The Latin Language

The Latin language first appears in literature as the language written, as well as spoken, in the plain of Latium, in the third century B. C. But the conquering armies of Rome soon carried a knowledge of the Roman or Latin tongue to the utmost boundaries of the known world, and the Latin language either took the place of the native language of every conquered nation, or else became engrafted upon it. Hence its presence is discernible in all European languages. Those languages which are the immediate offspring of the Latin, as the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, both Norman and Provencal, are called the Romance languages. Wallachian, the language of Roumania, in which Latin predominates, has not until lately been classed with the Romance languages. M. Littre says: "Latin alters, without doubt, toward the end of the empire and after the arrival of the barbarians, and the style of Gregory of Tours is very far removed from the purity of Livy; but after all it is Latin, and not one of the Neo-Latin languages. Then all at once it disappears, and we see arising, as if from under the ground, the various idioms to which it has given birth. It dies suddenly and without transformation, so that these secondary languages cannot be considered as the metamorphosis or expansion of it. We have no right to say that Latin is continued in new languages; it died without developing itself, but died leaving children and heirs." Latin ceased to be a spoken language 580 A. D.; but it remained the organ of general literature until the early part of the seventeenth century, twelve centuries after the dissolution of the Roman Empire. The last great philosopher who habitually wrote his works in Latin was Leibnitz (1646-1716). In the eighteenth century we still find Latin used for works on science and philosophy, and in 1760 Linnaeus issued his famous work on botany in Latin. The earliest work of Agassiz, born 1807, was in Latin. The general use of Latin in diplomacy, or for the formal intercourse of nations, was continued in the seventeenth century; but it was as late as 1825 that Latin was for the first time displaced by the Magyar or native language of Hungary in the debates of the Diet of that country, Joseph II. having in vain attempted to make German the Official language of Hungary in place of Latin. It is now the universal custom that written communications from foreign powers shall be made in the vernacular of the country from which they come, but, with rare exceptions, oral intercourse is carried on in the French language. It is interesting to note that Dante's Divina Commedia, the first great work in the Italian language, can still be understood by uneducated Italians, while, on the other hand, Chaucer, who a century later was the first to write in the English language, requires an interpreter. Milton wrote as lately as 1650 his "Defensio pro Populo Anglicano" (a defence of the English people for beheading Charles II.) in Latin, although his immortal works were written in modern English.