I realize that there is no good answer to this question. But I just came across the following author Hyginus
Of whom Wiki writes:
an author who was characterized by his modern editor, H. J. Rose, as adulescentem imperitum, semidoctum, stultum—"an ignorant youth, semi-learned, stupid"—but valuable for the use made of works of Greek writers of tragedy that are now lost. Arthur L. Keith, reviewing H. J. Rose's edition (1934) of Hygini Fabulae,[3] wondered "at the caprices of Fortune who has allowed many of the plays of an Aeschylus, the larger portion of Livy's histories, and other priceless treasures to perish, while this school-boy's exercise has survived to become the pabulum of scholarly effort."
After reading the author I find it rather remarkable that he is still quite difficult to understand even more so than St Augustine. The same can also be said for Seneca the Elder's Suasorium and Nepos' Lives, books although written by adults may have been intended for teenagers. Why should this be the case? You would think that if such books were intended for teenagers or written by teenagers than they would be easy to read but they really aren't at least relative to Saint Augustine's Confessions or Jerome's Bible or Isidor of Seville (another late author that I'm familiar with).
My best guess for why this should be the case is that the word order or way of viewing the world or the types of ideas we put together is more or less the same in all western European languages. I'm going to call this a conceptual scheme. As time goes by the peoples of Western Europe gradually adopted this conceptual scheme. For this reason, closeness in time to the modern conceptual scheme is a more important factor in determining intelligibility than the number of years of a certain author.
Hyginus, myth., Fabulae pr.1.1
latin.packhum.org
Of whom Wiki writes:
an author who was characterized by his modern editor, H. J. Rose, as adulescentem imperitum, semidoctum, stultum—"an ignorant youth, semi-learned, stupid"—but valuable for the use made of works of Greek writers of tragedy that are now lost. Arthur L. Keith, reviewing H. J. Rose's edition (1934) of Hygini Fabulae,[3] wondered "at the caprices of Fortune who has allowed many of the plays of an Aeschylus, the larger portion of Livy's histories, and other priceless treasures to perish, while this school-boy's exercise has survived to become the pabulum of scholarly effort."
After reading the author I find it rather remarkable that he is still quite difficult to understand even more so than St Augustine. The same can also be said for Seneca the Elder's Suasorium and Nepos' Lives, books although written by adults may have been intended for teenagers. Why should this be the case? You would think that if such books were intended for teenagers or written by teenagers than they would be easy to read but they really aren't at least relative to Saint Augustine's Confessions or Jerome's Bible or Isidor of Seville (another late author that I'm familiar with).
My best guess for why this should be the case is that the word order or way of viewing the world or the types of ideas we put together is more or less the same in all western European languages. I'm going to call this a conceptual scheme. As time goes by the peoples of Western Europe gradually adopted this conceptual scheme. For this reason, closeness in time to the modern conceptual scheme is a more important factor in determining intelligibility than the number of years of a certain author.