him be regarded as put to death legally” (si nox furtum faxsit, si im occisit, iure caesus esto).[19] We pass without warning from one subject, the thief, in the first clause to another, the householder, in the second, and back to the thief again in the third.  Cato in his book on Agriculture writes of the cattle:  “let them feed; it will be better” (pascantur; satius erit), instead of saying:  “it will be better for them to feed” (or “that they feed").  In an early law one reads:  “on the tablet, on the white surface” (in tabula, in albo), instead of “on the white tablet” (in alba tabula).  Perhaps we may sum up the general characteristics of this preliterary Latin out of which both the spoken and written language developed by saying that it showed a tendency to analysis rather than synthesis, a loose and variable grammatical structure, and a lack of logic in expression.

Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and Plautus in the third century before our era show the language as first used for literary purposes, and with them the breach between the spoken and written tongues begins.  So far as Livius Andronicus, the Father of Latin literature, is concerned, allowance should be made without doubt for his lack of poetic inspiration and skill, and for the fact that his principal work was a translation, but even making this allowance the crude character of his Latin is apparent, and it is very clear that literary Latin underwent a complete transformation between his time and that of Horace and Virgil.  Now, the significant thing in this connection is the fact that this transformation was largely brought about under an external influence, which affected the Latin of the common people only indirectly and in small measure.  Perhaps the circumstances in which literary Latin was placed have never been repeated in history.  At the very outset it was brought under the sway of a highly developed literary tongue, and all the writers who subsequently used it earnestly strove to model it after Greek.  Livius Andronicus, Ennius, Accius, and Pacuvius were all of Greek origin and familiar with Greek.  They, as well as Plautus and Terence, translated and adapted Greek epics, tragedies, and comedies.  Several of the early writers, like Accius and Lucilius, interested themselves in grammatical subjects, and did their best to introduce system and regularity into their literary medium.  Now, Greek was a highly inflected, synthetical, regular, and logical medium of literary expression, and it was inevitable that these qualities should be introduced into Latin.  But this influence affected the spoken language very little, as we have already noticed.  Its effect upon the speech of the common people would be slight, because of the absence of the common school which does so much to-day to hold together the spoken and written languages.