10 - Overview of the ancient Latin-learning materials
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2016
Summary
The lists below contain, to the best of my knowledge, all ancient Latin-learning materials that have been published to date; there are also numerous unpublished papyri. Although this list contains less information on each text than the similar list in Dickey (2012–15: i.7–10), it contains more texts and more recent editions, as a number of documents have been published or re-edited since that earlier list was finalized.
Under “Where to find it” is given not a complete list of editions, let alone a complete bibliography, but rather the name or number by which the text is most commonly known (often an editio princeps, though as a publication this is often seriously out of date), one or two references to usable editions, and the numbers in the Mertens–Pack database (http://promethee.philo.ulg.ac.be/cedopal/indexsimple.asp) and Leuven Database of Ancient Books (www.trismegistos.org/ldab/), either of which can be consulted for further bibliography. Although Cavenaile (1958) is not explicitly mentioned except when it has the best text of a papyrus, that work provides texts of many of the papyri and is worth consulting if one cannot obtain another edition. Similarly McNamee (2007) provides texts of the annotations found on annotated papyri (i.e. the monolingual Latin texts with glosses and/or notes in Greek); sometimes her edition supersedes a previous text of the annotations. Scappaticcio (forthcoming) will provide re-editions and detailed discussion of the alphabets and grammatical texts found on papyri.
The designation “transliterated” indicates that the Latin is transliterated into Greek script; bilingual texts with the Greek in Latin script also exist but have not been included here since they were probably designed for Latin speakers learning Greek rather than Greek speakers learning Latin. Also excluded are Latin papyri, even alphabets or grammatical treatises, that do not contain clear evidence of use by speakers of Greek (or another language); these could have been used by monolingual Latin speakers and so are not necessarily evidence of foreign-language learning.
Papyri
This section includes all texts that survive as original ancient documents; some are on parchment, wood, or ostraca rather than papyrus. Papyrological publications (italicized) and collections (not italicized) are indicated by a standard set of abbreviations, for which a complete key can be found in the Checklist of editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic, and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca, and Tablets, available online at www.papyri.info/docs/checklist.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Learning Latin the Ancient WayLatin Textbooks from the Ancient World, pp. 178 - 182Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016