What language did the Romans speak?

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Scott Spires

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Britannica Editors

Last updated

Sep. 18, 2026 •History

The Roman Empire is closely associated with the Latin language, but the actual linguistic situation in the empire was complex. The dominant language of the western half of the empire was Latin, with Greek predominating in the eastern parts of the empire. However, multilingualism was a daily reality in the entire area under Roman rule, and many other languages and dialects were spoken throughout the empire.

Latin

Latin was originally the language of Latium, the region of Italy where Rome is located. It was one of a number of Italic languages and dialects, such as Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian. As the Romans gradually expanded their rule outward, they brought their language with them. After consolidating their political power throughout Italy, the Romans conquered most of southern and western Europe and the Mediterranean coastal regions, including North Africa. Latin became the language of administration in the western half of the empire—the language used by politicians, soldiers, and intellectuals.

Latin was not a uniformly standardized language, and the use of it was diglossic. The prestige or “high” form of the language was Classical Latin. This was the language used by the educated and governing elite, and it became the major literary standard in which such Roman authors as Cicero, Horace, and Seneca wrote their works. The common or “low” form was Vulgar Latin, the speech of the common people and the language one would normally hear in the streets, taverns, and workplaces of Rome and other cities. Vulgar Latin, while not as strictly standardized or formal as Classical Latin, was a literary language in its own right. Over the centuries, Vulgar Latin evolved into the Romance languages of today, such as Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese.

Greek

In the eastern parts of the empire, Greek was the language of administration, as well as the prestige language for intellectual and literary activity. However, it was not only in the eastern empire that Greek was considered prestigious; it was common for the educated classes in the western empire to be bilingual in Latin and Greek. The influence of Greek culture on that of Rome was enormous, and a grounding in Greek language and literature was considered essential for educated Romans.

The form of Greek most commonly used in the eastern half of the Roman Empire was, however, not the Classical (Attic) variety but Koine (“common”) Greek. This language had evolved mainly from Attic and was spoken as a lingua franca throughout the eastern Roman realm. In addition to its function as an administrative language, Koine was used for the New Testament and most early Christian literature. It was also a major literary language, used by such writers as Epictetus and Polybius. At the same time, many writers in Greek, such as Plutarch, chose to write in the Attic standard.

Other languages

The vast size of the Roman realm meant that many languages besides Latin and Greek were spoken there. In the eastern Mediterranean and in North Africa, several major Semitic languages were spoken. Punic, the language of Carthage, was a dialect of Phoenician that was widely used in North Africa. Aramaic was spoken in Palestine and Syria. It became the everyday language of the region’s Jewish population; some portions of the Bible, as well as large parts of the Talmud, are in Aramaic. Syriac, which was a dialect of Aramaic, was notably used in early Christian writings. Another language closely associated with Christianity was Coptic, which is not Semitic but a descendant of ancient Egyptian; many early Christian thinkers wrote in both Coptic and Greek.

In the northern and western parts of the empire, other language groups were represented. Rome’s conquest of Gaul and Britain brought Celtic speakers under its rule. One prominent example is Gaulish, a Celtic language spoken in western and central Europe as well as Asia Minor. On the edges of the empire, speakers of Germanic dialects, such as the Goths and Vandals, frequently clashed with the Romans, eventually contributing to the fragmentation of the empire. The only significant surviving text in any of these early Germanic languages is the translation of parts of the Bible into Gothic.