A Companion to Late Antique Literature

by Scott McGill

  REFERENCES

  In addition to the Grammatici Latini (GL), edited by Heinrich Keil (Leipzig: Teubner, 1855–1880), it is indispensable to use updated editions of the artes grammaticae, whenever available: For the references, see the Grammatici disiecti blog (https://gradis.hypotheses.org). A recent anthology in English translation is Copeland and Sluiter (2012). Late Latin grammars on papyrus are now edited by Scappaticcio (2015). Reliable, basic information on late Latin grammarians is found in Kaster (1988, pp. 237–440); Herzog (1989, § 521–527); Sallmann (1997, § 432–446); Stammerjohann (20092). A first approach to the grammatical technical language must start from Lomanto and Marinone (1990) and Schad (2007).

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  Ax, Wolfram. (1987). Quadripertita ratio. Bemerkungen zur Geschichte eines aktuellen Kategoriensystems. In: The History of Linguistics in the Classical Period (ed. Daniel Taylor), 17–40. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

  Barabino, Giuseppina and Ferruccio Bertini. ed. (1967–1997). Studi Noniani. 15 vols. Genoa: Università degli studi di Genova.

  Baratin, Marc. (1989). La naissance de la syntaxe à Rome. Paris: Minuit.

  Baratin, Marc. (1994). Sur la structure des grammaires antiques. In: Florilegium Historiographiae Linguisticae (ed. Jan De Clercq and Piet Desmet), 143–157. Louvain: Peeters.

  Baratin, Marc and Françoise Desbordes. (1986). La “troisième partie” de l’ars grammatica. Historiographia linguistica, 13/2–3: 215–240 = Françoise Desbordes. 2007. Idées grecques et romaines sur le langage, Travaux d’histoire et d’épistémologie, 65–90. Lyon: Presses de l’ENS.

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  Bertini, Ferruccio. ed. (2000–2005). Prolegomena Noniana. 5 vols. Genova: Università degli studi di Genova.

  Blank, David. (2000). The organization of grammar in Ancient Greek. In: History of the Language Sciences (ed. Sylvain Auroux, E.F.K. Koerner, Hans‐Josef Niederehe, and Kees Versteegh), 407–411. Berlin: de Gruyter.

  Bouquet, Monique, Méniel, Bruno, and Ramires, Giuseppe. ed. (2011). Servius et sa réception de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance. Rennes: Presses Universitaires.

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  Cadoni, Enzo. (1987). Studi sul De compendiosa doctrina di Nonio Marcello. Sassari: Gallizzi.

  Copeland, Rita and Sluiter, Ineke. (2012). Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300 –1475. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Casali, Sergio and Stok, Fabio. ed. (2008). Servio: Stratificazioni esegetiche e modelli culturali. Brussels: Latomus.

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  Dammer, Raphael. (2001). Diomedes grammaticus. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.

  De Nonno, Mario.(1983). Frammenti misconosciuti di Plozio Sacerdote. Con osservazioni sul testo dei Catholica Probi. Rivista di Filologia e Istruzione Classica 111: 385–421.

  De Nonno, Mario (1990a). Le citazioni dei grammatici. In: Lo spazio letterario di Roma antica. Vol. 3: La ricezione del testo (ed. Guglielmo Cavallo, Paolo Fedeli, and Andrea Giardina), 597–646. Rome: Salerno.

  De Nonno, Mario. (1990b). Ruolo e funzione della metrica nei grammatici latini. In: Metrica classica e linguistica (ed. Roberto M. Danese, Franco Gori, and Cesare Questa), 453–494. Urbino: Quattroventi.

  De Nonno, Mario. (1998). Grammatici latini. In Enciclopedia oraziana (ed. Scevola Mariotti, 31–39). 3 vols. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana.

  De Nonno, Mario. (2000). I codici grammaticali latini d’età tardoantica: Osservazioni e considerazioni. In: Manuscripts and Tradition of Grammatical Texts from Antiquity to Renaissance. 2 vols. (ed. Mario De Nonno, Paolo De Paolis, and Louis Holtz), 1: 133–172. Cassino: Università degli studi di Cassino.

  De Nonno, Mario. (2009). Ars Prisciani Caesarensis: Problemi di tipologia e di composizione. In: Priscien: Transmission et refondation de la grammaire (ed. Marc Baratin, Bernard Colombat, and Louis Holtz), 248–278. Turnhout: Brepols.

