The concept of “Latinitas”. A diachronic approach

Abstract

Today, we find it strange to read in history treaties that “The Romans fought wars against the Latins”, as, in the paradigm of our general knowledge, the two entities are one and the same. In reality, the concept of “Latinity” overlapped the concept of “Romanness” only later in history and only partially. Each of the two terms gained different meanings across history and their intersection took on complex forms marked by different manifestation perspectives: geographic-historic; political-military; legal-administrative; linguistic-stylistic; identity-cultural and anthropologic. In the following pages, we propose the creation of an inventory of these perspectives, which are definitory for the concept of “Latinity”.

Keywords

• latinity
• romanness
• linguistic determinations
• socio-cultural determinations