This is a critical edition of what survives of Marcus Terentius Varro’s De lingua latina, the treatise on the Latin language that he composed in the middle of the first century BCE, together with fragments of his other grammatical writings. The volume was prepared by Georg Goetz and Friedrich Schoell and published at Leipzig by B. G. Teubner in 1910, and it presents the Latin text with a full critical apparatus, prolegomena on the manuscripts and printed editions, and indexes. Varro wrote twenty-five books on the Latin language; only a portion has come down to us, and this edition is built around the single medieval manuscript that preserves most of what remains.
“Casu fere factum est, ut societatem ad Plautum recensendum olim a Ritschelio praeceptore dilectissimo iunctam ad Varronis libros de lingua latina transferremus.”
The Core Argument
The Editors’ Preface
The Teubner volume of Varro’s De lingua latina — what survives of it — was edited by Georg Goetz and Friedrich Schoell and published at Leipzig in 1910, with fragments of Varro’s other grammatical writings appended. The preface is dedicated to the memory of Leonhard Spengel and Karl Odofred Müller, and signed from Jena and Heidelberg in November 1909. The collaboration, the editors admit, came about almost by accident: a society originally formed under Ritschl to edit Plautus was redirected to Varro’s books on the Latin language. When one editor offered to prepare a Teubner edition, he discovered the other had already agreed to do the same; they joined forces as a fresh token of friendship, though they argued sharply until one yielded, a new view emerged, or a question was left open. They chose not to mark their individual contributions, so that nothing would appear they did not both consider sound, and so neither could claim undue credit.
What began as a revision grew into a larger edition. A fresh collation of the Laurentian codex became necessary, along with added testimonies — not only explicit citations of Varro by later writers, which are relatively few, but parallel passages and ὁμοιώσεις as well. They concede more could be gathered, since they began collecting late. Fuller prolegomena, notes, and slightly reorganized indexes followed. From the outset they meant to include fragments of Varro’s other grammatical works, even though Funaioli had meanwhile published them in his Grammaticae Romanae Fragmentorum volume of 1907 and Wessner was soon to gather all Varronian remains. They explain their relation to Funaioli’s and Wilmanns’ foundations, using Wilmanns’ numbers in parentheses and Funaioli’s in brackets, with a concordance on page 242. Georg Wissowa and Franz Skutsch had hoped to proofread sheets, and some comments appear under the sigla Wi and Sh, but both withdrew upon taking up the offices of rector and dean; Paul Wessner could not give the help he intended; Adolf Groth shared notes he had once made. The editors thank these men, mention Ernst Diehl and Girolamo Vitelli, and ask pardon for remaining errors, listed in the Addenda and Corrigenda.
The Prolegomena: Varro’s Twenty-Five Books
Varro composed twenty-five books de lingua latina, working on them in 47–45 BCE, as inferred from Cicero. Whether he left them unpublished — Müller’s view, approved by Lachmann and Ritschl — or published them himself, as Spengel and Wilmanns argued, remains debated. Jerome’s index testifies that Varro made an epitome. The editors discuss the dating of the triad addressed to Septumius (books II–IV), the dedication to Cicero, and Varro’s use of examples such as “consul fuit Tullius et Antonius.”
Of the books’ later fortunes little is known. References in Livy, Vergil, Propertius, and Ovid point to the Antiquitates rather than the grammatical works. Vitruvius knew the books before 27 BCE. Verrius Flaccus, Remmius Palaemon, Columella, Valerius Probus, Pliny, and Gellius are weighed as possible users. Priscian preserved the largest fragment; Isidore mostly copied Servius. No medieval writer drew from Varro himself, except that in the eleventh century someone copied the Florentine codex and the Casinese fragment was later taken away. In the fourteenth century Boccaccio first certainly knew the books, and Petrarch probably did; Leonardo Bruni’s 1401 dialogue shows he did not yet know the codex.
The Casinese Fragment and Codex F
The codex Casinensis (no. 361) contains, besides Vegetius, Frontinus, and works of Peter the Deacon, a fragment from book V, sections 41–56 — the epitome. Keil first published it; L. Spengel confirmed it came from the old Casinese codex. Goetz argued that Peter the Deacon himself made that codex. The editors conclude that Peter excerpted from codex F at Monte Cassino, and that the unique book was later transported to Florence.
