id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
en-wikipedia-org-8936		Latin literature - Wikipedia			.html	text/html	3602	650	62	Latin was the language of the ancient Romans, but it was also the lingua franca of Western Europe throughout the Middle Ages, so Latin literature includes not only Roman authors like Cicero, Vergil, Ovid and Horace, but also includes European writers after the fall of the Empire, from religious writers like Aquinas (1225–1274), to secular writers like Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), and Isaac Newton (1642–1727). The first Latin poet to write on a Roman theme was Gnaeus Naevius during the 3rd century BC.[citation needed] He composed an epic poem about the first Punic War, in which he had fought. Cato also wrote the first Latin history of Rome and of other Italian cities.[4] He was the first Roman statesman to put his political speeches in writing as a means of influencing public opinion. Early Latin literature ended with Gaius Lucilius, who created a new kind of poetry in his 30 books of Satires (2nd century BC).	./cache/en-wikipedia-org-8936.html	./txt/en-wikipedia-org-8936.txt