  De Nonno, Mario. (2010). Et interrogauit Filocalus. Pratiche dell’insegnamento “in aula” del grammatico. In: Libri di scuola e pratiche didattiche. Dall’Antichità al Rinascimento. 2 vols. (ed. Lucio Del Corso and Oronzo Pecere), 1: 170–205. Cassino: Università degli studi di Cassino.

  De Paolis, Paolo. (2003). Miscellanei grammaticali altomedievali. In Grammatica e grammatici latini: teoria ed esegesi (ed. Fabio Gasti), 29–74. Pavia: Ibis.

  De Paolis, Paolo. (2010). L’insegnamento dell’ortografia latina fra Tardoantico e alto Medioevo: teorie e manuali. In: Libri di scuola e pratiche didattiche. Dall’Antichità al Rinascimento. 2 vols. (ed. Lucio Del Corso and, Oronzo Pecere), 1: 229–291. Cassino: Università degli studi di Cassino.

  Desbordes, Françoise. (1983). Le schéma “addition, soustraction, mutation, métathèse” dans les textes anciens. Histoire Épistémologie Langage, 5.1: 23–30 = Françoise Desbordes. 2007. Idées grecques et romaines sur le langage, Travaux d’histoire et d’épistémologie, 55–63. Lyon: Presses de l’ENS.

  Desbordes, Françoise. (1990). Idées romaines sur l’écriture. Presses universitaires de Lille.

  Dickey, Eleanor. (2007). Ancient Greek Scholarship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Dickey, Eleanor. (2012–2014). The Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Dionisotti, Anna Carlotta. (1996). On the nature and transmission of Latin glossaries. In: Les manuscrits des lexiques et glossaires de l’Antiquité tardive à la fin du Moyen ge (ed. Jacqueline Hamesse), 205–252. Louvain: Fédération internationale des Instituts d'études médiévales.

  Ebbesen, Sten. (1981). Suprasegmental phonemes in ancient and mediaeval logic. In: English Logic and Semantics from the End of the Twelfth Century to the Time of Ockham and Burleigh: Acts of the Fourth European Symposium on Mediaeval Logic and Semantics (ed. Henricus Antonius Giovanni Braakhuis, Corneille Henri Kneepkens, and Lambertus Marie de Rijk), 331–359. Nijmegen: Ingenium.

  Garcea, Alessandro, Lhommé, Marie‐Karine, and Vallat, Daniel. ed. (2016). Fragments d’érudition: Servius et le savoir antique. Hildesheim: Olms.

  Garcea, Alessandro and Lomanto, Valeria. (2003). Varron et Priscien: Autour des verbes adsignificare et consignificare. Histoire Épistémologie Langage 25: 33–54.

  Glück, Manfred. (1967). Priscians Partitiones und ihre Stellung in der spätantiken Schule. Hildesheim: Olms.

  Hamesse, Jacqueline. ed. (1996). Les manuscrits des lexiques et glossaires de l’Antiquité tardive à la fin du Moyen ge, Louvain: Fédération internationale des Instituts d'études médiévales.

  Herzog, Reinhart. ed. (1989). Handbuch der Lateinischen Literatur der Antike. Vol. 5: Restauration und Erneuerung. Munich: Beck.

  Holtz, Louis. (1981). Donat et la tradition de l’enseignement grammatical. Paris: CNRS.

  Jeep, Ludwig. (1893). Zur Geschichte der Lehre von den Redeteilen bei den lateinischen Grammatikern. Leipzig: Teubner.

  Kaster, Robert A. (1988). Guardians of Language. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  Law, Vivien. (1987). Late Latin grammars in the early Middle Ages: A typological history. In: The History of Linguistics in the Classical Period (ed. Daniel Taylor), 191–204. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

  Law, Vivien. (2000). Memory and the structure of grammars in antiquity and the Middle Ages. In: Manuscripts and Tradition of Grammatical Texts from Antiquity to Renaissance. 2 vols. (ed. Mario De Nonno, Paolo De Paolis, and Louis Holtz), 1: 9–58.Cassino: Università degli studi di Cassi
no.

  Leonhardt, Jürgen. (1989). Dimensio syllabarum: Studien zur lateinischen Prosodie‐ und Verslehre von der Spätantike bis zur frühen Renaissance. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

  Lindsay, Wallace Martin. (1901). Nonius Marcellus Dictionary of Republican Latin. Oxford: Parker and Co.

  Lomanto, Valeria and Marinone, Nino. (1990). Index Grammaticus. Hildesheim: Olms.

