RHETORICIANS AND GRAMMARIANS. 



859 



the roost valuable English works on this subject, are 

 Campbell's Philosophy el Rhetoric, Blair's Lectures 

 tin Rhetoric, and the Elements of Rhetoric by 

 ">V'hately (now archbishop of Dublin). 



RHETORICIANS AND GRAMMARIANS. 1st. 

 Those who were skilled in language were called, 

 by the ancient Greeks and Romans, grammarians, 

 or philologists. Their studies embraced every kind 

 of literary productions (yja^a, writing), and what- 

 ever might be necessary to illustrate and explain 

 them. But the grammarians, who were called also, 

 it first, critics, and by the Romans literati, occupied 

 themselves chiefly with the explanation and criti- 

 cism of the earlier poets. They were distinguished 

 from the grammatists (grammatistte, literatores) by 

 deeper and more extensive erudition ; the gramma- 

 tists treating mainly of the elements and rudiments 

 of knowledge. We find the first examples of scien- 

 tific researches into language among the sophisls, 

 who, in the age of Pericles, practised themselves 

 in their schools, in the explanation of the poets, 

 and particularly Homer, for the purpose of cultiva- 

 ting the taste, and exercising the critical powers ; 

 and their ingenuity was principally occupied upon 

 difficulties of their own raising. By this practice, 

 they taught their pupils to examine the laws of lan- 

 guage accurately, and observe them carefully. 

 Some of the scholars of Socrates, especially Plato, 

 also distinguished themselves by their illustrations 

 of the poets. Aristotle, who is called the founder 

 of criticism and grammar, made a revision of the 

 Homeric poems for Alexander the Great, and at- 

 tempted to purify them from interpolations. Before 

 him, however, Pisistratus is related to have arranged 

 the poems of Homer in the order in which they now 

 stand, and Cynasthus of Chios, Antimachus of Colo- 

 phon. Theagenes of Rhegium, and some others, 

 had occupied themselves with the interpretation of 

 Homer. But although some individuals had turned 

 their attention particularly to the explanation, or 

 the emendation, of the ancient authors, the science 

 of language and criticism was carried to much 

 greater perfection by the Alexandrian scholars. 

 After Alexandria had become the seat of science, 

 the rules of the Greek language, the laws of the 

 interpretation of authors, and the explanation of 

 mythology, the rules for the determination of the 

 various readings, and the particular merits of sepa- 

 rate passages, or whole books, became subjects of 

 study. The age of the Alexandrian grammarians 

 .(see Alexandrian School) is, therefore, the first 

 period in the history of the ancient grammarians : 

 they decided the relative rank of the authors who 

 were to be considered as models of taste, revised 

 some of their works, illustrated them with various 

 researches, unravelled and explained mythology, 

 composed lexicons upon individuals or upon bodies 

 of authors, collected the rules of grammar, and 

 judged the faults and merits of writings, which is 

 the province of the higher criticism. To refer to 

 remarks of different kinds upon the margins of the 

 books, the grammarians made use of critical marks 

 and signs. Different signs were used for different 

 authors. Among the grammarians of this age, 

 Didymus of Alexandria, who lived in the time of 

 Augustus, deserves to be mentioned as a critic : he 

 was surnamed ' ^aXxim^of (Ironsides), because he 

 wrote 4000 books. The second period embraces 

 the period of the New Platonists, who considered 

 these objects of inquiry important enough to oc- 

 cupy their attention. The critics and grammarians 

 of this age generally turned their attention more to 

 the thoughts of authors and the contents of their 

 works, than to the explanation of words or the laws 

 of language. In all of them, the spirit of their scien- 



tific system, founded upon religion, is apparent ; 

 few of them penetrated the peculiar character ot 

 Grecian antiquity. This period commences with 

 Plutarch of Chaeronea (A. D. 100), to whom some 

 critical and grammatical writings are attributed, 

 which are, however, unworthy of him. The third 

 period embraces those grammarians, mostly monks, 

 who diligently compiled from the ancient authors, 

 collected dictionaries from different writings, gave 

 rules for preserving the purity of the Attic dialect 

 from individual authors, or made annotations on the 

 margins of manuscripts. Many grammatical works 

 of this age are yet extant, in judging of the intrin- 

 sic value and utility of which, not only the qualifi- 

 cations of their authors, but more particularly the 

 purity of the sources whence they drew, must be 

 taken into consideration. This period includes 

 those Greeks, who, fleeing from their country, first 

 revived a taste for the study of Greek in Italy, at 

 the end of the fourteenth, and particularly in the 

 fifteenth century. Some collections of the Greek 

 grammarians were made in the fifteenth and six- 

 teenth centuries, among which the Cornucopia et 

 Hortus Adonidis (Venice, 1496, folio), and Alexan- 

 der Heladius's Gleanings of the Greek language, 

 are worthy of notice. Neither Grecian literature, 

 in general, nor grammatical studies, were cultivated 

 by the earlier Romans ; they were looked upon by 

 the multitude as a waste of time, and by patriots, 

 as hurtful to morals, while the state was yet rude 

 and warlike, and the want of a more refined taste 

 was not yet felt. But acquaintance with the Greeks 

 attracted the attention of many to this subject, and 

 some of the most distinguished men Scipio Africa- 

 nus and Caius Laelius, for example encouraged 

 the cultivation of Grecian learning. The nrst 

 Roman teachers of grammar, Livius Andronicus and 

 Ennius (B. C. 236 166), who were in part of Gre- 

 cian descent, and wrote both in prose and poetry, 

 made translations from some Greek authors. A 

 general taste for philological learning, and the 

 auxiliary sciences, among the Romans, was pro- 

 moted by the mission of the Greek critic and gram- 

 marian Crates of Mallus, a contemporary of Aris- 

 tarchus, to the Roman senate, as ambassador of 

 king Attalus Philadelphus, soon after the death of 

 Ennius (B. C. 170) : during his long residence there, 

 he delivered lectures from time to time, and his 

 lessons awakened, among the Romans, a disposition 

 to imitate the example of the Greeks. As Grecian 

 science became the standard to which the Romans 

 attempted to conform, the latter preserved, in its 

 full extent, the Grecian idea of the science of lan- 

 guage, and the Roman dialect of the Latin language 

 became, under the influence of the Grecian, the 

 language of books, and of the cultivated classes. 

 The grammatical studies became so popular, that 

 the most distinguished men wrote upon them ; and 

 there always continued to be schools of reputation 

 in Rome. The teachers received very high prices 

 for tuition ; and Marcus Scaurus gave about 16,000 

 dollars for a learned slave, Lutatias Daphnis, and 

 soon after set him at liberty; and Lucius Apu- 

 leius received a salary of nearly 10,000 dollars 

 a year, from a rich Roman knight, for his lessons. 

 The study of grammar was likewise diligently pro- 

 secuted in the provinces, and some of the most dis- 

 tinguished teachers were in Gaul. With the increase 

 of literary works in the Roman language, increas- 

 ing attention was paid to the primitive Latin 

 tongue, and to Roman literature and antiquity. Sue- 

 tonius devoted a particular treatise to the oldest 

 Latin grammarians, in which he gives accounts of 

 their lives and writings. The extant writings ot 

 the later Latin grammarians are to be found in the 



