two thousand years ago. And that period has been selected because
the language was then at its best and the greatest works of Roman
literature were being produced. This period, because of its supreme
excellence, is called the Golden Age of Roman letters.

[Footnote 1: Pronounce _La:'shi-um_.]

The Spread of Latin. For some centuries after Rome was founded, the
Romans were a feeble and insignificant people, their territory was
limited to Latium, and their existence constantly threatened by warlike
neighbors. But after the third century before Christ, Rome's power grew
rapidly. She conquered all Italy, then reached out for the lands across
the sea and beyond the Alps, and finally ruled over the whole ancient
world. The empire thus established lasted for more than four hundred
years. The importance of Latin increased with the growth of Roman
power, and what had been a dialect spoken by a single tribe became the
universal language. Gradually the language changed somewhat, developing
differently in different countries. In Italy it has become Italian, in
Spain Spanish, and in France French. All these nations, therefore, are
speaking a modernized form of Latin.

The Romans and the Greeks. In their career of conquest the Romans came
into conflict with the Greeks. The Greeks were inferior to the Romans in
military power, but far superior to them in culture. They excelled in
art, literature, music, science, and philosophy. Of all these pursuits
the Romans were ignorant until contact with Greece revealed to them the
value of education and filled them with the thirst for knowledge. And so
it came about that while Rome conquered Greece by force of arms, Greece
conquered Rome by force of her intellectual superiority and became her
schoolmaster. It was soon the established custom for young Romans to
go to Athens and to other centers of Greek learning to finish their
training, and the knowledge of the Greek language among the educated
classes became universal. At the same time many cultured Greeks--poets,
artists, orators, and philosophers--flocked to Rome, opened schools, and
taught their arts. Indeed, the preeminence of Greek culture became so
great that Rome almost lost her ambition to be original, and her writers
vied with each other in their efforts to reproduce in Latin what was
choicest in Greek literature. As a consequence of all this, the
civilization and national life of Rome became largely Grecian, and to
Greece she o