Codex F was written in the eleventh century at Monte Cassino in Lombard letters, later kept at Florence in the Marciana library, now in the Laurentiana, pluteus LI codex 10. Its first folio is blank except for an inscription listing contents. Petrus Victorius and Iacobus Diacetius collated it in 1521; Hieronymus Lagomarsini in 1740; Niebuhr, Lachmann, Ludwig Mercklin, Heinrich Keil, Adolf Groth, August Wilmanns, and Schoell all worked on it. Schoell re-read the book in 1906, finding Keil sometimes right, sometimes Groth, sometimes differing from both. The editors describe the codex’s physical makeup — quaternions, a ternio, a binio — list which folios contain which portions, and note lost folios.
The Census of Manuscripts
The prolegomena continue with a census of manuscripts. Codex Mutinensis 212, Antonibon’s m, was overvalued by Müller, as Keil rightly warned. Codex Parmensis, Antonibon’s P, dates to 1547; the Venetus Marcianus of 1478 is disfigured by lacunae. Codex Escurialensis III g 20 ends with the note that Sebastianus de Papia wrote it at Florence in 1419.
The Forum and Its Names
Varro works through the places of Rome one by one, and the derivations carry stories inside them. The fish market by the Tiber takes its name from fish, as Plautus attests. The forum cupedinis comes from desire or from delicacies; when every provision was gathered into a single spot and a building raised, it became the macellum — whether from a garden there or from a house whose owner bore the cognomen Macellus and was publicly torn down to make room for it. The lacus Curtius draws three competing accounts. Procilius says the earth gaped, the senate consulted the haruspices, and the answer came back that the god demanded a bravest citizen be sent down; an armed Curtius mounted his horse, turned from the Concordia, and plunged in, and the place closed over him. Piso places the story in the Sabine war, where Mettius Curtius withdrew into a marshy spot in the forum and returned to his men on the Capitol. Cornelius and Lutatius say the spot was struck by lightning and enclosed by senate decree, done by the consul Curtius, colleague of M. Genucius.
The arx comes from keeping off, the carcer from coercing, its underground part the Tullianum from King Tullius. The lauretum is from Tatius buried there or from a laurel wood; corneta, esculetum, and fagutal follow the same pattern. The armilustrium is from the circling of the purification; the circus Maximus from circuses, games, and the procession around the turning posts. The carceres are from coercing, though Naevius calls them a town. The inner circus is ad Murciae, from potters or from a myrtle grove; the circus Flaminius from the Flaminian meadow. The comitium is from coming together; the curiae are of two kinds, sacred and human, like the curia Hostilia built by King Hostilius. The rostra take their name from captured beaks. Then the graecostasis, the senaculum, the lautolae from washing. The Velabrum from ferrying in boats; the Aequimaelium from the leveled house of Melius; the busta Gallica; the doliola, where spitting is forbidden, with two stories attached. The argiletum from Argus or from clay; the clivus Publicius from the Publicii aediles; the clivus Pullius and Cosconius; the slope next to Flora. The vicus Africus from African hostages, the vicus Ciprius from the Sabine word for good, and the vicus sceleratus from Tullia driving her chariot over her slain father.
Houses and Their Parts
Domus is Greek, aedis from entrance. Varro lists the hollow of the house, the testudo, the impluvium, the compluvium, the Tuscanic style from the Tusci, the atrium from Atria. The rooms follow: cella from concealing, penaria, cubiculum, cenaculum, still used at Lanuvium, in Latium, at Falerii and Corduba. The lectica from gathering straw; segestria; feretrum; culcita from trampling; stragulum; pulvinar; coverings. Foreign words appear alongside Latin ones — sagum, reno, gaunaca, amphimallum — and then torale, torus from twisting, torulus, scabellum, scamnum, gradus.
Money and Its Fractions
The as comes from bronze; the dupondius follows, then tressis through nonussis, decussis, vicessis, tricessis up to centussis. The fractions run their course: sextula, semuncia, uncia, sextans, quadrans, triens, semis, septunx, deunx, dextans.
