With the Latin language the Latin literature extended itself over all
the West. In the schools of Bordeaux and Autun in the fifth century
only Latin poets and orators were studied. After the coming of the
barbarians, bishops and monks continued to write in Latin and they
carried this practice among the peoples of England and Germany who
were still speaking their native languages. Throughout almost the
whole mediaeval period, acts, laws, histories, and books of science
were written in Latin. In the convents and the schools they read,
copied, and appreciated only works written in Latin; beside books of
piety only the Latin authors were known--Vergil, Horace, Cicero, and
Pliny the Younger. The renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries consisted partly in reviving the forgotten Latin writers.
More than ever it was the fashion to know and to imitate them.
As the Romans constructed a literature in imitation of the Greeks, the
moderns have taken the Latin writers for their models. Was this good
or bad? Who would venture to say? But the fact is indisputable. Our
romance languages are daughters of the Latin, our literatures are full
of the ideas and of the literary methods of the Romans.
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