This book makes use of digital corpora to give in-depth details of the
history and development of the spelling of Latin. It focusses on
sub-elite texts in the Roman empire, and reveals that sophisticated
education in this area was not restricted to those at the top of
society. Nicholas Zair studies the history of particular orthographic
features and traces their usage in a range of texts which give insight
into everyday writers of Latin: including scribes and soldiers at
Vindolanda, slaves at Pompeii, members of the Praetorian Guard, and
writers of curse tablets. In doing so, he problematises the use of
'old-fashioned' spelling in dating inscriptions, provides important new
information on sound-change in Latin, and shows how much can be gained
from a detailed sociolinguistic analysis of ancient texts.