Learning Latin: Grammars and Annotations in Latin Papyri

The PL III / 504 is a small lacinia membranacea presumably written in IV d.C.: there are just a few and fragmentary lines concerning a grammatical topic and containing the citation of Vergilian exameters (Aen. 11, 12-13). Even if there are sever analogies with what can be read in the section de tropis in Charisius’grammar about the dialysis or in Sacerdos about the parenthesis, the author of the Ars grammatica of the PL III / 504 has to be considered unknown: the only certainty is that a grammatical text was know and, maybe, circulated in classrooms in the Oriental part of the Empire. In the same direction have to be seen other documents, such as the PLit. Lond. inv. 184 + PMich. VII 429 (containing another Vergilian quotation), what remains of an Ars talking about the speech’s parts and other grammatical features, written on the verso of a military document (II d.C.) and the PBodl. Libr. inv. Gr. bibl. d2 (III-IV d.C.), while the grammatical PLouvre inv. E 7332 (V-VI d.C.) or the PLouvre inv. E 7401 (VI d.C.; inedit) involve the more complex matter of bilingualism and bi-graphism. These documents make our knowledge of teaching and learning Latin in the Eastern provinces grown, together with all the annotations in Latin literary papyri – from Vergil to Cicero and Sallust – which have to be considered as a comment to texts, and all information they train have to be linked to what we know thanks to Late Antiquity’s ‘teachers’, the Grammatici Latini and the Auctores’commentators.