the imperfect is restricted to one tense, the present. The gerund (as amandi, amando, of, to loving) and the supine (amatum, amatu, to love) are an exclusive property of the Latin. The comparative study of the Indo-Germanic languages has established a very close resemblance of the Latin to the Sanscrit and Greek in the formation of the persons. The letters m, 8, t appear to have been in all these languages the characteristic consonants in the termination of the 3 persons. The 8 and

t appear as such throughout the Latin conjugation; the m everywhere in the first person plural, and in the first person singular in all tenses of the subjunctive, in all imperfects (bam) and pluperfects (ram) of the indicative; while in the present indicative, where also the Greek has only retained a few, not numerous, classes of verbs in μt, the m has everywhere given place to o, except in two solitary representatives of the old language, sum and inquam. The verb has, like the nouns, only 2 numbers, singular and plural. The 4 classes of words which have been mentioned are subject to inflection; the following 4 are inflexible, viz.: 5, the prepositions, which govern either the accusative or the ablative, or both accusative and ablative; 6, the conjunctions, which either govern always the subjunctive, or only on certain conditions; 7, the adverb, which generally admits of the same gradation as the adjective; 8, the interjection. In particles generally the Latin is incomparably inferior to the Greek, but these classes of words seem to have been more numerous in the earlier periods of the language.

Thus the historical progress of the language was directly opposed to that of other tongues, since it became synthetical instead of analytical as it advanced. Its slight tendency to synthesis appears from its deficiency in compound words. The roots are never grouped as in Sanscrit and German into long compounds, and Pacuvius in the 2d century B. C. vainly attempted to introduce even the simple mode of combination practised by the Greeks. The absence of the definite article is often a cause of obscurity, though it gives conciseness and vigor to the discourse. It constrains the writer especially in didactic works, and modern scholars have sometimes found it necessary to give the requisite clearness to their Latin style by introducing the Greek article in parenthesis. -Nearly all that was not related to the Greek in the Latin was derived from the Etruscan, Umbrian, and Oscan languages. The Etruscans, the most powerful of the early Italian tribes, gave to Rome its early constitution, religious discipline, regal insignia, and a royal line. The young men of the Roman aristocracy were educated in Etruria. Their language was probably Semitic (see ETRUSCAN LANGUAGE), and must have influenced that of Rome. Its most important monument is a pillar discovered at Perugia in 1822. The Opican or Oscan language was extensively spoken in the middle and southern portions of Italy, and comprises the larger portion of the non-Greek elements of the Latin. The difference between the Oscan and the Latin was dialectical, but was progressively increased by the opposition in the habits of the races which spoke them. The Oscans were stupid, sensual, barbarous, and proverbially notorious for their ignorance of Greek and their antipathy to it. The word Opicus in Latin was a far more contemptuous epithet than barbarus. The Oscan dialect therefore receded from the Greek, to which the Romans were led with the progress

of refinement more and more to conform. The monuments of it now remaining, as the Bantine table, resemble an illiterate vulgar corruption of Latin. One of the most ancient peoples in Italy was the Umbrians, whose city Ameria is said to have existed 381 years before Rome. The monuments are sufficient to supply a nearly complete grammar of their language, which bears a close affinity to the Oscan, and has much in common both with the Greek and Latin.—With the exception of the disputed Etruscan, all the elements which entered into the Latin language seem to have been of the Thraco-Pelasgian stock. In Latium the territories of several tribes met, and according to universal tradition Rome was in its infancy the asylum of fugitives from all parts. The various constituents were developed into a compact and uniform texture, which was refined and enriched by the contact and influence of the Greek. Until the time of the poet Livius Andronicus (about 240 B. C.), there are few monuments of Latinity. In these the orthography is altogether unsettled, the specimens, when transcribed, have suffered in the process, and the language itself is fluctuating. The oldest of them is a hymn which the fratres arvales, a college of Roman priests, recited at their annual festival. It was dug up at Rome in 1778, and its composition has been assigned to the age of Romulus. It contains but few words that remained in the language. It was followed by the Salian hymn, which was unintelligible to Horace, the laws of the 12 tables (about 450 B. C.), the inscription on the Duilian column (260), and the epitaphs in the mausoleum of the Scipios. It is not certain that all of these have been preserved in the form in which they were originally composed. The Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus (185) is quite intelligible, and scarcely differs from classical Latin except in orthography. The principal grammatical difference presented by the older monuments is an ablative in id, od, ed, and an accusative which afterward became the regular ablative. The progress which the language made during this period was nearly free from foreign influences, and Cicero therefore called the age of the Scipios that of the true Latinity. In his time Hellenisms had greatly modified its peculiar Latin features. When the Romans conquered successively the south of Italy, Sicily, Macedonia, and Achaia, their language received a new form from intercourse with the subject Greek inhabitants, and from that time might more properly be called the Roman than the Latin speech. Greek terms and phrases were grafted upon the old Latin stock. In this Hellenistic form the language appears in the oldest literary works of the Romans, in Plautus, Terence, Lucretius, and even Catullus. The custom of employing Greek tutors for the children of the most distinguished families favored this tendency. What the language lost in originality it gained in refinement and polish, so that its golden age dates nearly from this transformation, extending according to some from the death of Sylla through the

