Latin
Related: Rome - vulgar Latin
Language
Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire.All Romance languages descend from Latin, and many words based on Latin are found in other modern languages such as English. Moreover, in the Western world, Latin was a lingua franca, the learned language for scientific and political affairs, for more than a thousand years, being eventually replaced by French in the 18th century and English in the late 19th. It remains the formal language of the Roman Catholic Church to this day, which includes being the official national language of the Vatican. It is also still used, along with Greek, to furnish the names used in the scientific classification of living things. The closest living common language to Latin is Italian. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin [Aug 2004]
Latin literature
The literature of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire written in the Latin language. The periods of Latin literature are conventionally divided into "Golden" Latin, or Golden Age, which covers approximately the period from the start of the first century BC up to the mid-first century AD, and Silver Latin, which covers the remainder of the Classical period. Anything after the mid-second century comes under the blanket description of "late" Latin literature, and tends to be studied for the light it sheds on the development of Latin into the Romance languages rather than for its literary merit (though there are exceptions, eg. Augustine of Hippo.) --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_literature [Dec 2004]Latin Music [...]
Prefix [...]
Latin and Greek prefixes explained with examples.