How to apologise in Latin: a case study

Recent years have seen an increase in sociolinguistic studies of the Latin language devoted to aspects and forms of politeness as part of general linguistic behaviour, and considerable progress has been made overall. One area, albeit central to the notion of politeness, has been conspicuously neglected so far, and this area is best summarised by the term ‘apologies’. This paper aims to remedy this situation and to provide a first extensive case study, based on the textual corpus of Terence.