won a devotion more intense than religion could. Thus there is a certain similarity between the growth of Latin prose from Ennius to Cicero and that of English from Chaucer to Hooker. And though Greek rhetorical theory and models were factors in shaping Latin prose, as Roman theory and models were factors in shaping English, it seems to me quite probable that both languages would have taken the course they did without those models, for both were determined by forensic expression, by great causes, and by intense devotion to those causes on the part of the most intelligent men of their day. In following the evolution of Latin prose[5] we unfortunately have to deal largely with fragments quoted by later writers, and we cannot always be sure that these fragments are representative. For our purposes however they may legitimately be considered so. Before Ennius’ time very few speeches had actually been published. Cicero had at hand an old oration of Appius Claudius of about 281 B.C. and some funerary laudations, but he did not think either worth considering in a history of oratory. So far as we know, written prose documents before these were confined to laws, treaties, and meager official records. The fragments of the Twelve Tables (450 B.C.) are too scanty to afford any basis for judging style. Some of them are so wanting in lucidity, because of an ambiguous use of pronominal subjects, that a modern lawyer might readily manipulate them to prove any point. A few fourth- and third-century inscriptions from headstones and votive tablets[6] contain only blunt sentences which reveal chiefly an obvious desire to save the expense of stone-cutting. They do however show the native Latin word order and its fondness for the deferred verb. _Orcevia Numeri (uxor) nationu gratia, Fortuna Diovo fileia primogenia donum dedi._ This is of course a tendency in all inflected languages where the verb can be postponed till the subject and object have been visualized, since the inflectional endings indicate the direction of the verbal action. And in Latin, the hierarchy of _what is important_ can be and was recognized by the word order. “Orcevia, Numerius’ wife, for the gift of childbirth, to Fortuna, Jove’s daughter the firstborn, this gift I give.” Strictly speaking Cicero’s best-shaped sentence is not more periodic than that colloquial tablet of a humble woman a century before any Roman scholar thought of studying style. It was not the study of Greek that determined the form of Latin prose.