Editing Old Latin (section)

===The old-time language===
The concept of Old Latin (''Prisca Latinitas'') is as old as the concept of Classical Latin – both labels date to at least as early as the late [[Roman Republic]]. In that period [[Cicero]], along with others, noted that the language he used every day, presumably upper-class city Latin, included lexical items and phrases that were heirlooms from a previous time, which he called ''verborum vetustas prisca'',<ref>''De Oratoribus'', I.193.</ref> translated as "the old age/time of language".

In the classical period, ''Prisca Latinitas'', ''Prisca Latina'' and other [[idiom]]s using the adjective always meant these remnants of a previous language, which, in Roman [[philology]], was taken to be much older in fact than it really was. ''Viri prisci'', "old-time men", meant the population of [[Latium]] before the [[founding of Rome]].