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Priscian was the most important Latin grammarian of late antiquity. Probably hailing from North Africa, he worked as a professor of Latin in Constantinople in the early 6th century. There he published his masterpiece, the eighteen-volume Ars grammatica (before 527), which blended the traditional Roman textbook treatment of grammar (books 1–16, containing basic definitions and and an extensive treatment of parts of speech) with Alexandrian Greek scholarship (books 17–18, on syntax). The Ars grammatica revolutionized the theoretical basis of Latin grammar and would prove widely influential on subsequent study. Priscian also composed various smaller works. At some point before the Ars grammatica, he wrote short treatises: De figuris numerorum quos antiquissimi habent codices, De metris fabularum Terentii et aliorum comicorum, and Praeexercitamina (a Latin version of the Greek Progymnasmata ascribed to Hermogenes). After he had written the Ars grammatica, he also composed a summary of Latin morphology, Institutio de nomine, pronomine, et uerbo, as well as a lengthy discussion of the first line of each book of the Aeneid, Partitiones xii uersuum Aeneidos principalium. Both of these works were intended for novice students of Latin. Finally, he wrote two poems that have survived: a verse panegyric for Anastasius I, De laude Anastasii imperatoris, and a Latin hexameter translation of Dionysius Periegetes’ geographical poem. |