reign of Augustus, and according to others from the time of Cicero to that of Tiberius. But it was rather as a literary language than as the popular speech that the Latin then attained to excellence. Cicero affirms that he knew but 5 or 6 Roman ladies who spoke it correctly. He was, however, a purist, and sometimes occupied himself for days in seeking a proper word or phrase. Quintilian complained that the Roman populace could not even utter an exclamation of joy without some barbarism, and said that it was nearly as difficult even in Rome for the young to become acquainted with classical Latin as with a foreign tongue. As a spoken language the Latin never was in universal use. As the Romans extended their dominion in Italy, they degraded but did not extirpate the local idioms. They did not, at first, attempt to establish between the different peoples which fell under their empire a unity of language to strengthen the bond of nationality. On the contrary, they even forbade to the vanquished tribes the common use of the speech of the conquerors. Subsequently, however, they authorized it, and finally enjoined it. The Latin therefore became in the provinces the official and perhaps the literary language, but in private relations and intercourse each people preserved its native dialect. Classical Latin is peculiar in having no distinct dialects. Yet, from the reproach of Patavinity which Quintilian brings against the style of Livy, who was born in Patavinium (Padua), it is supposed that the popular speech in the different provinces had peculiarities which sometimes crept into the literature. Though without dialectical differences, there was always a recognized distinction between the language of the people and that of the nobles. The former was the lingua plebeia, vulgaris, rustica, and is known to us only by a few phrases in the comic poets; the latter was the lingua nobilis, classica, urbana, and is that which is preserved in the monuments of Roman literature. There was also the sermo provincialis, which probably varied quite as much from the lingua rustica as that did from the cultivated speech of the capital. As the Romans were not a commercial people, it was only by the success of their arms that they extended their language. By war and military colonies they made it known throughout the gigantic area of the Roman empire. Its progress, however, was singularly impeded wherever it came in contact with Greek, for the reason that the latter was a superior instrument of communication. The language of the conquered for a time triumphed over that of the conquerors, so that in the age of Cicero Greek was understood by educated people in nearly every part of the empire, and Latin was con fined almost exclusively to Italy. Soon after, in the larger part of Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia, Latin was cultivated in connection with the native languages, and became known either as a spoken or written tongue to the higher classes generally. Plutarch says

