Introduction

Abstract

The theme of this volume is “tradition” versus “reception” in classical studies. It is a volume conceived out of the need to delineate the difference between those terms frequently and often interchangeably used. The authors attempted to capture the two ideas “in action,” as they emerge in history, as a way of imbuing the cultural models of diverse peoples with Greco‑Roman style and inspiration. The contributors to the present volume did not limit their research to practices and ambitions of elites, but, as in the case of Paweł Madejski in “Latin in the Contemporary Polish ‘Street Epigraphy’,” they literally chased pavements looking for evidence of Latin being absorbed and digested by the lowest cultural strata (Fragment tekstu).