ncies, the Latin of the Roman official and the
Latin of the church, were the influences which made the language spoken
throughout the Empire essentially uniform in its character. Had the Latin
which the colonist, the merchant, and the soldier carried through Italy
and into the provinces been allowed to develop in different localities
without any external unifying influence, probably new dialects would have
grown up all over the world, or, to put it in another way, probably the
Romance languages would have come into existence several centuries before
they actually appeared. That unifying influence was the Latin used by the
officials sent out from Rome, which all classes eagerly strove to imitate.
Naturally the language of the provinces did not conform in all respects to
the Roman standard. Apuleius, for instance, is aware of the fact that his
African style and diction are likely to offend his Roman readers, and in
the introduction to his _Metamorphoses_ he begs for their indulgence. The
elder Seneca in his _Controversiae_ remarks of a Spanish fellow-countryman
"that he could never unlearn that well-known style which is brusque and
rustic and characteristic of Spain," and Spartianus in his Life of Hadrian
tells us that when Hadrian addressed the senate on a certain occasion, his
rustic pronunciation excited the laughter of the senators. But the
peculiarities in the diction of Apuleius and Hadrian seem to have been
those which only a cultivated man of the world would notice. They do not
appear to have been fundamental. In a similar way the careful studies
which have been made of the thousands of inscriptions found in the
West[7], dedicatory inscriptions, guild records, and epitaphs show us
that the language of the common people in the provinces did not differ
materially from that spoken in Italy. It was the language of the Roman
soldier, colonist, and trader, with common characteristics in the way of
diction, form, phraseology, and syntax, dropping into some slight local
peculiarities, but kept essentially a unit by the desire which each
community felt to imitate its officials and its upper classes.

The one part of the Roman world in which Latin did not gain an undisputed
pre-eminence was the Greek East. The Romans freely recognized the peculiar
position which Greek was destined to hold in that part of the Empire, and
styled it the _altera lingua_. Even in Greek lands, however, Latin gained
a strong hold, and exerted consid