There is a prehistory and a history of the relations between the Greek and Latin languages, with consequences persisting up to the present day. The flow of this influence is predominantly from Greek to Latin. Greek represented for Latin the absolute model of evolution which few could contest, in spite of the purists’ efforts to avoid or reduce borrowing from the first in order to stimulate the internal resources of their own language. Struggling to find a comfortable equilibrium between the nationalists’ hellenophobia and the pedants’ hellenomania, writers as well as political and social actors involved in the creation process of literary Latin succeeded to create one of the most performant instruments of communication which became in turn the model of all the modern languages. Due to the theoretic writings on Greek neologisms and the strongly viable lexical creations he brought about, Cicero’s contribution to upgrading the standards of the Latin language is remarkable.
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