Paramount ascendancy of Latinism Hellenism

Latinism

In the great struggle of the nationalities throughout the wide range of the Roman empire, the secondary nations seem at this period on the wane or disappearing. The most important of them all, the Phoenician, received through the destruction of Carthage a mortal wound from which it slowly bled to death. The districts of Italy, which had hitherto preserved their old language and manners, Etruria and Samnium, were not only visited by the heaviest blows of the Sullan reaction, but were compelled also by the political levelling of Italy to adopt the Latin language and customs in public intercourse, so that the old native languages were reduced to popular dialects which soon decayed. There no longer appears throughout the bounds of the Roman state any nationality entitled even to compete with the Roman and the Greek. On the other hand the Latin nationality was, as respected both the extent of its diffusion and the depth of its hold, in the most decided ascendant. As after the Social war any portion of Italian soil might belong to any Italian in full Roman ownership, and any god of an Italian temple might receive Roman gifts; as in all Italy with the exception of the region beyond the Po the Roman law thenceforth had exclusive authority superseding all other civic and local laws; so the Roman language at that time became the universal language of business, and soon likewise the universal language of civilized intercourse, in the whole peninsula from the Alps to the Sicilian Straits. But it no longer restricted itself to these natural limits.