Fiction
Republican and early imperial Rome knew no Latin fiction beyond such things as Sisenna’s translation of Aristides’ Milesian Tales. But two considerable works have survived from imperial times. Of Petronius’ Satyricon, a rambling picaresque novel, one long extract and some fragments remain. The disreputable characters have varied adventures and talk lively colloquial Latin. The description of the vulgar parvenu Trimalchio’s banquet is justly famous. Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass) has a hero who has accidentally been changed into an ass. After strange adventures he is restored to human shape by the goddess Isis. Many passages, notably the story of Cupid and Psyche, have a beauty that culminates in the apparition of Isis and the initiation of the hero into her mysteries.
Medieval Latin literature
From about 500 to 1500 Latin was the principal language of the church, as well as of administration, theology, philosophy, science, history, biography, and belles lettres, and medieval Latin literature is therefore remarkably rich. Two themes dominate the linguistic and literary development of medieval Latin: its close and creative adaptation of the classical heritage from which it emerged and its changing relationship with the medieval vernacular languages. Within these two broad themes a number of subsidiary yet significant strains can be distinguished: the emergence of national characteristics in the Latin literature produced in different parts of Europe; the refinement of the polarity between popular and learned Latin by the clergy’s use of a colloquialism intelligible to its audience as a lingua franca; and the effect of certain periods of special vigour and artistic self-awareness, such as the Carolingian revival of the 8th and 9th centuries and the new impulse given to learned and vernacular literature in the 12th.