Short answers, pulled from the story.
The first known Latin inscription dates to the 6th century BC and was carved into the Lapis Niger stone. This artifact was discovered in the Roman Forum and predates the traditional founding of Rome in 753 BC.
Latin did not die with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD but underwent a metamorphosis into distinct Romance languages. A written form known as Medieval Latin persisted as the lingua franca of Western and Catholic Europe for over a thousand years.
The Italian humanist Petrarch began to reshape Latin from a dead relic into a living vehicle for new ideas in 1304. This period extended from Petrarch's time to the present day and saw the language become the primary medium for science, law, and philosophy.
The Latin language features seven noun cases including the rare Locative case used for cities and small towns. It also includes four main verb conjugations that dictate the action's timing and nature.
The Second Vatican Council permitted the use of vernacular languages in the Mass from 1962 to 1965. Despite this change, Latin remains the official language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite.
Romance words make up 59 percent of the English vocabulary when excluding compound and derived words. This influence began with the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest which introduced a flood of Latin-derived terms into the English lexicon.