A lezione dal grammaticus: la lettura degli auctores

The school of the grammaticus: the reading of auctores. The problem of a correct and effectual teaching of the Latin language is as old as the Roman scholastic institution and a seemingly strict pedagogical plan shows gradual changes in methodology, subjects and educational organisation. In the practise of teaching the grammaticus could choose from two teaching strategies, which complemented each other thus contributing to the students’ linguistic and literary knowledge: the lessons of the theory of the language and the lessons of comment on the texts. While the artes show a crystallised structure of the theoretical course, the selection of the commented auctores reveals the intervention of the teachers’ personal choice. While showing the formation of a fixed canon, important sources such as Quintilianus, Suetonius and Aulus Gellius also signal the development of new perspectives, with the recognition of auctores iuniores as classical authors. We know that the lessons of the theory of the language and those of comment on the texts took place in parallel; therefore the quotations of authors in the artes reflect the literary choices made for the lessons of enarratio auctorum. Thus the variations in the authors of the scholastic curriculum signal the evolving of the pedagogical as well as literary trends and respond to several reasons which are not only educational, but also cultural and historical. The intertwining of such factors influences the selection of texts, thus favouring the circulation of certain works and allowing their survival in the following centuries.