effect of substituting Greek for Latin as the language of
administration in the East. On the other hand, the growth of the papal
power in the West favoured the establishment of Latin as the sole
language of the West, to the neglect of Greek. Thus East and West were
then divided in language, and Latin became universal in the West. In
Anglo-Saxon, the people of the Eastern Empire are characterised simply
as the Greeks (Crecas).

The heart of the new Latin literature was in the Scripture translations.
Many exercised themselves in translating, especially the New Testament.
Augustine says the translations were beyond number. But the central and
best known of these many versions is thought to have been made in
Africa. In A.D. 382, Damasus, the bishop of Rome, induced
Jerome to undertake that work of revision which produced the Latin
Bible, which is the only one now generally known, and which is called
the Vulgata, that is to say, the received version. Older italic
versions, so far as they are extant, are now to us among the most
interesting of Christian antiquities. In the early centuries, and
throughout the whole Middle Age, the Scriptures took rank above all
literature, and their influence is everywhere felt.

The sack of Rome (A.D. 410) drew forth from the pagans a fresh
outcry against Christianity. They sought to trace the misery of the
times to the vengeance of the neglected gods. This accusation evoked
from St. Augustine the greatest of all the apologetic treatises, namely,
his "City of God" (De Civitate Dei). This great work exhibits the
writer's mature and final opinions, and it may be said to represent the
maturity and culmination of that Latin literature which began after
A.D. 166, and continued to progress until it was half quenched
in barbarian darkness. The "City of God" has been called the first