words could be used in one sense only? On the contrary, the true grammarian knew very well that, besides the vulgar Latin known to the common herd, there existed eleven other kinds, each of which had a distinct grammar of its own.” According to this system of “the twelve Latinities,” everything had twelve names, any one of which might be used according to pleasure. New vocabularies had to be invented, either by the Latinising of Greek roots, or transposing the letters of the original words in such a way as to form a variety of new combinations. New conjugations and declensions adorned the grammar of the initiated, and to complete their system a new prosody was added, in which the dactyls and spondees appear to have been measured, not by quantity, but by accent.[34] Even the triumphs of the barbarians did not in all cases result in the immediate extinction of letters. In Italy a second Augustan age bid fair at one time to arise under the rule of Theodoric, the Ostrogoth. His court was adorned by the genius of two great men--Boethius, the Christian philosopher, and the last of the classic writers; and Cassiodorus, in whom closed the long line of Roman consuls. Both of them exerted a powerful influence over the studies of succeeding generations. The original Latin works of Boethius supplied the schools with a series of Christian classics which were naturally held in extraordinary esteem by teachers who, as time went on, felt with increasing force the difficulty of training Christian youth exclusively out of pagan class-books. And it was chiefly by his translations from the Greek that the mediæval scholars acquired their knowledge of the Greek philosophy, at a time when the study of that tongue had ceased to be generally pursued. A yet further addition to scholastic literature was contributed by Cassiodorus. He was not indeed the only statesman who had distinguished himself in this line. Towards the close of the fifth century Marcian Capella, an African pro-consul, had produced his celebrated work on the Espousals of Mercury and Philology, which he chooses to personify as a goddess; the seven liberal sciences, into which all known learning had been classified since the days of Philo, being represented as the handmaidens presented by the bridegroom to the bride. His _Satiricon_, written in nine books, continued to be one of the most popular text-books in use during the middle ages, and was at an early period translated into the vernacular.