This is the third edited volume to have come out of the ERC-funded LatinNow project, directed by Alex Mullen, one of the editors; it follows on from A. Mullen (ed.), Social Factors in the Latinization of the Roman West (2023) and A. Mullen and G. Woodhuysen (eds), Languages and Communities in the Late-Roman and Post-Imperial Western Provinces (2023). The project has also resulted in the two-volume Manual of Roman Everyday Writing (2021).

The focus of this volume is the provinces of Britain, Gaul, the Spains and the Germanies, from the time when these began to come into significant contact with the Romans (i.e. roughly the first century b.c. except for Spain, in which this contact came earlier), and the process of Latinisation that these areas consequently underwent. Latinisation is quite specifically considered from the perspective of language, and particularly writing. So, the (intertwined) questions that remain top of mind for the authors of individual chapters cluster around the development and extent of literacy, the learning of Latin and the extent of bilingualism, and how far Roman cultural manifestations of literacy were adopted and adapted by peoples in these areas.

After an introductory chapter by Mullen (‘Exploring life and languages in the Roman Western provinces: methods, materials, and mindsets’), we get three chapters focusing on Spain (‘Indigenous languages, bilingualism, and literacy in Hispania Citerior, third century b.c.e.–first century c.e.’, Noemí Moncunill; ‘The rise of Latin in Hispania Ulterior, third century b.c.e.–second century c.e.’, María José Estarán Tolosa and Javier Herrera Rando; ‘The epigraphic habit in post-conquest Hispania: a geospatial analysis of the epigraphic data and self-governing communities’, Pieter Houten), five on Gaul and Germany (‘The languages and epigraphies of Iron Age and Roman Gaul’, Alex Mullen; ‘The onomastics of the Batavian civitas in the context of the Latinization of Gallia Belgica and Germania Inferior’, Marie-Thérèse Raepsaet-Charlier; ‘Literacy in Gaul: the value of instrumentum’, Michel Feugère and Anna Willi; ‘Writing Latin in Germania Superior’, Anna Willi; ‘Writing equipment and Latin literacy in the Netherlands: an archaeological perspective’, Jasper de Bruin) and one on Britain (‘Languages and literacies in Roman Britain’, Alex Mullen), along with a concluding ‘Intermezzo’ by Greg Woolf. The thorough coverage, from a number of different perspectives, means that this volume will surely now become an essential work on literacy and language contact in the Roman Empire, especially since it is available via open access. Particularly valuable, it seems to me, are the chapters on Spain, where there have been great advances in the understanding of the language and orthography of the various indigenous languages in recent years, but often published in venues which are easy for the anglophone world to overlook.

Abstracting away from the details of the individual contributions (all of which are of a very high standard), the book also presents a strong and fairly explicit message about the kind(s) of methodology required to do this kind of research. This is laid out in detail in the first chapter, and the subsequent chapters act as case studies for the approach. The book is one of the best demonstrations that I have yet seen of the ways in which large-scale digital databases and corpora allow things to be done, more or less in the blink of an eye, which in the past could have been a life’s work, if they could be done at all. The number of maps and figures that the various authors have managed to produce is truly remarkable.

However, the book is completely clear-eyed about the problems involved in using this information, whether they involve meta-data (duplication of records, information that is messy, inaccurate or simply missing) or distortions caused by patterns of excavation or differing approaches to the recording of small finds. It also recognises that there are things that big data cannot tell us — for instance, that the development of the lapidary habit of funerary/dedicatory/official epigraphy under Roman influence is not the same thing as the development of literacy; and that we must not lose sight of the information that small collections or individual items can tell us. This is particularly obvious when considering the writing of Lusitanian (101–6) or of British Celtic (396–400); for these languages, the size of the corpora of texts written in the language has increased by half (Lusitanian, from four to six) or doubled (British Celtic, from two to four!) in the last quarter-century, with major effects on our understanding of them and their socio-cultural-linguistic contexts.

In lieu of a deep dive, which space does not permit, I offer a couple of observations. Raepsaet-Charlier’s chapter gathers Batavian names, with some individuals adopting wholly Roman nomenclature, others ‘cover-names’ which translate Celtic or Germanic into Latin equivalents, and some retaining their original names (at least as part of their nomenclature). Quite a number of these retained names have elements which, although not etymologically Latin, resemble Latin names or words, for instance the gentilicium Divius (whose bearer’s cognomen is Taurus, perhaps originally Celtic Tarvos?), Flavus and the gentilicium Flavius (derived from the Germanic Flaus), Tullio. I wonder if these similarities, which perhaps allowed the name to be seen as both Latin and another language, were another tactic adopted as part of the process of Latinisation. It would also be interesting to investigate whether women’s names tended to stay un-Latinised for longer (note Mullen’s discussion of Gaulish being preserved in female-dominated contexts, 202). The same article (233) mentions the Celticisation of Germanic-speaking populations: this provides a helpful reminder that Latinisation, although perhaps the process most visible to us, was not the only game in town. Greg Woolf’s ‘Intermezzo’ (411) raises the prospect of studying Roman military writing from Italy, as well as the provinces. In this connection, I note that the Caecilius Jucundus tablets from Pompeii contain the autograph of P. Alfenus Varus (CIL 4.3340.45), at the time the first centurion of the praetorian cohorts, subsequently praetorian prefect under Vitellius, whose spelling is interestingly substandard.

The book is not entirely without typos and mistakes. I mention a handful which are of some consequence: Varr., Ling. 5.16 (111 n. 12) should be 5.162, and Iunonis should be read for lunonis; Tigaranus should be Trigaranus (187); on page 290 we are told ‘the second, probably related, graffito was inscribed above the drawing (not pictured in Fig. 8.7)’: it is pictured. The right-hand side of figure 1.3 (7) represents ‘the language that we believe may have been spoken by the majority of the population in the sixth century c.e.’: it is incongruous, therefore that the map features Breton (alongside ‘British Celtic’, ‘Latin’, ‘Germanic’ and ‘Vascon’), at a time when Breton was certainly not to be distinguished from Cornish, and which may well predate the split between Breton and Cornish on the one hand and Welsh on the other. We are told (186) that the sequence Sacer Perocọ in a Gaulish inscription may mean ‘Sacer son of Perocos’ or ‘Sacer and Peroco’; if Perocọ is a patronymic, then the father’s name must have been something like Per(r)os.

These minor cavils do not undermine the great usefulness of the book, and its major contributions to both the theory and practice of looking at linguistic and cultural change in the age of big data.