Priscian

Byzantine scholar

• Born: Fifth century
• Birthplace: Caesarea, Mauretania (now Cherchell, Algeria)
• Died: Sixth century c.e.
• Place of death: Constantinople, Byzantine Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey)

Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae preserved and abridged several earlier works of classical Latin grammar in a form so useful that it was copied and annotated and became the standard work in its genre until the end of the Middle Ages.

It is possible that the Symmachus to whom Priscian dedicated three minor works was the same man who was put to death with his son-in-law Boethius for plotting against the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great (c. 454-526) in 524; if so, that would provide additional motivation for Priscian’s political leanings and distaste for the Goths. Judging from the fact that in his panegyric Priscian makes no mention of Anastasius’s war against the Persians from 503 to 505, it is likely that he wrote it before the war. In addition, since his chief book on grammar was revised or copied by his pupil, Theodorus, “in the consulship of Olybrius” in 526, it is possible that Priscian was dead by that year. Theodorus’s copy is the original of all the extant manuscripts of Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae (526; grammatical foundations), in eighteen books.

Life’s Work

Eleven writings are attributed to Priscian. Their order of composition is not known and only estimates of their dates can be made. Priscian’s most important work is clearly his Institutiones grammaticae. He certainly completed this large work, now formatted in two volumes, before 526, when it was copied by Theodorus. In its dedication to one “Julianus, consul and patrician,” Priscian states that he has translated from the Greek treatises of the grammarian Apollonius Dyscolus (fl. second century) and his son, the language scholar Aelius Herodianus (fl. second century). Priscian chose his sources well, for Apollonius has been called “the father of scientific grammar,” and Herodianus continued his father’s work. They lived in Alexandria and Rome serving the emperors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, respectively. Priscian follows Apollonius closely in his treatment of pronouns, adverbs, conjunctions, and syntax, as can be determined from the extant parts of the latter’s work. Apollonius’s most original contribution to grammatical studies was in the area of syntax. Nevertheless, Priscian believed his own book to be brief compared to the “spacious scrolls” of Apollonius or the “sea” of Herodianus. Indeed, the success of Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae may derive from its relative brevity.

Early Life

Few details are known about the life of Priscian (PRIHSH-ee-uhn). He was a native of the Vandal kingdom in North Africa and at some time before 503 moved his residence to Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. His presence in Constantinople is attested by the Ostrogothic writer and public official Cassiodorus (c. 490-c. 585), who asserts that in his own time, Priscian was a teacher of Latin grammar

A valuable feature in Priscian’s grammatical work is his inclusion of copious quotations from both Greek and Latin authors to exemplify particular grammatical principles. Thus, he preserved much that would otherwise have been lost: precious passages of Quintus Ennius, Marcus Pacuvius, Accius, Cato the Censor, and Marcus Terentius Varro. Most often quoted are Cicero and Sallust, but other Latin writers such as Plautus, Terence, Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, Statius, Persius, and Juvenal also appear. Priscian’s Greek examples come chiefly from Homer, Plato, Isocrates, and Demosthenes. In the first sixteen books of the Institutiones grammaticae, often called Priscianus major (the great Priscian), he concentrates on grammar itself; the last two books, Priscianus minor (the little Priscian), are devoted to syntax. Here Priscian was more original because there existed fewer works on syntax from which to borrow. In one manuscript, the last two books are referred to as a distinct book called De constructione (on constructions). A table of contents would include book 1, on the letters and their sounds; book 2, on syllables, words, sentences, and nouns; book 3, on comparatives, superlatives, and diminutives; book 4, on interrelated forms such as verbals and participles used as nouns; book 5, on the gender, number, and case of nouns; book 6, on the endings of the nominative case and the formation of the genitive case; book 7, on the remaining cases dative, accusative, and ablative; books 8, 9, and 10, on verbs the general rules for their conjugations and especially the formation of the perfect tense of the four conjugations; books 11 through 16, each devoted to one of the parts of speech participles, pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, interjections, and conjunctions; and books 17 and 18, on syntax (word order, construction of sentences).