  Luhtala, Anneli. (2002). On definitions in ancient grammar. In: Grammatical Theory and Philosophy of Language in Antiquity (ed. Pierre Swiggers and Alfons Wouters), 257–285. Louvain: Peeters.

  Luhtala, Anneli. (2005). Grammar and Philosophy in Late Antiquity. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

  Luhtala, Anneli. (2010). Latin Schulgrammatik and the emergence of grammatical commentaries. In: Condensing Texts – Condensed Texts (ed. Marietta Horster and Christiane Reitz), 209–243. Stuttgart: Steiner.

  Luque Moreno, Jesús et al. ed. (1987–2007). Scriptores Latini de re metrica. Concordantiae. 19 vols. Granada: Departmento de filologia Latina de Granada.

  Magallón García, Ana‐Isabel, (1996). La tradición gramatical de differentia y etymologia hasta Isidoro de Sevilla. Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza.

  Martorelli, Luca. ed. (2014). Greco antico nell’Occidente carolingio. Frammenti di testi attici nell’Ars di Prisciano. Hildesheim: Olms.

  Matthaios, Stephanos. (2002). Neue Perspektiven für die Historiographie der antiken Grammatik: Das Wortartensystem der Alexandriner. In: Grammatical Theory and Philosophy of Language in Antiquity (ed. Pierre Swiggers and Alfons Wouters), 161–220. Louvain: Peeters.

  Morelli, Giuseppe. ed. (2006). Nomenclator metricus Graecus et Latinus, vol. 1. Hildesheim: Olms.

  Müller, Rudolf Wolfgang. (1964). Rhetorische und syntaktische Interpunktion. Untersuchungen zur Pausenbezeichnung im antiken Latein. Tübingen: Eberhard‐Karl‐Universität.

  Munzi, Luigi. (1980–1981). Il de partibus orationis di Giuliano di Toledo. AION (Filologia) 2–3: 153–228.

  Munzi, Luigi. (1992). Il ruolo della prefazione nei testi grammaticali latini. AION (Filologia) 14: 103–126.

  Sallmann, Klaus. ed. (1997). Handbuch der Lateinischen Literatur der Antike. Vol. 4: Die Literatur des Umbruchs. Munich: Beck.

  Scappaticcio, Maria Chiara. (2012). Papyri Vergilianae. Liège: Presses universitaires.

  Scappaticcio, Maria Chiara. (2015). Artes Grammaticae in frammenti. I testi grammaticali latini e bilingui greco‐latini su papiro. Berlin: de Gruyter.

  Schad, Samantha. (2007). A Lexicon of Latin Grammatical Terminology. Pisa: Giardini.

  Schenkeveld, Dirk M. (2004). A Rhetorical Grammar: C. Julius Romanus, Introduction to the Liber de Adverbio. Leiden: Brill.

  Schoell, Fritz. (1876). De accentu linguae Latinae ueterum grammaticorum testimonia. Leipzig: Teubner.

  Schoemann, Georg Friedrich. (1862). Die Lehre von den Redetheilen nach den Alten. Berlin: W. Hertz.

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  Stok, Fabio. ed. (2013). Totus scientia plenus. Percorsi dell’esegesi virgiliana. Pisa: ETS.

  Stoppie, Karen, Swiggers, Pierre, and Wouters, Alfons. (2007). La terminologie grammaticale en contexte bilingue: Macrobe et l’analyse de la diathèse verbale. In: Bilinguisme et terminologie grammaticale gréco‐latine (ed. Louis Basset, Frédérique Biville, Bernard Colombat et al.), 201–224. Louvain: Peeters.

  Uhl, Anne. (1998). Servius als Sprachlehrer. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

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  Ziolkowski, Jan M. and Putnam, Michael C.J. (2008). The Virgilian Tradition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  School Texts

  Lillian I. Larsen

  29.1 Introduction

  In traditional reflection, the demographic and religious shifts that render late antiquity distinct have often masked the foundational pedagogical continuities of this period. Studies that frame the advent of Christianity and the emergence of monasticism as markers of “profound political and religious change” (Kaster 1988, p. ix) concomitantly define late ancient literary trajectories as registers of rupture. For example, Robert Kaster (1988, p. 12) characterizes late antique classroom models as a legacy that leads to the fragmenting of student understanding. Crystallizing a broader array of commensurate appraisal, he suggests that, at this point, an “overall view of history” was replaced with memories of “disjointed but edifying vignettes.” Collections of “ethical commonplaces” supplanted the “systematic knowledge of philosophy.” An “organic sense of language” was reduced to “rules and categories, divided and subdivided [into] rare lexical tidbits.” Likening “the items amassed over years of schooling,” to “slips filed away in a vast range of pigeonholes,” he depicts accrued content as elements that might be “summoned up individually and combined to meet the needs of the moment,” absent any perception of a synthetic “uniform relationship among them” (cf. Marrou 1960, pp. 1–157).

