Late Antiquity

Cassiodorus was a prominent participant in the political, intellectual, and religious life of 6th-century ce Italy, and a learned scholar of the classical and Christian traditions. As a member of the administration of the Gothic government under Theoderic and his successors, he advanced through what may be considered the late-Roman cursus honorum. He was also witness to the dramatic political and religious debates of the day, including volatile interactions between the royal court at Ravenna, the Senate at Rome, and the emperor in Constantinople. Justinian’s Gothic War in Italy effectively ended his political career, after which he first became an exile in Constantinople, and then the founder of a school for Christian learning (Vivarium) on his ancestral estates in southern Italy. The literary works that he produced span the spectrum of his personal experiences and attest to the intellectual and cultural range of people living during the 6th century: panegyrics, a chronicle, ethnography, letters, treatises on reading, grammars, Christian exegesis, and ecclesiastical history.

Felix, Flavius, Latin poet of senatorial rank. His verses, often unclassical in quantity, include a poem on baths built by Thrasamond, *Vandal king in Africa ( 496–523ce).

Iulius Valerius Alexander Polemius, author in the mid-4th cent. ce of an extant Latin version of the Greek Alexander Romance of *Pseudo-Callisthenes. Its style shows some colourful and archaic features, imitating earlier poets and Apuleius.

Palladius (1), Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus, author of the only surviving agricultural treatise from late antiquity (c. mid-5th cent. ce: the date is disputed) in 15 books: book 1 contains 32 wide-ranging short topics; books 2–13 outline the year's work by month; book 14 treats veterinary matters, book 15 (in elegiacs) grafting. Palladius owned properties in Italy near Rome, 3. 25. 20) and Sardinia (4. 10. 16) and possibly Gaul (cf. the detailed description of a Gallic reaping machine, 7. 2. 2–4). His practical experience (cf. 2. 2. 1; 4. 10. 24) ensured a critical approach to his main sources *Columella and *Gargilius Martialis (cf. 1. 28. 5, 4. 10. 16). The purposefully plain prose style (cf. 1. 1. 1) and absence of discussion of slaves (except for 1. 6. 18) suggest that he was writing instructions for a workforce of free tenants—against a background of agricultural recession (cf. 3. 18. 6; 7. 1).

Pentadius (3rd or 4th cent. ce), author of elegiac poems in ‘echoic’ or ‘serpentine’ verse (where the opening words of each hexameter are repeated as the second half of the following pentameter) on fortune, spring, and *Narcissus (1), and (less certainly) of a number of short epigrams.

Author of an Ars de nomine et verbo (ed. Keil, Gramm. Lat. 5. 410–39) and a Vita Vergilii in hexameters (often published, e.g. in Baehrens, PLM 5. 85). A De aspiratione attributed to him (ed. Keil, Gramm. Lat. 5. 439–41) is apocryphal.

Pompeius (late 5th–early 6th cent. ce), African grammarian, commented on *Donatus (1)'s ars (GL 5. 95–312), perhaps also on *Virgil and *Terence (very uncertain).

Priscian was the most prolific and important member of the late Latin grammarians. His grammatical works have been edited by Heinrich Keil (Grammatici Latini 2, 3), and they amount to over 1,000 printed pages in all.

Born in Mauretania, Priscian spent most of his life as a teacher of Latin in *Constantinople (Byzantium), then the capital of the eastern Roman empire. His surviving works include the Institutio de nomine et pronomine et verbo, the Praeexercitamina, a set of grammatical exercises based on each first line of the twelve books of the Aeneid, and the Institutiones grammaticae. The Institutio was an important authority for the teaching of Latin in the early Middle Ages before the much longer and more comprehensive Institutiones (974 printed pages) became widely known in and after the Carolingian age.

This work comprises eighteen books, the first sixteen setting out, after a brief introduction to orthography, the eight Latin word classes (parts of speech) in great detail. Books 17 and 18 provide an account of the syntax of Latin, the first systematic treatment of Latin syntax of which we have knowledge.