During the Middle Ages, each branch of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) had its own “classic” textbook. For grammar, two treatises of Aelius Donatus (fl. fourth century) known as the Ars minor (English translation, 1926) and Ars maior (elementary and advanced grammar), which formed the Ars grammatica (English introduction to work, 1982), were used as textbooks in elementary schools through the Middle Ages. The more advanced Institutiones grammaticae of Priscian served as the classic text in the universities. His minor works include a treatise on the initial lines of the twelve books of Vergil’s Aeneid (c. 29-19 b.c.e.; English translation, 1553), important as an illustration of the exercises demanded of schoolchildren in Priscian’s day, and treatises on accents, on the declensions of nouns, and on the meters of the playwright Terence (fl. second century b.c.e.) (dedicated to Symmachus). Priscian wrote a prose treatise on the symbols used to denote numbers and on weights and measures (De figuris et nominibus numerorum, et de normis et ponderibus , also dedicated to Symmachus. In addition, he wrote a poem devoted entirely to weights and measures (De ponderibus et mensuris carmina), which is incomplete. Of the extant 162 lines, fifty-five concern weights, the rest the standards of measure for fruits and liquids.

His free translation of the Progymnasmata (preparatory rhetorical exercises, or, first steps in rhetoric; partial English translation, 2003), written by the Greek Hermogenes of Tarsus in the second century, is significant because with it Priscian supplemented his own grammar and brought to the Latin Middle Ages the elements of Greek rhetorical theory. His translation, Praeexercitamina rhetorica, comprised the last section of Hermogenes’s major work on rhetoric. The section De laude (on panegyrics) contains examples and suggestions for extolling almost anything, from the sport of hunting to horses, doves, and trees. Priscian’s use of mythological material ignores the intellectual struggle then dividing Christianity and paganism. This work too was dedicated to Symmachus.

The panegyric in honor of Emperor Anastasius has been dated about 503. It contains 334 iambic and hexameter lines. In about the year 100, the panegyric, or praise for a ruler, had been introduced into rhetoric as a genre separate from persuasive and judicial oratory. Priscian’s panegyric may have served as his classroom model. Priscian’s poem De sideribus (on the stars) contains about two hundred lines and is a simple and dry naming of stars and planets. He also produced a poetic free translation of the Oikumenes periegesis (second or third century; English translation, 1697) by Dionysius Periegetes (fl. second or third century), a geographer of the early Roman Empire. Priscian’s version, called De situ or Descriptio orbis terrarum, was probably intended for the instruction of pupils.

Significance

The list of scholars throughout the Middle Ages who studied, quoted, or copied Priscian reads like a Who’s Who of medieval intellectual history. Indeed, the modern reader may find it difficult to understand the durability of Priscian’s influence over the field of grammatical studies. It should be remembered that, while language is constantly changing, grammar, the underlying structure of language, changes slowly. In addition, reverence for the correctness of past usage kept Priscian’s book from early obsolescence.

Priscian was one of the sources used by his younger contemporary Flavius Magnus Aurelius in the latter’s De orthographia (on spelling). The English scholars Aldhelm (c. 639-709) and Saint Bede the Venerable (672 or 673-735) quoted Priscian, indicating that a manuscript of the Institutiones grammaticae had reached England by their day. English scholar Alcuin (735-804) names Priscian among the authors available in the York library, and the substance of his second dialogue on grammar is borrowed from Priscian. As headmaster of Charlemagne’s Palatine school at Aachen, Alcuin relied on Priscian among the other stock authors, including Donatus, Cassiodorus, Saint Bede the Venerable, Saint Isidore of Seville, and Phocas. Alcuin’s pupil Rabanus Maurus (c. 780-856) made a copy of Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae and introduced it into Germany at the monastery of Fulda, whose library he founded. Servatus Lupus of Ferrieres, Rabanus’s pupil, quoted frequently from Priscian in his letters on literary and grammatical matters. His own disciple Remigius wrote commentaries on Priscian while teaching at Auxerre, Reims, and Paris. Meanwhile, Priscian’s work was favored among Irish scholars in monastic centers, where an interest in Greek was kept alive. Irish poet and scholar Sedulius Scottus (fl. c. 848-c. 860 or 874?) and possibly Irish-born theologian and philosopher John Scotus Erigena (c. 810-c. 877) wrote commentaries on Priscian’s grammatical foundations. At least three (of more than one thousand extant) of Priscian’s manuscripts are written in the Irish minuscule script of the ninth century, including that which came to Saint Gall around 860.

