Latin and Greek were the official and dominant languages of the Roman Empire, but other languages were important regionally.



Koine Greek had become a shared language around the eastern Mediterranean and into Asia Minor as a consequence of the conquests of Alexander the Great.[6] The "linguistic frontier" dividing the Latin West and the Greek East passed through the Balkan peninsula. Educated Romans, particularly those of the ruling elite, studied and often achieved a high degree of fluency in Greek, which was useful for diplomatic communications in the East even beyond the borders of the Empire. The international use of Greek was one condition that enabled the spread of Christianity, as indicated for example by the choice of Greek as the language of the Epistles of Paul and its use for the ecumenical councils of the Christian Roman Empire. With the dissolution of the Empire in the West, Greek became the dominant language of the Eastern Roman Empire, later known as the Byzantine Empire.

Koine Greek had become the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean and into Asia Minor after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Lucian even imagines that Greek is the universal language of the dead in the underworld. In late antiquity, a Greek-speaking majority lived in the Greek peninsula and islands, major cities of the East, western Anatolia, and some coastal areas. Greek continued as the language of the Byzantine Empire, and developed into a distinctive medieval Greek that gave rise to modern Greek.

Latin-Greek bilingualism and translation

Although Latin is presented by Virgil as a unifying source of identity, bilingualism in Greek played a foundational role in the Roman literary tradition. Romans who received an elite education studied Greek as a literary language, and most men of the governing classes could speak Greek. The desultor litterarum or "literary acrobat" was one who had the ability to leap back and forth between the two languages, which was characteristic of the cultural milieu known as the Second Sophistic. Native Greek speakers of the intellectual elite were in turn capable of practicing literary criticism of Latin texts.

The emperor Claudius tried to limit the use of Greek, and on occasion revoked the citizenship of those who lacked Latin. Even in addressing the Roman Senate, however, he drew on his own bilingualism in communicating with Greek-speaking ambassadors. Suetonius quotes him as referring to "our two languages," and the employment of two imperial secretaries, one for Greek and one Latin, dates to his reign.

The everyday interpenetration of the two languages is indicated by bilingual inscriptions, which sometimes even switch back and forth between Greek and Latin. The epitaph of a Greek-speaking soldier, for instance, might be written primarily in Greek, with his rank and unit in the Roman army expressed in Latin.


This funerary stele (3rd century) is among the earliest Christian inscriptions: the abbreviation D.M. at the top refers to the Di Manes, the old Roman spirits of the dead, but accompanies Christian anchor and fish symbolism expressed by the Greek phrase "Fish of the Living", followed by the deceased's epitaph in Latin

In the Eastern empire, laws and official documents were regularly translated into Greek from Latin. Both languages were in active use by government officials and the Church during the 5th century. From the 6th century, Greek culture was studied in the West almost exclusively through Latin translation. Latin loanwords appear liberally in Greek texts on technical topics from late antiquity and the Byzantine period.


A 5th-century papyrus showing a parallel Latin-Greek text of a speech by Cicero

The Greek was the dominant language in South east Europe, Anatolia and Egpyt until the invasion of the Slavs in the Balkans (V century), the invasion of the Arabs of Egypt (632 a.C) and the mongolian invasion of Anatolia (1230 a.C).


Source: Wikipedia