"Of course, no one ever actually spoke Latin," a particularly stupid – and incompetent – Latin teacher once told a friend of mine.
The teacher had been so perplexed by the difficulties of Latin – particularly the ablative absolute and the difference between the gerund and the gerundive – that he thought the language had been devised purely for literary technique.
But of course the Romans spoke Latin (when they weren’t speaking Greek). Gladiators swore at each other in Latin. Supporters cheered Ben Hur in the Circus Maximus in Latin. And prostitutes advertised their wares in Latin signs on the streets of Pompeii: “Sum tua aeris assibus II” (“I’m yours for two bronze coins.”)
