Joseph Farrell, Latin language and Latin culture, from ancient to modern times. (Roman Literature and its Contexts.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xiv, 148. Hb $54, pb $18.95.

Extract

Latin language and Latin culture is a short, concentrated treatise on the Latin language and its impact, past and present, on those who have come in contact with it. The author is not a linguist, nor is this book written in any way as a contribution to the linguistics or sociolinguistics of Latin. If it were being reviewed from the perspective of Classical philology and literary theory in which it is written, the assessment of it would be very different from the evaluation that follows; so in a sense, my review is biased a priori in that I can approach the issues it raises only from a perspective that is wholly different from that of the author. Nonetheless, a book about language and culture invites the attention of the linguist, and we would be derelict if we were to dismiss it as linguistically uninteresting. Indeed, it is both interesting and provocative.