n traders, tax-collectors, bankers,
and land-owners.[5] When Trajan in his romantic eastern campaign had
penetrated to Ctesiphon, the capital of Parthia, he found Roman merchants
already settled there. Besides the merchants and capitalists who were
engaged in business on their own account in the provinces, there were
thousands of agents for the great Roman corporations scattered through the
Empire. Rome was the money centre of the world, and the great stock
companies organized to lend money, construct public works, collect taxes,
and engage in the shipping trade had their central offices in the capital
whence they sent out their representatives to all parts of the world.

The soldier played as important a part as the merchant in extending the
use of Latin. Tacitus tells us that in the reign of Augustus there were
twenty-five legions stationed in the provinces. If we allow 6,000 men to a
legion, we should have a total of 150,000 Roman soldiers scattered through
the provinces. To these must be added the auxiliary troops which were made
up of natives who, at the close of their term of service, were probably
able to speak Latin, and when they settled among their own people again,
would carry a knowledge of it into ever-widening circles. We have no exact
knowledge of the number of the auxiliary troops, but they probably came to
be as numerous as the legionaries.[6] Soldiers stationed on the frontiers
frequently married native women at the end of their term of service,
passed the rest of their lives in the provinces, and their children
learned Latin.

The direct influence of the government was no small factor in developing
the use of Latin, which was of course the official language of the Empire.
All court proceedings were carried on in Latin. It was the language of
the governor, the petty official, and the tax-gatherer. It was used in
laws and proclamations, and no native could aspire to a post in the civil
service unless he had mastered it. It was regarded sometimes at least as a
_sine qua non_ of the much-coveted Roman citizenship. The Emperor
Claudius, for instance, cancelled the Roman citizenship of a Greek,
because he had addressed a letter to him in Latin which he could not
understand. The tradition that Latin was the official language of the
world was taken up by the Christian church. Even when Constantine presided
over the Council at Nicaea in the East, he addressed the assembly in Latin.

The two last-mentioned age