Dickey E. Latin Forms of Address: From Plautus to Apuleius

Oxford University Press, 2002. — 434 p. — ISBN: 0199242879.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.