Many can still be seen today. As the Roman empire grew, the Latin language stretched to all parts of the empire. Latin is the basis for the languages of French, Spanish, Portugese, Italian and Romanian. These languages are called the Romance languages. Even the German and English languages have gotten words from Latin.
Most European languages use the original Latin alphabet.
The Greeks borrowed their alphabet from the Phonecians. The Greek alphabet was then borrowed and changed by the Romans. Although most people in Ancient Rome did not know how to read or write, they developed an important body of literature . Virgil, the Roman poet, greatly admired Homer's epics. Emperor Octavian gave Virgil a large sum of money to write an epic about Rome's beginnings.