Expert: Maria - 9/18/2008

Question
I am curious what language was spoken in ancient Rome during the Roman Republic not during the Roman Empire (if it was different). I didn't know for sure if it may have been Etruscan, classical Latin, or something else? And whichever it is how do you say the word "respect" and what would the symbols look like? Thank you.

Answer
Hello,

Either  during the Roman Republic (from the abolition of monarchy in 509 BC to  the accession of the first emperor, Augustus, in 27 BC) or during the Roman Empire ( from 27 BC to the fall of the empire  in 476 AD), the Romans spoke Latin, not Etruscan which was the language spoken by close neighbours of the ancient Romans who however borrowed a few words from such a language before it became extinct already by the time of Christ in the 1st.century AD, when it was replaced by Latin.

The extinct language of the Etruscans is known mainly from inscriptions which  can be easily read, but, with the exception of only a few words, cannot be understood, as the vocabulary is still today unknown.

As for Latin, it was always the language spoken by the Romans since the  foundation of Rome in 753 BC, though this language has undergone some changes as the centuries went by, just because each language  obviously evolves, so that we can tell of OLD LATIN (also called Early Latin or Archaic Latin spoken from 753 BC to the 1st.century BC), CLASSICAL LATIN (broadly from the 1st century BC to  the early 3rd. century AD) and LATE LATIN  as  used from the third century A.D. onward.

The conquests of Rome spread Classical Latin and especially Late Latin  throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe, of course.

As for the word "respect", in Latin it can be “respectus”(as ‘regard’) or “reverentia” (as ‘reverence’), according to the context, of course.

Both these nouns are in the nominative which is the case of the subject of a sentence, as in Latin each noun has different endings (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, ablative), according to its role in a phrase.

Best regards,
Maria