Nevertheless, Latin literature is of immense importance. We may think of the prodigious historical significance of the pagan Roman Empire, and then of the prodigious spiritual significance of the Christian Roman Church. We may think of the impress that has been left on all Western Europe by these, and remember that the language of each is Latin. The necessity of not neglecting the mere language is obvious. But we are here concerned with Latin literature, of which the language is but the vehicle. * * * * * Where does Latin literature begin and end? Writing in Latin has not ended yet. But we shall for the present confine ourselves to the Latin works of pagan Rome, in the days when Rome can fairly be called a nation of tolerably homogeneous life and pursuits. Though the writings of Tertullian, Lactantius, Jerome and Augustine, in the third and fourth centuries, are undeniably Latin, and literature also, we can on this principle draw a tolerably clear line against them. Similarly the later poets, such as Ausonius, Claudian, and Boethius, lie outside the scope of the present chapter. From the third century B.C. onwards, the Latin-speaking Romans, beginning as a mere clan in central Italy, spread their empire gradually over the peninsula, over France, Spain and Portugal, over Great Britain to the Grampians, across the Rhine, along the Danube, over modern Turkey and Greece, over Asia Minor and Syria to the river Euphrates, over most of Arabia, Egypt, and all the southern coast of the Mediterranean. In Spain and Portugal, in France, and in Roumania they planted colonies and settlements, till the languages of those countries actually became Latin; dialects, no doubt, but Latin. Over all this empire Latin literature spread with the spreading of control and settlement, and in the first century of our era it was as natural for a Latin writer to hail from Spain as from Rome. Persons no less than Seneca, Lucan, Quintilian, and Martial are Spaniards from towns later known as Cordova, Calahorra and Bambola. Subsequently Africa (Tunis) and Gaul have their distinguished representatives. Considerations like these should make it clear how vast an influence Latin literature must have wielded both directly and indirectly. The modern languages of France, Spain, Portugal, Roumania, and Italy are various continuations of the Latin; and France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, despite all historical changes, have been neither able nor desirous to shake off the guidance and impulses of Latin literature. This is one reason why it is the French and Italians who find their chief study in Virgil and Horace, Cicero and Seneca, whereas the Teutons, exerting a greater freedom of choice, more distinctly recognize the superiority of Homer and Sappho, Demosthenes and Aeschylus.