The second group of languages developed within the territory which had formed a part of the Roman Empire, and includes modern French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. It has now been clearly proved, by a very minute study of the old forms of words, that these Romance languages were one and all derived from the _spoken_ Latin, employed by the soldiers, merchants, and people at large. This differed considerably from the elaborate and elegant written Latin which was used, for example, by Cicero and Cæsar. It was undoubtedly much simpler in its grammar and doubtless varied a good deal in different regions;--a Gaul, for instance, could not pronounce the words like an Italian. Moreover, in conversation people did not always use the same words as those in the books. For example, a horse was commonly spoken of as _caballus_, whereas a writer would use the word _equus_; it is from _caballus_ that the word for horse is derived in Spanish, Italian, and French (_caballo_, _cavallo_, _cheval_). As time went on the spoken language diverged farther and farther from the written. Latin is a troublesome speech on account of its complicated inflections and grammatical rules, which can be mastered only after a great deal of study. The people of the Roman provinces and the incoming barbarians naturally paid very little attention to the niceties of syntax and found easy ways of saying what they wished.[160] Yet several centuries elapsed after the German invasions before there was anything written in the language of conversation. So long as the uneducated could understand the correct Latin of the books when they heard it read or spoken, there was no necessity of writing anything in their familiar daily speech. But the gulf between the spoken and the written language had become so great by the time Charlemagne came to the throne, that he advised that sermons should be given thereafter in the language of the people, who, apparently, could no longer follow the Latin. The Strasburg oaths[161] are, however, about the first example which has come down to us of the speech which was growing into French. [Sidenote: Earliest examples of the Germanic languages.] [Sidenote: Gothic.]