The primary aim of any literary history is to foster a deeper appreciation of the creative writing which it describes; to define the qualities of the works themselves must be its main concern. Roman literature, however, demands the reader's attention for a second reason, because more than any other national literature it has dictated the forms and modes of thought of subsequent European letters. For more than fifteen centuries after Virgil and Livy, Latin remained the learned language of Europe, constantly evoking the great auctores of the classical period. Then, side by side with the Latin writings of the High Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the vernacular literatures of the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries likewise boast their proud descent from the antique Romans, who continue to breathe inspiration into Western letters after the Renaissance. This epilogue concerns itself chiefly with the medieval period and the more important classical influences within it.

The ways in which the Latin classics impinged on the imaginative experience of later generations were shaped by a complex of political, economic and social factors but above all by the emergence of dominant Christian thinkers in the fourth-century West. These Christian leaders, emerging shortly after the establishment of Christianity as the favoured religion of the state, exploited their education in classical eloquence to proclaim the superiority of Christian beliefs over traditional Roman values. As Christians they inherited attitudes towards classical literature in which the denunciation of a Tertullian rang louder than the approval of a Lactantius; as educated Romans they found their modes of thought and powers of expression moulded by the authors they sought to reject.