The Romans 

Latin was the official language of the Roman Empire. Financial administrators, legal
officers and leading man of local communities used it throughout the area under Roman
government. The wealthy and educated classes of the empire often spoke Latin, but the
majority of people continue to speak local languages such as Celtic, Coptic, and Aramaic. In
some areas, public monuments had bilingual inscriptions in Latin and the local language so that
everybody could read them. However, local languages died out completely during the Roman
period and were replaced by Latin.

Roman Greece

Roman Greece is the period of Greek History affecting its subsequent constituent Roman
provinces. By 275 BC, The Romans in Italy were fighting the Carthaginians and some of the
Greek decided to help, because Greeks were afraid of Romans. But Carthaginians lost, and the
Romans were very angry at the Greeks, so they started to take Greece over as well. The Greek
peninsula came under Romans rule in 146 BC after the victory of the Romans in the Battle of
Corinth, when Macedonia became a Roman province. The Romans ruled Greece for about 500
years.
Roman culture was highly influenced by the Greeks.​While some Roman nobles
regarded the Greeks as backwards and petty, many others embraced Greek literature and
philosophy. The Greek language became a favorite of the educated and elite in Rome

At that moment, ​when Greece fell under the control of Rome, Latin grammarians
discovered the Greek grammar, they applied the Greek grammatical models to their own
language. The two languages having similarities, they used the same parts of speech (V, N, Adj,
Adv, Prep, conj, articles, pronoun). Clearly, the presentation of Latin grammar was similar to the
Greek one.
During that time, languages other than Latin and Greek were considered barbarous
tongues by the Romans, but a Roman education included knowledge of Greek as well as Latin.
Trilingualism was common among those who were educated; a native tongue, Greek, and Latin.

In Roman linguistics, some important names need to be mentioned. The first of them is
Varro.
​Marcus varro
Marcus Terentius Varro, was an ancient Roman scholar and writer. Varro proved to be a
highly productive writer and turned out more than 74 Latin works on a variety of topics. His work
however, was the most influential of the Roman period and proved to be an exception to the
trend of using Greek categories and terminology with little change. Under the headings of
etymology, morphology, and syntax. One of his works ​‘De Lengua Latina’ (On the Latin
Language) consisted on 26 books, though less than a quarter survived. Varro’s work
takes into account differences between Latin and Greek ​(e.g. the absence of the definite
article in the former). He also held the view that Language is first and foremost a social
phenomenon with a communicative purpose; secondarily, it is a tool for logical and philosophical
enquiry.

Towards the end of the millenium , several authors wrote major works in the fields of grammar
and rhetoric, notably Cicero (106-43 BC) on style, and Quintilian (1st C AD)

Cicero
Cicero, Marcus Tullius Cicero, was a Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer, orator, political
theorist, consul, and constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman
equestrian order, and is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. His
influence on the Latin language was so immense that the subsequent history of prose in, not
only Latin but European languages up to the 19th century, was said to be either a reaction
against or a return to his style.

Legacy

Cicero has been traditionally considered the master of Latin prose.The English words
Ciceronian (meaning "eloquent") and cicerone (meaning "local guide") derive from his name.He
is credited with transforming Latin from a modest utilitarian language into a versatile literary
medium capable of expressing abstract and complicated thoughts with clarity.

Quintilian

Quintilian, Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely
referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing. In English translation. His
father, a well-educated man, sent him to Rome to study rhetoric early in the reign of Nero. His
work,’ Institutio Oratoria’ (English: Institutes of Oratory) is a twelve-volume textbook on the
theory and practice of rhetoric by Roman rhetorician Quintilian. It was published around year 95
CE. The work deals also with the foundational education and development of the orator himself.
He became the first teacher to receive a state salary for teaching Latin rhetoric, and he
also held his position as Rome’s leading teacher.

Aelius Donatus

Aelius Donatus, was a Roman grammarian and teacher of rhetoric. Donatus was a proponent of
an early system of punctuation, consisting of dots placed in three successively higher positions
to indicate successively longer pauses, roughly equivalent to the modern comma, colon, and full
stop. His work deals with grammar in general at greater length.
Priscian

Priscian, full name: Priscianus Caesariensis, was a Latin grammarian and the author of the
Institutes of Grammar which was the standard textbook for the study of Latin during the Middle
Ages. It also provided the raw material for the field of speculative grammar. Priscian's most
famous work, the Institutes of Grammar (Latin: Institutiones Grammaticae), is a systematic
exposition of Latin grammar. The grammar is divided into eighteen books, of which the first
sixteen deal mainly with sounds, word-formation and inflexions; the last two, which form from a
fourth to a third of the whole work, deal with syntax.

To sum up, the main results of the Roman period was a model of grammatical description that
was handed down through many writers, and which became the basis of teaching in the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance. This model became the traditional approach to grammar, which
continue to exercise its influence on the teaching of English and other modern languages.