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A tale of two languages
Macrobius on Greek and Latin
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Abstract
From early on Latin grammarians were fascinated by the relationship between Latin and Greek. When they started to describe their own language, they borrowed extensively from Greek grammatical terminology, which they tended to translate into Latin. In the grammatical literature references to the structure of Greek are frequent, usually serving didactic purposes. In this paper, I deal with a treatise written by the fifth-century homme de lettres Macrobius, in which he compared the two languages. His perspective differed from that of common grammarians because his comparison was inspired by intellectual curiosity rather than didactic considerations.
Résumé
Très tôt, les grammairiens latins ont affiché leur intérêt pour les relations entre le latin et le grec. Lorsqu’ils ont commencé à décrire leur propre langue, ils ont puisé abondamment dans la terminologie grammaticale grecque tout un vocabulaire technique, qu’ils traduisaient le plus souvent dans leur propre langue. Dans les ouvrages grammaticaux latins, les références à la structure de la langue grecque sont très nombreuses. Dans cet article, j’examine un traité de Macrobe (Ve siècle de n.è.), dans lequel sont comparées les deux langues. La perspective de cet homme de lettres différait de celle des grammairiens traditionnels : en effet, si ces derniers visaient essentiellement des objectifs didactiques, lui était mû par la curiosité scientifique.
Zusammenfassung
Die lateinischen Grammatiker waren von jeher fasziniert von den Beziehungen zwischen Lateinisch und Griechisch. Als sie anfingen, ihre eigene Sprache zu beschreiben, übernahmen sie zahlreiche Ausdrücke der griechischen grammatischen Terminologie, die sie in der Regel ins Lateinische übersetzten. In den grammatischen Schriften gibt es entsprechend viele Hinweise auf die Struktur des Griechischen, was meistens didaktische Zwecke hatte. In diesem Beitrag wird eine Abhandlung von Macrobius analysiert, in der die beiden Sprachen miteinander verglichen werden. Die Perspektive von Macrobius, einem ‘Homme de lettres’ des fünften Jahrhunderts, war nicht die der sonstigen Grammatiker, die fast immer didaktische Ziele verfolgten, während Macrobius von intellektueller Neugier getrieben wurde.
Article outline
- 1.Comparing Latin and Greek
- 2.Macrobius’ treatise comparing Greek and Latin
- 3.Macrobius’ sources
- 4.Comparing the Greek and the Latin verbal system
- 5.Rules and paradigms
- 6.Terminology
- 7.Conclusion: Macrobius and the two languages
- Notes
- Author queries
References
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