3. There are three sacred languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and they are supreme through all the world. For it was in these three languages that the charge against the Lord was written above the cross by Pilate. Wherefore, because of the obscurity of the holy Scriptures, a knowledge of these three languages is necessary, in order that there may be recourse to a second if the expression in one of them leads to doubt of a word or its meaning. 4. But the Greek tongue is considered most famous among the tongues of the nations. For it is more resonant than the Latin and all other tongues, and its variety is discerned in its five divisions: of which the first is called κοινή, that is, debased or common, which all use. 5. The second is Attic, that is, the Athenian speech which all the writers of Greece used. The third is Doric, which the Egyptians have and the Sicilians. The fourth is Ionic. The fifth, Aeolic, which the Aeoles spoke. In observing the Greek tongue there are definite distinctions of this sort; for their language is divided in this way. 6. Certain have asserted that there are four Latin languages, namely, the early, the Latin, the Roman, the corrupted. The early is that which the oldest Italians used in the time of Janus and Saturn, a rude speech, as is shown in the songs of the Salii; the Latin, which they spoke in Latium under Latinus and the kings of Tuscia, in which the twelve tables were written. 7. The Roman, which began to be spoken by the Roman people after the kings were driven out, which was used by the poets Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, Virgilius, the orators Gracchus, Cato, Cicero, and the rest. The corrupted Latin, which, after the empire was extended more widely, burst into the Roman state along with customs and men, corrupting the soundness of speech by solecisms and barbarisms. 10. Every language, Greek, Latin, or of other nations, any man can grasp by hearing it, or can get from a teacher by reading. Though a knowledge of all languages is difficult for anyone, still no one is so sluggish that, situated as he is in his own nation, he should not know his own nation’s language. For what else is he to be thought except lower than the brute animals? For they make the sound that is proper to them, but he is worse who lacks a knowledge of his own language.