The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lives Of Eminent Grammarians And
Rhetoricians, by C. Suetonius Tranquillus

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Title: Lives Of Eminent Grammarians And Rhetoricians
The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Volume 13.

Author: C. Suetonius Tranquillus

Release Date: December 14, 2004 [EBook #6398]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger

THE LIVES
OF
THE TWELVE CAESARS

By
C. Suetonius Tranquillus;

To which are added,

HIS LIVES OF THE GRAMMARIANS, RHETORICIANS, AND POETS.

The Translation of
Alexander Thomson, M.D.

revised and corrected by
T.Forester, Esq., A.M.

LIVES OF EMINENT GRAMMARIANS

(506)

I. The science of grammar [842] was in ancient times far from being in
vogue at Rome; indeed, it was of little use in a rude state of society,
when the people were engaged in constant wars, and had not much time to
bestow on the cultivation of the liberal arts [843]. At the outset, its
pretensions were very slender, for the earliest men of learning, who were
both poets and orators, may be considered as half-Greek: I speak of
Livius [844] and Ennius [845], who are acknowledged to have taught both
languages as well at Rome as in foreign parts [846]. But they (507) only
translated from the Greek, and if they composed anything of their own in
Latin, it was only from what they had before read. For although there
are those who say that this Ennius published two books, one on "Letters
and Syllables," and the other on "Metres," Lucius Cotta has
satisfactorily proved that they are not the works of the poet Ennius, but
of another writer of the same name, to whom also the treatise on the
"Rules of Augury" is attributed.

II. Crates of Mallos [847], then, was, in our opinion, the first who
introduced the study of grammar at Rome. He w