Long Live Latin aspires to something different than the many grammars, manuals, and lexicons that Latin has inspired during its long life: not to aid, primarily, in understanding the technical mechanisms of the language, but to assist in teasing out its pleasures, in poetry and prose, written and recited. It will deepen any reader’s appreciation of Latin, even those who have little knowledge of it.
The case for Latin is all too often boiled down to a utilitarian norm: Latin will help you expand your vocabulary, think clearly, and read carefully. But Gardini, a native Italian and a Professor of Italian and Comparative Literatures at Oxford, professes a simple and essential love of Latin for what it is, not for what it can do. He delights in every aspect of the language—its own ancestors (Etruscan and proto-Indo-European), its authors, its descendants across the European continent, its phonics, and the now-widespread alphabet it employed.
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