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Article

grammar, grammarians, Latin  

Thomas J. Keeline

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Latin Literature
  2. Linguistics

For the Romans, “grammar” (grammatica) encompassed the study of both language and literature. Although its precise origins are unclear, Latin grammar in its developed form—and in the only form that survives in the early 21st century—is a Romanised version of a Greek discipline, with the Greek influence pervasive and everywhere visible.

The word grammarian (grammaticus) was applied especially to professional teachers of Latin to children—native speakers at first but, in late antiquity, increasing numbers of non-native speakers too. According to Quintilian, the grammaticus had two tasks: to instruct his charges in correct Latinity and to elucidate the texts of the poets. In fact, these two tasks were bound up in each other: proper usage was shown by citations from approved authors, and approved authors were explicated particularly to illustrate proper usage. In teaching students about Latin with reference to the canonical authority of the past, the grammarian was also teaching students how to be good Romans in the traditional mould.

Article

Terentius Varro, Marcus  

Robert A. Kaster

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Latin Literature
  2. Linguistics
Varro (according to Petrarch) was “the third great light of Rome”—after Vergil and Cicero—and certainly Rome's greatest scholar. Though the great bulk of his work survives only in fragments, the quotations and paraphrases that those fragments preserve make his influence on subsequent writers evident: much of later Latin literature, from the Aeneid of Vergil down to St. Augustine's City of God, would look very different had they been unable to draw upon his learning. His writings covered nearly every branch of inquiry: history, geography, rhetoric, law, philosophy, music, medicine, architecture, religion, and more.Marcus Terentius Varro, (116–27bce), was born at Reate, in the Sabine territory (see sabini) NE of Rome. After studying at Rome with L. Aelius, the first true scholar of Latin literature and antiquities, and at Athens with the Academic philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon, Varro began a public career that brought him to the praetorship and, ultimately, to service on the Pompeian side (see .

Article

Vulgar Latin  

Roger Wright

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
26 April 2018
Subjects:
  1. Latin Literature
  2. Linguistics
The language of the Roman Empire, spoken and written, was Latin. Like all languages spoken over a wide area for a long time, it varied greatly. Since the arrival of sociolinguistics in the 1960s, it has been accepted that such variation is in no way unnatural or sinister, and the flexibility it implies is often an advantage rather than a problem. But standardization of the Latin language was taken seriously, particularly within the traditions established by Aelius Donatus in the 4th century and Priscian in the 6th, with the result that eventually features of the language that did not accord with the precepts of these authorities were regarded as not just different but wrong. The concept of Vulgar Latin has been defined in a variety of different ways, but József Herman’s definition, as a label for all those features of Latin that we know existed, but which were not recommended by the grammarians, is probably the most useful; its meaning has thus usually been defined in opposition to that of another concept of dubious value, Classical Latin, the Latin of the grammarians (see grammar, grammarians, Latin).