  More sympathetic assessments reverse these valuations. The same catalysts faulted for the fragmenting of synthetic thought are here credited with literary production that is “complex, sophisticated and creative” (Burton‐Christie 1993, p. viii). Albeit the organic work of a spiritually focused “lay movement,” comprising constituencies that remain “untouched by the literary culture and refinement that formed the outlook of their bishops” (Wilken 2012, p. 105), edifying vignettes are praised for providing a particularly “clear…historical picture” of the late ancient world (Burton‐Christie 1993, pp. 3–5). Ethical commonplaces are named not only “rich and varied” but also the “flowering” of unprecedented, even novel, ingenuity (pp. 3–5). Synthetically representative of a “remarkable new literary genre” (Ward 1986, p. xix), each is likewise deemed the “expression of an altogether original method of spiritual education” (Guy 1974, p. 44; emphasis mine).

  The divergent character of these assessments can only give pause. Placed in conversation, they manifest the degree to which “all historical interpretive efforts and their methods and approaches illuminate some things, cast shadows over others, [and they] foreground some things, render into the background certain others” (Wimbush, 1997, p. 1). Each simultaneously displays uncanny affinity with Henri Marrou’s representation of monasticism as a type of Christian school “that was wholly devoted to religion and had none of the features of the old classical school” (Marrou 1956, p. 330; cf. Larsen 2013a; 2013b). Measuring the depth of Marrou’s influence lies beyond the scope of this relatively brief chapter (cf. Larsen 2013a). However, the fact that monasticism remains a kind of “absent chapter in the history of education” (Rappe 2001, p. 423) more than half a century after the publication of Marrou’s epic History, affirms the persistent power of his premise (cf. Wilken 2012, pp. 99–108). Delimiting a primary swath of late ancient literature comprised of “text[s] without … context” derivative of “communit[ies] with no inheritance” (Harvey 1996, p. 242), this legacy is embodied in bifurcated constituencies defined solely by categories of contest. Here, “original thinkers and radical teachers” remain “pitted against the fathers,” urban intellectuals “facing off” with “desert wisdom” (Rappe 2001, p. 423).

  Inadvertently bridging these binaries, George Kennedy has argued for a single system of literary reference that links pedagogical practice in space and over time. Introducing his compendium of Greek T
extbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric (Progymnasmata), Kennedy likens the formulaically fixed and fundamentally fluid praxis that defined ancient and late antique literary habits to the “structural features of classical architecture.” He suggests that not only Greco‐Roman literature but also the writing produced by emergent (and established) Christian communities must be understood as uniformly rooted and shaped by “the habits of thinking and writing learned in schools” (Kennedy 2003, p. ix). This essay follows Kennedy in using classroom continuity as a lens for exploring the pedagogical landscape of late antiquity. Eschewing rhetorics of “rupture,” it instead explores the stable media preserved in classroom handbooks, extant school texts, and finally, late ancient literature itself.

  29.2 The “Fragments” of Late Antique Literature

  The discrete elements that unite Greco‐Roman literary forms with classroom pedagogical practice are well documented (cf. Marrou 1956; Bonner 1977; Cribiore 1996; 2001; Morgan 1998, 2007; Too 2001; Watts 2006; Chin 2007). By the fourth century of the Common Era, they were likewise well established. Emergent protocol, loosely referenced in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, is concretely affirmed in a lineage that finds focused articulation in the Hellenistic period and extends through late antiquity, into Byzantium and beyond (cf. Cribiore 1996; Morgan 1998). In exercises aimed at training both moral disposition and emergent intellect, students first encountered literary content in word lists, maxims, chreiai, and fables. In iterative progression, at every succeeding educational level, they rehearsed the same “fragmentary” material, “chewing it over…making collections…and expanding…content” until they could (at an opportune moment, or in a well‐turned phrase) “aptly” incorporate lines and passages into everyday speech and writing (Cribiore 2001, p. 179). As students progressed, foundational building blocks could be variously combined in ways that linked the elementary instruction of a grammaticus to more advanced composition. At every stage and across generations, the goal of such instruction was not solely technical. Iterative rehearsal was understood as a conduit for simultaneously inculcating virtue and shaping character (cf. Morgan 2007).