As well as being in the front rank of teachers and reformers, Erasmus was also a great writer of Latin and an outstanding figure in the history of Latin literature. In the range of his style, his command of language, the variety of subjects he covered, and the very size of his output, Erasmus can arguably only be compared to Cicero. Like Cicero, he achieved a position of such eminence that even within his own lifetime anything he wrote was in demand. Erasmus came at the end of a long series of writers, stretching back to the Dark Ages, who kept Latin alive as a medium of literary composition, and without whose efforts the rediscovery of Classical authors in the Renaissance would have borne little fruit. Originally published in 1970, this volume includes chapters on the importance of Erasmus as an interpreter of the Classics, as a satirist and as a writer of letters. There is an account of his work as a Biblical scholar and religious reformer, an examination of his linguistic style and a discussion of the medieval background and the significance of Erasmus to contemporary times.