> Speaking Latin was expected, after the ascent of Rome as the dominant power in the Mediterranean, complete, more or less, by Caesar's time, the way English is now. It was the lingua franca. overlords.
It's probably not very important for our lefty purposes, but this is inaccurate. In fact, along the Mediterranean littoral, if you had a second language in addition to your native one, it was far more likely to be Greek than Latin. There's a reason why the New Testament is written in Greek rather than Latin, and why there is a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible (the Septuagint) but no Latin one. This rather rotgut Greek patois is referred to by Grecians as koine', or "common" Greek.
The hinterlands (Gaul, Iberia, Dacia) were a slightly different story, of course, and ultimately did become Latinophone because they were settled by Latin speakers. This process didn't occur in the established civilizations of the Mediterranean basin -- the Romans conquered 'em but didn't settle 'em.
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Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org