It is the foundation for the French, Spanish, and Italian languages and many of its words have been incorporated into other languages. As a language, Latin possessed qualities of clarity and order that made it suitable not only for literature, but as a vehicle for the structured phrasing and discipline which were requisites for the formal language of church and government documents. The discipline of the language may account for the fact that the usually practical and often unimaginative Romans developed the form of literature we call satire. The purpose of satire is to poke fun at a person or event. The target of satire in the later years of the empire was Roman society, and the writer Juvenal developed the genre to a high degree with his merciless criticism of Rome as decadent and depraved.
Satire needs precise words and phrasing to make it strike home effectively.
Latin as a language is no longer spoken, but it endures now, as it has for centuries, through the writings of Roman historians and poets. Vergil's the Aeneid , an epic poem about the founding of Rome by refugees from Greek- destroyed Troy, effectively blends myth and fact. It became a standard handbook for every student in the empire. Today it is appreciated by scholars for its literary excellence and grandeur of scope. Much of what we know of early Rome, especially its military expeditions, has been learned by reading the historians Tacitus, Sallust, Julius Caesar, and others.