Aelius Festus Aphthonius is believed to be the author (otherwise unknown) of a Latin work called ''De metris omnibus'' ("About all the metres") incorporated as part of the '' Ars Grammatica'' of the fourth-century AD Christian writer

Gaius Marius Victorinus Gaius Marius Victorinus (also known as Victorinus Afer; fl. 4th century) was a Roman grammarian, rhetorician and Neoplatonic philosopher. Victorinus was African by birth and experienced the height of his career during the reign of Constantius II. He ...

. The manuscripts of Victorinus's ''Ars Grammatica'' end with the words: ''Aelii Festi Aphthonii V.P. de metris omnibus explicit liber iiii'' ("here ends the 4th book of Aelius Festus Aphthonius's ''de metris omnibus''"). Scholars have taken different views of this. Some, such as

Heinrich Keil Theodor Heinrich Gottfried Keil (25 May 1822, Gressow – 27 August 1894, Friedrichroda) was a German classical philologist. He was a son-in-law to educator Friedrich August Eckstein (1810–1885). He studied classical philology at the Univer ...

, the 19th century editor of Marius Victorinus, believed that Victorinus published the work of an earlier writer Aphthonius, to which he added an introduction and an appendix on the metres of

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

. The philologist P. Monceaux, however, writing in 1905, suggested that Aphthonius was later than Victorinus, and replaced part of Victorinus's work with his own. A third view is expressed by Bruce (1949), who writes: "In the present state of uncertainty, the uniformity of style and language seems to justify us in treating the whole of the ''Ars Grammatica'' as the work of Victorinus." In the 2012 assessment of Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter, 'most of the ''Ars grammatica'', as edited by Keil ... has now been recognized as the ''De metris'' of Aphthonius ... Only the opening section of the treatise ... is the work of Victorinus'.Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter, ''Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300-1475'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 124 n. 3; .

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External links

Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum: complete texts and full bibliographyText of Aphthonius
in the Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum. {{authority control Latin-language writers Ancient Roman writers Grammarians of Latin 4th-century Latin writers Ancient linguists

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