language: The Americas The oldest surviving example of Latin is a brief inscription of four words on a cloak pin in Greek characters This shows that the full vowels were used in unstressed syllables, a system that changed gradually as the Latin language developed The other early surviving Latin scripts show a stress accent on the first syllable of any word, whereas by the late republic the accent fell on the second or second-from-last syllable Indeed, one of the striking features of Latin is the importance placed on accentuation As the Romans expanded their rule, with Latin as the language of administration, the use of the language became common throughout the empire Roman citizens and many others became fluent in Latin Through the Roman system of education many Roman boys and also people all over the empire learned Latin grammar Cato the Censor (234–149 b.c.e.) told everybody that he had taught his son to read and write, and the Roman scholar Pliny (23–79 c.e.) also believed that children should be taught by their parents Many tutors, sometimes slaves, were employed to teach children Latin, and secondary schools taught boys both grammar and rhetoric (the study of methods of speaking and writing effectively and persuasively) When the Edict of Caracalla (212 c.e.) extended Roman citizenship to all freeborn men throughout the Roman Empire, the desire to learn Latin increased further Although they were certainly not the first texts, the earliest surviving extensive works in Latin were the comedies of Titus Maccius Plautus (ca 254–184 b.c.e.) and Terence (ca 185–159 b.c.e.) The latter was a slave born in Carthage and freed by his Roman master, a senator There was also the poetry of Quintus Ennius (239–169 b.c.e.) and Gaius Lucilius (ca 180–ca 102 b.c.e.) Literature from the middle of the first century b.c.e is dominated by the works of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 b.c.e.), and this period is often known as the Age of Cicero It was also the era of Lucretius (ca 100–ca 55 b.c.e.), Gaius Sallustus Crispus (86–34 b.c.e.), and the military victories of Julius Caesar (100–44 b.c.e.) The works of the latter, The Conquest of Gaul and The Civil War, are the oldest surviving accounts of a military campaign by one of its leaders Caesar himself established the first state library in Rome, which was completed by Asinius Pollio (76 b.c.e.–4 c.e.) This had works in Greek as well as Latin, but eventually works in Latin began to overtake those in Greek Gradually many cities throughout the Roman Empire established their own libraries, a process that coincided with the rise in bibliopolae (publishers) These used scriveners (professional copyists) to produce copies of books and made many works available throughout the empire, indicating that there was an extensive market for books During the Augustan Age (27 b.c.e.–14 c.e.) writers such as Horace (65–8 b.c.e.), Virgil (70–19 b.c.e.), Ovid (43 b.c.e.– 17 c.e.), and Livy (59 b.c.e.–17 c.e.) wrote what are regarded as some of the major Latin texts Virgil’s Aeneid, describing the arrival in Italy of Aeneas, a Trojan prince, was one of the longest Latin epics of its period Livy’s massive Ab urbe condita libri (Books from the Foundation of the City) comprised 619 142 books, but only 35 survive The detail in the surviving books demonstrates an extensive literary tradition wherein Livy was able to base his work on previous historians Horace, Virgil, Ovid, and Livy were followed by Seneca the Elder (ca 55 b.c.e.–ca 39 c.e.), Seneca the Younger (ca b.c.e.–65 c.e.), Tacitus (ca 56–ca 120 c.e.), and Petroneus (d 66 c.e.), the first writer of fiction Suetonius (ca 69–ca 140 c.e.) and Juvenal (ca 55–ca 127 c.e.) represented the climax of the Roman Silver Age Literary works from the Age of Cicero showed that there were at least three different types of Latin used by the Romans Cicero wrote in what has become known as classical oratorical Latin This was used for oratory, senatorial and other records, legal texts, and an old form of poetry called Saturnian verse Some other writers used classical written Latin, and evidence from references in texts and also from inscriptions and votive tablets (a tablet used for sacred or religious purposes) show that the colloquial Latin used by many citizens of the Roman Empire was quite different and also changed extensively over time, diverging from the other two and becoming known as Vulgar Latin There are also references to these differences by Roman grammarians By the third century c.e books were written in this colloquial form Both Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine, writing in the fourth and fift h centuries, continued to write in classical Latin In terms of grammar Latin had six cases (forms of a noun or pronoun indicating its role in a sentence) for the declensions (changes in form to designate grammatical function) of nouns and adjectives, and some nouns also had a locative case (indicating place or direction) Some of these cases survived in languages derived from Latin In the early Christian Church, Latin played a crucial part in recording information It was the language of the city of Rome, which became the center of western Christendom, of the Vulgate (the Roman Catholic Bible), and of administration throughout the empire The language’s extensive reach ensured that it would survive within the Christian Church and remain the language of learning and diplomacy for many centuries THE AMERICAS BY MICHAEL J O’NEAL Unraveling the history of language development and dispersion in the ancient Americas is a daunting task for historians, linguists, and archaeologists The first problem is the sheer number and diversity of languages Linguists have identified some 200 distinct language families in the Americas, many with subfamilies and sub-subfamilies, but even that number is in dispute (A language family is a group of languages that have important similarities, suggesting that they developed from a common older language These languages can be grouped into a family “tree.”) Efforts to compare languages that, in most cases, are long extinct or nearly extinct require gathering and analyzing immense amounts of information, and linguists have barely begun the process