works are lost) were Q. Mucius Scaevola, who died in 82 B.C., and following him Ser. Sulpicius Rufus, who died in 43 B.C. In the Augustan age M. Antistius Labeo and C. Ateius Jurists. Capito headed two opposing schools in jurisprudence, Labeo being an advocate of method and reform, and Capito being a conservative and empiricist. The strife, which reflects the controversy between the “analogists” and the “anomalists” in philology, continued long after their death. Salvius Julianus was entrusted by Hadrian with the task of reducing into shape the immense mass of law which had grown up in the edicts of successive praetors—thus taking the first step towards a code. Sex. Pomponius, a contemporary, wrote an important legal manual of which fragments are preserved. The most celebrated handbook, however, is the Institutiones of Gaius, who lived under Antonius Pius—a model of what such treatises should be. The most eminent of all the Roman jurists was Aemilius Papinianus, the intimate friend of Septimius Severus; of his works only fragments remain. Other considerable writers were the prolific Domitius Ulpianus (c. 215) and Julius Paulus, his contemporary. The last juristical writer of note was Herennius Modestinus (c. 240). But though the line of great lawyers had ceased, the effects of their work remained and are clearly visible long after in the “codes”—the code of Theodosius (438) and the still more famous code of Justinian (529 and 533), with which is associated the name of Tribonianus.
Bibliography.—The most full and satisfactory modern account of Latin literature is M. Schanz’s Geschichte der römischen Litteratur. The best in English is the translation by C. C. Warr of W. S. Teuffel and L. Schwabe’s History of Roman Literature. J. W. Mackail’s short History of Latin Literature is full of excellent literary and aesthetic criticisms on the writers. C. Lamarre’s Histoire de la littérature latine (1901, with specimens) only deals with the writers of the republic. W. Y. Sellar’s Roman Poets of the Republic and Poets of the Augustan Age, and R. Y. Tyrrell’s Lectures on Latin Poetry, will also be found of service. A concise account of the various Latin writers and their works, together with bibliographies, is given in J. E. B. Mayor’s Bibliographical Clue to Latin Literature (1879), which is based on a German work by E. Hübner. See also the separate bibliographies to the articles on individual writers. (W. Y. S.; J. P. P.)
LATINUS, in Roman legend, king of the aborigines in Latium, and eponymous hero of the Latin race. In Hesiod (Theogony, 1013) he is the son of Odysseus and Circe, and ruler of the Tyrsenians; in Virgil, the son of Faunus and the nymph Marica, a national genealogy being substituted for the Hesiodic, which probably originated from a Greek source. Latinus was a shadowy personality, invented to explain the origin of Rome and its relations with Latium, and only obtained importance in later times through his legendary connexion with Aeneas and the foundation of Rome. According to Virgil (Aeneid, vii.-xii.), Aeneas, on landing at the mouth of the Tiber, was welcomed by Latinus, the peaceful ruler whose seat of government was Laurentum, and ultimately married his daughter Lavinia.
Other accounts of Latinus, differing considerably in detail, are to be found in the fragments of Cato’s Origines (in Servius’s commentary on Virgil) and in Dionysius of Halicarnassus; see further authorities in the article by J. A. Hild, in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités.
LATITUDE (Lat. latitudo, latus, broad), a word meaning breadth or width, hence, figuratively, freedom from restriction, but more generally used in the geographical and astronomical sense here treated. The latitude of a point on the earth’s surface is its angular distance from the equator, measured on the curved surface of the earth. The direct measure of this distance being impracticable, it has to be determined by astronomical observations. As thus determined it is the angle between the direction of the plumb-line at the place and the plane of the equator. This is identical with the angle between the horizontal planes at the place and at the equator, and also with the elevation of the celestial pole above the horizon (see Astronomy). Latitude thus determined by the plumb-line is termed astronomical. The geocentric latitude of a place is the angle which the line from the earth’s centre to the place makes with the plane of the equator. Geographical latitude, which is used in mapping, is based on the supposition that the earth is an elliptic spheroid of known compression, and is the angle which the normal to this spheroid makes with the equator. It differs from the astronomical latitude only in being corrected for local deviation of the plumb-line.
The latitude of a celestial object is the angle which the line drawn from some fixed point of reference to the object makes with the plane of the ecliptic.
Variability of Terrestrial Latitudes.—The latitude of a point on the earth’s surface, as above defined, is measured from the equator. The latter is defined by the condition that its plane makes a right angle with the earth’s axis of rotation. It follows that if the points in which this axis intersects the earth’s surface, i.e. the poles of the earth, change their positions on the earth’s surface, the position of the equator will also change, and therefore the latitudes of places will change also. About the end of the 19th century research showed that there actually was a very minute but measurable periodic change of this kind. The north and south poles, instead of being fixed points on the earth’s surface, wander round within a circle about 50 ft. in diameter. The result is a variability of terrestrial latitudes generally.
To show the cause of this motion, let BQ represent a section of an oblate spheroid through its shortest axis, PP. We may consider this spheroid to be that of the earth, the ellipticity being greatly exaggerated. If set in rotation around its axis of figure PP, it will continue to rotate around that axis for an indefinite time. But if, instead of rotating around PP, it rotates around some other axis, RR,
making a small angle, POR, with the axis of figure PP; then it has been known since the time of Euler that the axis of rotation RR, if referred to the spheroid regarded as fixed, will gradually rotate round the axis of figure PP in a period defined in the following way:—If we put C = the moment of momentum of the spheroid around the axis of figure, and A = the corresponding moment around an axis passing through the equator EQ, then, calling one day the period of rotation of the spheroid, the axis RR will make a revolution around PP in a number of days represented by the fraction C/(C − A). In the case of the earth, this ratio is 1/0.0032813 or 305. It follows that the period in question is 305 days.
Up to 1890 the most careful observations and researches failed to establish the periodicity of such a rotation, though there was strong evidence of a variation of latitude. Then S. C. Chandler, from an elaborate discussion of a great number of observations, showed that there was really a variation of the latitude of the points of observation; but, instead of the period being 305 days, it was about 428 days. At first sight this period seemed to be inconsistent with dynamical theory. But a defect was soon found in the latter, the correction of which reconciled the divergence. In deriving a period of 305 days the earth is regarded as an absolutely rigid body, and no account is taken either of its elasticity or of the mobility of the ocean. A study of the figure will show that the centrifugal force round the axis RR will act on the equatorial protuberance of the rotating earth so as to make it tend in the direction of the arrows. A slight deformation of the earth will thus result; and the axis of figure of the distorted spheroid will no longer be PP, but a line P′P′ between PP and RR. As the latter moves round, P′P′ will continually follow it through the incessant change of figure produced by the change in the direction of the centrifugal force. Now the rate of motion of RR is determined by the actual figure at the moment. It is therefore less than the motion in an absolutely rigid spheroid in the proportion RP′ : RP. It is found that, even though the earth were no more elastic than steel, its yielding combined with the mobility of the ocean would make this ratio about 2 : 3, resulting in an increase of the period by one-half, making it about 457 days. Thus this small flexibility is even
