regarded as put to death legally" (si nox furtum faxsit, si im occisit,
iure caesus esto).[19] We pass without warning from one subject, the
thief, in the first clause to another, the householder, in the second, and
back to the thief again in the third. Cato in his book on Agriculture
writes of the cattle: "let them feed; it will be better" (pascantur;
satius erit), instead of saying: "it will be better for them to feed" (or
"that they feed"). In an early law one reads: "on the tablet, on the white
surface" (in tabula, in albo), instead of "on the white tablet" (in alba
tabula). Perhaps we may sum up the general characteristics of this
preliterary Latin out of which both the spoken and written language
developed by saying that it showed a tendency to analysis rather than
synthesis, a loose and variable grammatical structure, and a lack of logic
in expression.

Livius Andronicus, Nævius, and Plautus in the third century before our era
show the language as first used for literary purposes, and with them the
breach between the spoken and written tongues begins. So far as Livius
Andronicus, the Father of Latin literature, is concerned, allowance should
be made without doubt for his lack of poetic inspiration and skill, and
for the fact that his principal work was a translation, but even making
this allowance the crude character of his Latin is apparent, and it is
very clear that literary Latin underwent a complete transformation
between his time and that of Horace and Virgil. Now, the significant
thing in this connection is the fact that this transformation was largely
brought about under an external influence, which affected the Latin of the
common people only indirectly and in small measure. Perhaps the
circumstances in which literary Latin was placed have never been repeated
in history. At the very outset it was brought under the sway of a highly
developed literary tongue, and all the writers who subsequently used it
earnestly strove to model it after Greek. Livius Andronicus, Ennius,