Festival Names
Book VI opens with the festivals. Ecurria comes from the running of horses, and on that day games are run in the Campus Martius. Liberalia is named because throughout the town aged priestesses of Liber, crowned with ivy, sit with cakes and a small hearth, sacrificing on behalf of a buyer; in the books of the Salii surnamed Agonenses the day might rather be called Agonia. Quinquatrus is observed through an error about its name, as if it were called five; just as the Tusculans call the day after the sixth day before the Ides sexatrus, and after the seventh septimatrus, so this day, because it fell after the fifth day before the Ides, is quinquatrus. It is called the day of the tubilustrium because trumpets are purified in the shoemakers’ hall. Megalesia is named from the Greeks, because it was summoned from the Sibylline books by King Attalus of Pergama; near the wall stands the Megalesion, the temple of that goddess, from where it was brought to Rome. Fordicidia is from pregnant cows, sacrificed publicly in several curiae. Palilia is named from Pales, as Cerialia from Ceres. Vinalia is from wine, and the day belongs to Jupiter, not Venus; the flamen Dialis takes the auspices for the vintage, and between the cutting and throwing away of the entrails he gathers the wine. Robigalia is named from Robigo, sacrifice made lest rust seize the crops. The day of Vestalia is for the Vestal virgins, or from Vesta. The Quinquatrus minusculae are the Ides of June, when the flute-players wander the city and gather at the temple of Minerva. The day of Fors Fortuna was named by King Servius Tullius, who dedicated a shrine near the Tiber. Poplifugia seems named because the people fled in a sudden uproar, not long before the Gauls departed the city.
Litigation, Theft, and the Roots of Words
Varro traces iurgare back to ius, since litigation is conducted by right, and iurgium is glossed as litibus—lawsuits. The old legal formula “rem sive litem dicere oportet” preserves this sense of disputed matters. Clepere, meaning to snatch, comes from clam, passing through clapere by the shift of E and A, though it may also descend from Greek kleptein. Mandier derives from mandendo, chewing, which gives us manducari and the obscene mask of Atellan farce, the manducus. Obscenum comes from scena, the stage, with the same A/E variation seen in scaeptrum/sceptrum and faeneratrix/feneratrix. In Plautus, crevi means “I have decided,” so an heir who accepts his inheritance cernit and has crevisse. Frequens describes one assiduously present when needed, opposed to infrequens. Ennius’s fodari comes from digging, whence fossa.
Animal Sounds and Human Speech
Words migrate from animal cries to human use. Mussare comes from the muti, who say no more than “MU.” Pacuvius’s averruncassint derives from avertendo, giving the god Averruncus invoked against danger. Pipulo means convicio, from the piping of chicks. Ennius writes latrat, Plautus gannit, Caecilius dibalare, Lucilius rudet and heiulitabit. Less obvious transfers include ululantis for the wolf, mugit for the calf, bovantes for the ox, fremendi for the lion, vagit for the kid, and fringuttis for the finch.
Nexum and the Bond of Debt
Manilius holds that everything done by scale and bronze, involving mancipia, is nexum. Mucius says such transactions obligate except when given in mancipium. A free man who surrendered his labor for debt until payment was called nexus, like obaeratus from bronze. This bondage was abolished under the dictator C. Poetelius Libo Visolus, freeing all who had sworn to “good ability.”
Poetic Words and the Harvest’s End
Delicuum, in the Casina, comes from what is not deliquandum—turbid things clarified until liquid. Naevius and other poets yield derivable words: mucro from lingua, vitulantes from Vitula, praebia from praebendo, sardare from serare, to open. Varro closes fearing more will fault him for excess than omission, comparing himself to one leaving stubble after harvest, and recaps his six books.
Anomaly in Declension
Book VIII turns to declension’s irregularities. Pronouns in oblique cases fail to mark gender as the nominative does. Common nouns fall into four declension-types—nominative, casual, augmentative, diminutive—and in none is analogy preserved. Ovile and suile exist but not bovile; amator and salutator but not messor. Compounds show tibicines but not citharicen, aurifex but not argentifex. Nouns have differing numbers of cases, so no analogy holds. Gens, mens, and dens decline dissimilarly; bonum yields melium and optimum with gaps throughout. Diminutives shift unpredictably: cista to cistula to cistella, but macer to macricolus to macellus.
The Defense of Analogy
Book IX opens with Varro criticizing Crates, who leaned on Chrysippus and Aristarchus without grasping either. Analogy is born from consuetudo, and neither anomaly nor analogy should be rejected. The populus should use analogy and correct itself. Nouns of the third type lack the social bond of masculine and feminine; slaves’ names do not decline like free men’s, since gentile names are not natural to slaves. Praenomina arose for practical distinction—Secunda, Tertia, Quintus, Postumus. Where nature advances with usage, analogy propagates proportionally. Objections about words lacking plurals or cases no more destroy analogy than a headless statue destroys the analogy of its members. Book X announces four matters: similarity, ratio, proportion, and usage. Suis from suere and suis of sus sound alike but differ in part of speech.
