Legacy of The Classical World
The classical languages of the Ancient Mediterranean world influenced every European language, imparting to each a learned vocabulary of international application. Thus, Latin grew from a highly developed cultural product of the Golden and Silver eras of Latin literature to become the international lingua franca in matters diplomatic, scientific, philosophic and religious, until the 17th century. In turn, the classical languages continued, Latin evolved into the Romance languages and Ancient Greek into Modern Greek and its dialects. In the specialised science and technology vocabularies, the influence of Latin and Greek is notable. Ecclesiastical Latin, the Roman Catholic Church’s official tongue, remains a living legacy of the classical world to the contemporary world.
Read more about this topic: Classics
Famous quotes containing the words legacy, classical and/or world:
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“Several classical sayings that one likes to repeat had quite a different meaning from the ones later times attributed to them.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.”
—Francis William Bourdillon (1852–1921)