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
Greek East and Latin West Mediterranean as having an East/West cultural split. Cultures associated with the historical Iberians, Goths, Franks, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Celts, West Slavs and the historical Roman Catholic Church (Central and Western Europe) have traditionally been considered "Western"; these cultures adopted Latin as their lingua franca in the Middle Ages. Cultures associated with the Byzantine and Russian Empires (Greeks, Orthodox Slavs (East and South Slavs), Romanians and to a lesser extent Albanians) have traditionally been considered "Eastern"; these cultures all used Greek or Old Church Slavonic as a lingua franca during the early Middle Ages. In the classical context, "Greek East" refers to