ABSTRACT
In early days a great variety of languages was spoken in Italy, but by the end of our period Latin predominated, though such dialects as Oscan survived till the first century AD, while Greek was adopted by educated Romans as a second tongue. Speeches in the Senate and funeral orations stimulated the development of Roman oratory. Horace considered that Roman literature began with Livius Andronicus that is at the time when Rome had conquered Italy and was asserting her supremacy throughout the Mediterranean. Cato the Censor wrote a history in Latin, thereby setting an example which was followed by the annalists of the Gracchan era. This account of Rome's development from early times down to Cato's own time was called the Origines. Rome's widening influence then brought her first into Campania, where a flourishing Osco-Samnite variety of Italic art had succeeded the earlier culture of Etruscans and Greeks, and secondly into Magna Graecia and Sicily.