that in his time every people was familiar with Latin. Under the empire it was taught with greater purity and elegance in Gaul and Spain than in Italy. Julius Cæsar, says Aulus Gellius, advised young Roman authors to shun a new word as a dangerous rock. The protest against neologisms was repeated by many other purists. When the emperor Tiberius in an address to the senate Latinized the Greek word μovonwλtov, Pomponius Marcellus dared to resist this exercise of the imperial authority in the republic of letters, and to declare to the emperor that he could give the right of Roman citizenship to men, but not to words. Yet Rome continued to borrow from the language of every people with which she came in contact, and the invasion of foreign terms was almost unlimited from the time of the Antonines, when strangers resorted from all parts of the Roman world to the capital. The degeneracy was the more rapid because after the Plinys there was no writer capable of moderating it. The Christian era has sometimes been accounted the date when the Latin became a fixed language. More properly, it was the period when its progress was arrested, and its decline began. Its decadence dates from the approximation of the literary to the vulgar Latin; and it was the Christian instruction in the lingua plebeia et rustica which chiefly contributed to this result, introducing into religious writings barbarisms which had till then only been found in the mouth of the people. This mode of alteration is noteworthy in the 2d century, and was completed after the 5th. Between these two eras occurred two events which consummated the destruction of the language: the transplanting of the seat of the empire to Constantinople, and the invasion of the barbarians. The Latin of the decline has the appropriate name of "low Latinity." Its corruption consists not so much in changing the signification of words, as in creating new expressions, and introducing a throng of new words, first from the Greeks, and then from each of the barbarous nations. After the division of the empire, the Byzantine emperors endeavored to retain the Latin as one of the traditions of Rome, and enjoined its use in the codes and edicts; yet it was abandoned in favor of the Greek as soon as the eastern empire was obliged to renounce all pretensions to the sovereignty of the West. The successive incursions of the Goths, Vandals, and Lombards flooded it in the West with foreign words and forms. In this state it was preferred by the invaders to their own language. The foreign dynasties that ruled Italy were ambitious to heighten the resemblance of their courts to that of the Caesars by cherishing the use of Latin. The lingua Latina became distinguished from the lingua Romana. The former was the classical Latin, now cultivated even by the learned only in writing; the latter was the old lingua plebeia transformed by invasions. The purest specimens of the ancient lingua Romana are supposed to exist in the mountains of Sardinia and in the country of the Grisons. It was

in the ages of low Latinity that Latin versification in rhyme was first attempted, of which there are many examples in ecclesiastical hymns, full of false quantities. That the Latin language did not share the destruction of the Roman empire was due to Christianity, which had adopted it, and, though it at first deteriorated it, afterward secured its perpetuity. It remained in Europe the ecclesiastical, political, and official language, long after it had ceased to be spoken except in cloisters. In the time of Gregory of Tours the preachers of France delivered their sermons in it; in the time of St. Bernard the as yet rude French was employed in delivering sermons, though they were written in Latin. Charlemagne ordered all judicial processes to be drawn up in Latin, and forbade officers to employ any other in their documents. Yet the debates of the parliaments and the metaphysical and theological discussions of the schools were insufficient to prevent its becoming a dead language. Moreover, the scholastic Latin was in large part a mélange of Gallic and Gothic terms furnished with Latin terminations; and the judicial verbal coinages were not less barbarous than those of the pedants of the schools. But the grotesqueness of the official Latin was its least defect. Francis I. was obliged to abolish it from the courts of justice because the meaning of the words employed could no longer be determined, and constantly gave rise to new lawsuits. At the revival of letters, Latin was the common speech of the savants of Europe, and was written by many of them with purity and ease. The Ciceronians of the court of Leo X. especially excelled in its elegant use, their name being derived from their principle that no word ought to be employed unless it was sanctioned by the authority of Cicero. The chief scholars of the day engaged in a controversy in support or contestation of this principle, the most important work produced on the subject being the Ciceronianus of Erasmus, in which he assailed the Ciceronian pedants with admirable satire and learning. It was answered in a tract by the elder Scaliger, a monument of skilful vituperation and literary bitterness. The reformation, by depriving the Latin of the exclusive privilege, which it had till then preserved, of being the official interpreter of the sacred texts and the common language of orthodoxy throughout Christendom, diminished its prestige and authority. Among the Protestants the vernacular languages were exalted above it. Yet the disfavor into which it fell in Germany, Holland, and England, as the interpreter of divine knowledge, did not prevent the most important works in profane science from being written in it. Lord Bacon first wrote his principal works in Latin, believing that it was destined to be the universal and common language of learned men. Even at the present time many of the books of German erudition are produced in Latin, and both in Germany and Holland many medical and legal works are written in it. In Poland, which

