section_path: Society/Language
section_name: Language
paragraph_text: Language
  
  There was never an official language of the Empire, however, Latin and Greek were the main languages. During the early years of the Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek had been useful to pass the requirements to be an educated noble, and knowledge of Latin was useful for a career in the military, government, or law. In the east, Greek was the dominant language, a legacy of the Hellenistic period. Greek was also the language of the Christian Church and trade.
  
  Most early emperors were bilingual but had a preference for Latin in the public sphere for political reasons, a practice that first started during the Punic Wars. Classical languages expert Bruno Rochette claims Latin had experienced a period of spread from the second century BC onwards, and especially so in the western provinces, but not as much in the eastern provinces with a change due to Diocletian's reforms: there was a decline in the knowledge of Greek in the west, and Latin was asserted as the language of power in the east.
  
  Despite this, Greek's influence gradually grew in the government, beginning when Arcadius in 397 AD allowed judges to issue decisions in Greek, Theodosius II in 439 expanded its use in legal procedures, the first law in Greek was issued in 448, and when Leo I legislated in the language in the 460s. Justinian I 's Corpus Juris Civilis, a compilation of mostly Roman jurists, was written almost entirely in Latin; however, the laws issued after 534, from Justinian's Novellae Constitutiones onwards, were in both Greek and Latin, which marks the year when the government also officially began to use the former language.
  
  Historian Nikolaos Oikonomides states that Greek for a time became diglossic with the spoken language, known as Koine (later, Demotic Greek), used alongside an older written form (Attic Greek) until Koine won out as the spoken and written standard. Latin fragmented into the incipient Romance languages in the 8th century, following the collapse of the Western Empire after the Muslim invasions broke the connection between speakers. During the reign of Justinian (r. 527–565), Latin disappeared in the east, though it may have lingered in the military until Heraclius (r. 610–641). Historian Steven Runciman claims contact with Western Europe in the 10th century revived Latin studies, and by the 11th century, knowledge of Latin was no longer unusual in Constantinople.
  
  Many other languages are attested in the Empire, not just in Constantinople but also at its frontiers. They include Syriac, Coptic, Slavonic, Armenian, Georgian, Illyrian, Thracian, and Celtic; these were typically the languages of the lower strata of the population and the illiterate, who were the vast majority. The Empire was a multi-lingual state, but Greek bound everyone, and the forces of assimilation would lead to the diversity of its peoples' languages declining over time.