Between the times of Alcuin and Peter Abelard (1079-1142), Donatus and Priscian continued to be the principal grammar authorities followed by scholars. From the twelfth century on, however, the emphasis on theology, philosophy, and natural history at the University of Paris brought about significant changes, and literature and grammar were reduced in importance. The new authorities for grammar were the scholars at that university who continued to produce commentaries on or abridgments of Priscian. As late as 1141, Theodoric, chancellor of the school at Chartres, wrote a treatise on the seven liberal arts, liberally quoting Donatus and Priscian for his section on grammar.

It was during the thirteenth century that Priscian gradually lost the place of honor to his commentators, Petrus Helius, professor at Paris about 1142, and Robert Kilwardby, archbishop of Canterbury from 1272 to 1279. In that period of changing curricula, some scholars regretted the neglect of the study of authors such as Homer, Claudian, Persius, Donatus, and Priscian. One such person was John of Garland, an English scholar at Paris, who wrote fourteen books on Latin grammar. Another was Henri d’ Andeli, a master at Rouen whose poem The Battle of the Seven Arts (1259) depicts a war between the authors on the side of grammar and those defending logic (Plato and Aristotle). In one episode, Priscian is made to hold his own in combat with Aristotle. In the fourteenth century, Priscian was superseded by the modern compilations of Alexander de Villa Dei, author of a hexameter poem on syntax, grammar, and the figures of speech, called Doctrinale puerorum (c. late twelfth century), which drew largely from Priscian. Another who was preferred to Priscian was Evrard of Béthune (fl. c. 1212), who also presented a grammar, called Graecismus (c. late twelfth century), in verse format. Presumably, their use of verse as a memory aid was a key to their success.

Besides the rise of logic and other arts, which started to claim precedence over grammar in the schools, another reason must be noted for the demise of grammar and the eclipse of Priscian. Throughout the Middle Ages, Latin was still a living language in the Church and the schools, undergoing the dynamic changes common to living languages. New vocabulary, however, included technical terms and the names of things unknown to antiquity. As Latin departed more and more from classical Latin, the huge and precise grammatical foundations of Priscian became less useful. On the southwest doorway of Chartres Cathedral, which is decorated with personifications of the seven arts and their leading representatives, Grammar and Priscian are found together. The two are also identified in the representation of the Seven Earthly Sciences in the chapter house of Santa Maria Novella Church in Florence. The Renaissance thus paid its homage to Priscian, greatest of all Latin grammarians.

Bibliography

Cameron, A. D. E. “Priscian’s De laude Anastasii.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 15 (1974). Discussion of the date and circumstances of Priscian’s panegyric to Emperor Anastasius. Concludes that the events not mentioned in the work provide evidence that it must have been written before 503.

Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Translated by Willard R. Trask. 1952. Reprint. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990. A modest treatment that provides excellent information on Priscian’s later influence. Includes a bibliography.

Koerner, E. F. K., and R. E. Asher, eds. Concise History of the Language Sciences: From the Sumerians to the Cognitivists. New York: Pergamon, 1995. A history of linguistics, with a chapter on Priscian and Latin grammar. Includes a bibliography and an index.

Lanham, Carol Dana, ed. Latin Grammar and Rhetoric: From Classical Theory to Medieval Practice. New York: Continuum, 2002. A history of Latin rhetoric and grammar in the time of Priscian. Includes discussion of Saint Bede and Cassiodorus, among others. Bibliography and index.

Sandys, John Edwin. From the Sixth Century B.C. to the End of the Middle Ages. Vol. 1 in A History of Classical Scholarship. 1903. Reprint. New York: Hafner, 1967. Encyclopedic coverage of writing on grammar from Greece and Rome through Priscian to the fourteenth century.

Wilson, Henry A. “Priscianus Caesariensis (Priscian of Caesarea).” In A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects, and Doctrines, edited by William Smith. Vol. 4. New York: Kraus, 1967. A thorough treatment of Priscian and his writings. Reprinted from the original edition of 1840.