In the present paper the author would like to show, through a brief analysis of some textbooks, the most interesting changes in teaching and practising Latin translation as taught in Italian Licei. Nowadays, the tradition of basing Latin versions on a model for the text as an ensemble of syntactic structures is increasingly being abandoned. Similarly the traditional practice of translating by the mere application of morphosyntactic "rules" (Ratione est Usu is the revealing title of a book published twenty years ago) is giving way to practice based on a broader model of the text and its interpretation. Based on a new conception both of text as a cultural item and of translation as a complex interpretation of a text as a whole, the present practice of Latin translation in the Italian school is becoming an increasingly hermeneutic practice.