What language was spoken by the Roman Empire?
Languages of the Roman Empire
The dominance of Latin and Greek among the literate elite may obscure the continuity of spoken languages, since all cultures within the Roman Empire were predominantly oral. In areas where Syriac, Coptic, Hebrew and Aramaic were spoken, they coexisted with Greek.
Sicilia (Roman province)
With the establishment of six Roman "coloniae" at the beginning of the Imperial period, Sicily received a large influx of Latin speakers for the first time and a Latin-Greek bilingualism developed which continued until the Byzantine period. Generally, in the Imperial period, Latin replaced Greek in an ever-increasing number of areas, while Greek was confined to lower registers, although it retained its historic prestige and was widely used by the population. Latin became firmly established as the elite language, with Calpurnius Siculus, , and Julius Firmicus Maternus producing literary works in Latin, although there are also examples of Sicilian authors who wrote in Greek during the Imperial period, such as Pantaenus, Aristocles of Messene, Probus of Lilybaeum, and Citharius. In this period the non-Greek languages must have definitively disappeared, although Punic may still have been spoken at the end of the Imperial period based on the testimony of Apuleius. Numerous Jewish and Samaritan communities are attested on the island in the Imperial period, although they usually appear in the record using Greek or Latin. From the 5th century the Greek 
language appears to have experienced a recovery that lasted into the period of Muslim domination.