Croatian Latin literature Known by his contemporaries as the new Lucretius. Encouraged by this success, in Rome Stay began to expound Newtonian philosophy and scientific discoveries in verse. The finished poem, with more than 24,000 lines, was entitled "Ten Books of Philosophy in Verse" ("Philosophiae recentioris versibus traditae libri decem", 1755–1792). During the 19th century, Latin literature began to disappear throughout Europe, and in the 20th century (in spite of individual efforts) it almost completely disappeared. A Croatian Latinist of this period was Ton Smerdel (1904–1970), a classical philologist who has published seven books of Latin verse by modern neo-Latin poets. Croatian Latin
Bible translations into Latin used Latin translations of fragments of the Hebrew Bible. The earliest known translations into Latin consist of a number of piecework translations during the early Church period. Collectively, these versions are known as the "Vetus Latina" and closely follow the Greek Septuagint. The Septuagint was the usual source for these anonymous translators, and they reproduce its variations from the Hebrew Masoretic Text. They were never rendered independently from the Hebrew or Greek; they vary widely in readability and quality, and contain many solecisms in idiom, some by the translators themselves, others from literally translating Greek language idioms into Latin. Earlier