Note 20 — Chapter III · DANTE’S LATIN WORKS

This southern idiom (nostrum ydioma, i. 10)—from which Dante apparently regards both classical Latin and the modern romance languages derived—would be what we now call Vulgar Latin; but he restricts the phrase vulgare latinum (or latium) to Italian, which—when discussing the rival claims of the three vernaculars to pre-eminence—he rightly recognises to be closest to classical Latin.