Flavius Sosipater Charisius ( 4th century AD) was a
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
grammarian.
He was probably an
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...
n by birth, summoned to
Constantinople
Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...
to take the place of
Euanthius, a learned commentator on
Terence
Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a playwright during the Roman Republic. He was the author of six Roman comedy, comedies based on Greek comedy, Greek originals by Menander or Apollodorus of Carystus. A ...
.
''Ars Grammatica''
The ''Ars Grammatica'', in five books, is addressed to his son (not a Roman, as the preface shows). The surviving text is incomplete: the beginning of the first, part of the fourth, and the greater part of the fifth book are lost.
[
The work, which is a ]compendium
A compendium ( compendia or compendiums) is a comprehensive collection of information and analysis pertaining to a body of knowledge. A compendium may concisely summarize a larger work. In most cases, the body of knowledge will concern a specific ...
, is valuable as it contains excerpts from the earlier writers on grammar, who are in many cases mentioned by name: Remmius Palaemon, Julius Romanus (Gaius Iulius Romanus), Comminianus.[
The edition of Heinrich Keil, in ''Grammatici Latini'', i. (1857), has been superseded by that of Karl Barwick (1925).
]
References
* Article by G. Gotz in Pauly-Wissowa
The Pauly encyclopedias or the Pauly-Wissowa family of encyclopedias, are a set of related encyclopedia
An encyclopedia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge, either general or special, in a particular field o ...
, III. 2 (1899)
* Teuffel, Wilhelm Sigismund and Schwabe, Ludwig von, ''History of Roman Literature'' (Engl. trans), Vol. I. 2
* Frohde, in ''Jahr. f. Philol.'', 18 Suppl. (1892), 567–672
External links
Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum: complete texts and full bibliography
Grammarians of Latin
Ancient linguists
4th-century writers in Latin
{{AncientRome-bio-stub