Overview

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 analysed during recent work in sociolinguistics. The results offer new insights into Roman culture and shed a fresh light on the interpretation of numerous passages in literature. A glossary of the 500 most common addresses and quick-reference tables explaining the rules of usage make this book a valuable resource for Latin teachers and all active users of the language, while the evidence for the investigations behind these conclusions will fascinate scholars and laymen alike. Original, jargon-free, and highly readable, this work will be enjoyed even by those with no prior knowledge of Latin.

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9780199242870

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Dickey has done a splendid job of reducing to quite readable prose what to many might seem at first blush an untractable topic ... deft deployment of evidence, clarity of thought, and elegance of expression. Journal of Sociolinguistics Dickey has done an excellent job once again of assembling, organizing, and analysing an astonishing amount of material. Journal of Roman Studies It takes a certain kind of person to write a book about vocatives. It takes a very special certain kind of person to make it a good book. And it takes Eleanor Dickey to follow up the best monograph we have on Ancient Greek sociolinguistics, Greek Forms of Address from Herodotus to Lucian (1996), with what is at least on the surface a repeat peformance for Latin. Journal of Roman Studies A most welcome sequel to her Greek Forms of Address which was very well received ... a truly learned work which must become the standard work on the topic. Greece & Rome Eleanor 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. Stephen Harrison, Times Literary Supplement

Author Information

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).

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