Customer Reviews

The Latin Language

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The best part about this scholarly book is Palmer's development of the somewhat constricted literary language of Classical Latin out of the wider context of the dialects and varying usages of Latium and its environs. Readers should be aware that this is a historical survey of Latin, not a reference grammar or a book to learn the language from. Prior knowledge of the basics of Latin grammar is assumed.

In tracing the history of the language, the book necessarily gives a history of Roman literary styles, from the age of Cato and Ennius to the Christian period. While this is not a comprehensive treatment of Latin literature, it is informative.

The extensive etymological and comparative information in this book, on the other hand, is somewhat dated, since it was written in a period before the laryngeal theory had thoroughly penetrated Indo-European studies. Its treatment of Latin among the Italic dialects fares somewhat better.

First of all let me declare my satisfaction with the book itself. It is a valuable addition to my Latin shelf, and I particularly appreciate the appendix of archaic Latin material. The detail throughout the book is scholarly and thorough. But two complaints sour my experience of this purchase:

1. Amazon does not reveal that this is simply a reprint of the 1954 Faber & Faber publication. This is shown ONLY on the verso of the title page, which is not visible in the preview! Amazon gives only this for a publication date: "University of Oklahoma Press (April 1988)". Reprehensible.

2. Throughout the book there are abbreviations for key sources. The epigraphs included in the appendix, for example, are all referenced as coming from CIL, but nowhere are we told what CIL, or any other abbreviation, refers to. Well, a search of the web shows that CIL is Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum:

"The CIL (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum) is the most important collection of Latin inscriptions, and is a very important tool for every student of Roman history. It was conceived by Theodor Mommsen (Nobel Prize for literature in 1902) in mid-19th century after dozens years of planning work and attempts. It was published thank the undertaking of the Berlin Academy (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum consilio et auctoritate Academiae litterarum regiae Borussicae editum, Berolini 1863)."

Well, we needed to be told that in this book! Why are we not? It MAY be the fault of the original author and publisher; but my best hypothesis so far is that the republishers simply omitted the usual list of abbreviations provided at the end of the front matter in the original Faber series (see for example the French and Russian volumes). If this is so, that is a serious disservice to readers, and represents an inexcusable decline in publishing standards since the 1950s. We deserve better; indeed, we PAY for better.