Latin Forms of Address: From Plautus to Apuleius [Hardcover]

Eleanor Dickey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0199242879 | ISBN-13: 978-0199242870

How did Romans address their children, their parents, their slaves, and their patrons? When one Roman called another "dearest," "master," "brother," "human being," "executioner," or "soft little cheese," what did these terms really mean and why? This book brings to bear on such questions a corpus of 15,441 addresses spanning four centuries, drawn from literary prose, poetry, letters, inscriptions, ostraca, and papyri and analyzed using recent work in sociolinguistics. Including a glossary of the 500 most common addresses and quick-reference tables explaining the rules of usage, this original and highly readable work will be enjoyed even by those with no prior knowledge of Latin.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Dickey catalogues and describes with admirable scholarly thoroughness the forms of address used by Romans.... She deserves congratulation for her meticulous, well-written and clearly argued work of reference which provides a remarkable collection of one type of evidence for the Roman obsession with hierarchy and status."--Times Literary Supplement

"Eleanor Dickey's book is the most well researched and meticulously documented study of Latin vocatives, and no one who reads it will ever refer to a vocative as 'just another vocative.'"--New England Classical Journal

About the Author

Assistant Professor of Classics, Columbia University. Her previous work, also published by Oxford University Press was, Greek Forms of Address: From Herodotus to Lucian (1996).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 434 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 4, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199242879
• ISBN-13: 978-0199242870
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #773,140 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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