to indicate one relation, and with the ablative to suggest another. In Asia, for instance, meant “in Asia,” in Asiam, “into Asia.”  When the two case forms became identical in pronunciation, the meaning of the phrase would be determined by the verb in the sentence, so that with a verb of going the preposition would mean “into,” while with a verb of rest it would mean “in.”  In other words the idea of motion or rest is disassociated from the case forms.  From the analogy of in it was very easy to pass to other prepositions like per, which in literary Latin took the accusative only, and to use these prepositions also with cases which, historically speaking, were ablatives.

In his heart of hearts the school-boy regards the periodic sentences which Cicero hurled at Catiline, and which Livy used in telling the story of Rome as unnatural and perverse.  All the specious arguments which his teacher urges upon him, to prove that the periodic form of expression was just as natural to the Roman as the direct method is to us, fail to convince him that he is not right in his feeling—­and he is right.  Of course in English, as a rule, the subject must precede the verb, the object must follow it, and the adverb and attribute adjective must stand before the words to which they belong.  In the sentence:  “Octavianus wished Cicero to be saved,” not a single change may be made in the order without changing the sense, but in a language like Latin, where relations are largely expressed by inflectional forms, almost any order is possible, so that a writer may vary his arrangement and grouping of words to suit the thought which he wishes to convey.  But this is a different matter from the construction of a period with its main subject at the beginning, its main verb at the end, and all sorts of subordinate and modifying clauses locked in by these two words.  This was not the way in which the Romans talked with one another.  We can see that plainly enough from the conversations in Plautus and Terence.  In fact the Latin period is an artificial product, brought to perfection by many generations of literary workers, and the nearer we get to the Latin of the common people the more natural the order and style seem to the English-speaking person.  The speech of the uneducated freedmen in the romance of Petronius is interesting in this connection.  They not only fail to use the period, but they rarely subordinate one idea to another.  Instead of saying “I saw him when he was an aedile,” they are likely to say “I saw him; he was an aedile then.”

When we were analyzing preliterary Latin, we noticed that the co-ordination of ideas was one of its characteristics, so that this trait evidently persisted in popular speech, while literary Latin became more logical and complex.