and to define it as the language which was used in conversation throughout
the Empire with the innumerable variations which time and place gave it,
which in its most highly refined form, as spoken in literary circles at
Rome in the classical period, approached indefinitely near its ideal,
literary Latin, which in its most unconventional phase was the rude speech
of the rabble, or the "sermo inconditus" of the ancients. The facts which
have just been mentioned may be illustrated by the accompanying diagrams.

[Illustration: Fig. I]

[Illustration: Fig. II]

[Illustration: Fig. III]

[Illustration: Fig. IV]

In Fig. I the heavy-lined ellipse represents the formal diction of Cicero,
the dotted line ellipse his conversational vocabulary. They overlap each
other through a great part of their extent, but there are certain
literary locutions which would rarely be used by him in conversation, and
certain colloquial words and phrases which he would not use in formal
writing. Therefore the two ellipses would not be coterminous. In Fig. II
the heavy ellipse has the same meaning as in Fig. I, while the space
enclosed by the dotted line represents the vocabulary of an uneducated
Roman, which would be much smaller than that of Cicero and would show a
greater degree of difference from the literary vocabulary than Cicero's
conversational stock of words does. The relation of the uncultivated
Roman's conversational vocabulary to that of Cicero is illustrated in Fig.
III, while Fig. IV shows how the Latin of the average man in Rome would
compare, for instance, with that of a resident of Lugudunum, in Gaul.