Latinity and Literary Society at Rome

For centuries after the fall of the Roman empire, the ability to write and speak pure Latin was the mark of the true scholar. But although such skill was esteemed in medieval times, the language of ancient Rome was as various as the styles of slaves and masters.

Latinity and Literary Society at Rome reaches back to the early Roman empire to examine attitudes toward latinity, reviewing the contested origins of scholarly Latin in the polemical arena of Roman literature. W. Martin Bloomer shows...