On the Latin Language, Vol. I

Books XIV.-XIX. treated of syntax. Books XX.-XXV. seem to have continued the same theme, but probably with special attention to stylistic and rhetorical embellishments.

Of these twenty-five books, we have to-day, apart from a few brief fragments, only Books V. to X., and in these there are several extensive gaps where the manuscript tradition fails.

The fragments of the De Lingua Latina On the Latin Language, that is, those quotations or paraphrases in other authors which do not correspond to the extant text of Books V.-X., are not numerous nor long. The most considerable of them are passages in the Noctes Atticae Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius ii. 25 and xvi. 8. They may be found in the edition of Goetz and Schoell, pages 3, 146, 192-198, and in the collections of Wilmanns and Funaioli (see the Bibliography).

It is hardly possible to discuss here even summarily Varro’s linguistic theories, the sources upon which he drew, and his degree of independence of thought and procedure. He owed much to his teacher Aelius Stilo, to whom he refers frequently, and he draws heavily upon Greek predecessors, of course, but his practice has much to commend it: he followed neither the Anomalists nor the Analogists to the extreme of their theories, and he preferred to derive Latin words from Latin sources, rather than to refer practically all to Greek origins. On such topics reference may be made to the works of Barwick, Kowalski, Dam, Dahlmann, Kriegshammer, and Frederik Muller, and to the articles of Wölfflin in the eighth volume of the Archiv für lateinische Lexikographie Archive for Latin Lexicography, all listed in our Bibliography.