by the first kings; nor to the republican law of the 12 tables; nor to the Annales Pontificum, a record of the chief events of every year by the high priest and four of his colleagues; nor to the Libri Lintei, the consular historical records. It was not till after the Romans had spread their conquests over Magna Græcia and Sicily, and had thus become intimately associated with Italian Greeks, that they began to give their attention to the cultivation of language and literature. Their first poet was the Greek Andronicus, taken prisoner at the capture of Tarentum, and called Livius Andronicus after he became a Roman citizen, who gave to the drama a somewhat regular plot. He produced Latin tragedies and comedies translated from and modelled after the Greek, and made a version of the Odyssey in the Saturnian metre. His plays were used as a text book in schools when Horace was a boy. Nævius (about 235 B. C.) followed his example in imitating the Greek drama, but exchanged mythological for political subjects, in which he so freely satirized the Roman aristocracy and the leading characters of state that he was successively imprisoned and banished. He also wrote a historical poem on the first Punic war. The art of poetical composition was greatly advanced by Ennius (239-169), a versatile genius, called by the Romans the father of their poetry. Possessing unusual learning and accomplishments, enjoying the society at Rome of the elder Cato and the Scipios, he wrote tragedies, satirical and didactic poems, and the Annales, an epic on Roman history, for which he first used the Latin hexameter. His works were marked by a stern and solemn grandeur, were freely imitated and borrowed from by Virgil, but lacked polish and ornament. Euripides was his model in tragedy, and he treated the mythological divinities with a marked disdain, which, as well as his translation of the sceptical Euhemerus, seems to prove that religious faith was already in decline. Though no Roman tragedy anterior to the Augustan age has been preserved, yet this branch of the drama reached the highest point which was destined to it at Rome in the hands of Pacuvius, nephew of Ennius, and of his junior contemporary Accius or Attius, both of whom imitated the Greek tragedies and rarely introduced events of Roman history. The former was both poet and painter, and received the epithet of doctus (learned); and there remains from the Prometheus of the latter our finest fragment of the Roman tragadia palliata or high tragedy. The successor of Nævius in comedy was Plautus, whose plays have a Roman freshness and meaning about them, notwithstanding their Grecian garb, rugged versification, artificial negligence, and sometimes coarse jests. Elius Stilo said that if the Muses spoke Latin they would employ the style of Plautus. With a patriotic fidelity, he treated beneath the veil of the new Greek comedy the complications, disorders, and emotions of Roman life. He was at once

author, actor, and manager, and while ridiculing the vices and follies of all classes, succeeded in avoiding the resentment of the patricians, and in pleasing the mob which thronged the carea. His plays were highly and permanently admired, and St. Jerome is said to have consoled himself with them after passing his nights in tears and penitence. Under Terence (195-159), the friend of Scipio and Lælius, Latin comedy rose to its highest, though not to Attic excellence. No longer seeking to please only by broad ridicule, he aimed to delineate the pathetic as well as amusing features of ordinary life, employing sometimes a grave and sententious discourse, and content to raise a laugh only when his subject naturally suggested it. His comedies are all translated or adapted from Greek sources, chiefly from Menander; the scene of many of them is in Athens; and a gentleman, a slave, a parasite, a soldier, and a courtesan are the most frequent characters. The exquisite purity and elegance of his style have been universally applauded. He was a sort of prototype of Virgil, and reflects the taste of the best society of his time. Though inferior to Plautus in native buoyant vigor, he surpassed him in constructive talent, correctness, and depth of feeling. Nearly contemporary with him were Novius and Pomponius, authors of popular farces; Cæcilius Statius, of Gallic birth, whose plots were excellent, but whose Latinity is condemned by Cicero; and Afranius, whose plays, committed to the flames by Gregory I., were the best examples of the comedia togata, which exhibited Roman instead of Greek characters and manners. Roman literature had till this time been chiefly in the hands of Greek slaves, whose genius on their arrival in Rome had secured their freedom and celebrity. At length Lucilius (148-103), a patrician, gave to it the advantage of his rank as well as genius. The Scipios and Lælii had amused themselves with it only as amateurs, thinking it would derogate from their dignity to make it their profession. The example of Lucilius introduced letters among the things permitted to patricians. He perfected the Roman satire, a style of poetry unknown to the Greeks, the verse, form, and personalities of which were wholly different from the satires of his predecessors. He imitated the liberties of the old Greek comedy by designating persons, but his vigor and pungency are peculiarly Roman.-Previous to Ennius had appeared the first rude annalists, Q. Fabius Pictor, from whose uncritical narrative the current accounts of the early history of Rome were in the main derived, and L. Cincius Alimentus, a curious investigator of ancient records and monuments. These were succeeded by the elder Cato (234–149), who wrote the Origines of Roine, a work which his position and erudition enabled him to make peculiarly valuable, and the loss of which is particularly regretted; Calpurnius Piso, whose annals extended probably from the earliest times to the second Punic war; and Cælius Antipater, who is commended for the eloquence and correct