A wide-ranging & highly readable history of Latin between the sixteenth & twentieth centuries - a period when it dominated the civic & sacred worlds of Europe and, arguably, the entire western world. Latin explores the institutional contexts in which the language was adopted & transmitted as well as the privilege it came to confer on those that studied it. Annotation. Though the once burning question of Latin's place in school curricula has been overshadowed by other issues, Waquet (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris) feels the need for a resolutely historical account of the language that is not a pamphlet or an exercise in special pleading. She writes a social history of Latin in the modern era, analyzing the uses made of it and the discourses concerning it. The 1998 Le latin ou l'empire d'un signe, published by Editions Albin Michel, is translated by John Howe.