In a composition a little girl once wrote: "Lady Jane Grey studied Greek and Latin, and a few days thereafter she died." In a more scholarly source, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, there is record of another fatality in a battle with Greek and Latin. An epitaph by a father runs as follows: "To Dalmatius, his very dear son, a boy of remarkable talent and learning, whose unhappy father was not permitted to enjoy his companionship for even seven full years, for, after studying Greek without an instructor, he took up Latin in addition, and in three days' time he was snatched from the world. Dalmatius, his father, set up this stone." The African Emperor Septimius Severus was shrewder. He kept his foreign accent till his old age. He never mastered Latin and Latin never mastered him.
Eugene McCartney, "Was Latin Difficult For a Roman?", The Classical Journal 23, 3: 163-182.
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