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All three official scripts of the modern European Union—Latin, Greek and Cyrillic—descend from writing systems used in the Roman Empire. Today, the Latin script, the Latin alphabet spread by the Roman Empire to most of Europe, and derived from the Phoenician alphabet through an ancient form of the Greek alphabet adopted and modified by ...
He was the first Roman statesman to put his political speeches in writing as a means of influencing public opinion. [citation needed] Early Latin literature ended with Gaius Lucilius, who created a new kind of poetry in his 30 books of Satires (2nd century BC). He wrote in an easy, conversational tone about books, food, friends, and current events.
Romanization in most of those regions remains such a powerful cultural influence in most aspects of life today that they are described as "Latin countries" and "Latin American countries". That is most evident in European countries in which Romance languages are spoken and former colonies that have inherited the languages and other Roman influences.
In the United States, the nation's Founders were strongly influenced by the classics, and they looked in particular to the Roman Republic for their form of government. [13] From the beginning of the 18th century, the study of Greek became increasingly important relative to that of Latin. [14]
The Golden age of Latin literature is a period consisting roughly of the time from 75 BC to AD 14, covering the end of the Roman Republic and the reign of Augustus Caesar. In the currently used philological model this period represents the peak of Latin literature.
In Roman tradition, borrowed from the Greeks, literary theatre was performed by all-male troupes that used face masks with exaggerated facial expressions to portray emotion. Female roles were played by men in drag . [417] Roman literary theatre tradition is represented in Latin literature by the tragedies of Seneca, for example.
Roman literature was from its very inception influenced heavily by Greek authors. Some of the earliest works currently discovered are of historical epics telling the early military history of Rome. As the Roman Republic expanded, authors began to produce poetry, comedy, history, and tragedy.
The term Romance derives from the Vulgar Latin adverb romanice, "in Roman", derived from romanicus: for instance, in the expression romanice loqui, "to speak in Roman" (that is, the Latin vernacular), contrasted with latine loqui, "to speak in Latin" (Medieval Latin, the conservative version of the language used in writing and formal contexts ...