The Mechanics of Proportion
Varro defines analogy: things dissimilar in part yet sharing a ratio, compared in two pairs, yield analogon and analogia. He illustrates with Menaechmus, coinage, and family relations, then applies it to declensions—albus, albo, albi—producing analogies like Albius to Atrius. Analogy has two genera, disjunct and conjunct, mirrored in the cithara’s tetrachords and the physician’s seventh day. He criticizes those who wrongly pronounce verbs across three tenses, and distinguishes infecta from perfecta. Usage has three species: old, current, and neither, plus a mixed fourth. Analogy should not be sought in indeclinables, single-case words, unique series, or mismatched sets, but holds in four grades elsewhere.
Style, the Three Characters, and the Roman Letter
Varro derives faenerator from faenus, itself from fetus and fetura, money that “bears” interest, and notes that Cato and his contemporaries pronounced the word without the letter A. Both women and men, he observes, inhabited the epicrocum. From Gellius comes his report of three approved genera of style in verse and prose, which the Greeks call characteres: the grand, the slender, and the middle — in Latin uber, gracilis, mediocris. Each has its virtues (dignity and amplitude; charm and subtlety; a blend of both) and paired vices that counterfeit them: swollen and tumid for the grand, squalid and jejune for the slender, uncertain and ambiguous for the middle. Varro assigns Latin examples — Pacuvius for grandeur, Lucilius for slenderness, Terentius for the middle. Homer already displayed the three in Ulysses, Menelaus, and Nestor, and the same triad appeared in three philosophers sent by the Athenians to the Roman senate to seek remission of a fine of nearly five hundred talents incurred for the devastation of Oropus: Carneades the Academic, Diogenes the Stoic, Critolaus the Peripatetic. Introduced to the senate through the senator C. Acilius as interpreter, each first declaimed separately before a great crowd; Rutilius and Polybius admired the eloquence of each — Carneades violent and rapid, Critolaus clever and polished, Diogenes modest and sober.
Letters, Accent, and the Elements of Grammar
Varro treats ethe and emotion in Terence, Trabea, Atilius, and Caecilius, then later, lutum, and iugmenta, domi suae, and mutuo. He explains clausulae as so called because they “close” a sentence, citing Accius, Caecilius, and Terence, and describes the trochaic septenarius and comic quadratus. He advises placing a mark between syllables, reports that there are seventeen Latin letters with others superfluous, records that Caesar wrote I for certain words, criticizes Accius for doubling vowels, quotes Lucilius on orthography, and argues that E should precede I in plurals but not singulars. He retains mium, commircium, and Mircurius with I, discusses the digamma, distinguishes plebs and urbs (B) from Pelops (P), prefers delirus (from lira, a furrow), Delmatia, ferias, and arispex, derives intervallum from vallum, and writes narare with one R. Voice, he says, has three dimensions — height, thickness, length — and he debates the letter H, treats aspiration in cilo, coclea, Graecus, ortus, pulchrum, and R, defines accent’s matter, place, and nature, and reports Athenodorus’ two prosodies, Dionysius Thrax’s three, Tyrannio’s four, and his own agreement with the four, including the middle. The fragments close on tibiae, accents, rhythm, metre, cola, comma, periodus, and versus.
Prepositions, Stage Terms, and the Offices of Grammar
The fragments distinguish de, ex, and a: one says “imus in provinciam,” “eximus e nave,” but “de provincia existimamus.” Varro faults “senatum habere apud aedem Apollinis” for “in aede,” and “de senatus sententia” for “ex senatus sententia,” noting one enters the senate and leaves it. He corrects “de tabulis dicere” versus “e tabulis,” “legi” versus “dici,” “a capite dempta” versus “de capite,” and “ad caput additum,” and distinguishes transscribunt, describunt, and exscribunt. On stage terms he prefers “pro rostris,” “in rostra,” “e rostris,” “de rostris,” and “in contione,” “e contione,” “de contione,” and faults “litterae datae e Gallia” for “in Gallia,” and “Roma” for “Romae.” Coram concerns those present, palam also the absent; caper means a castrated goat; a castrated cock becomes capus; poscere is demanding something for our merit, petere asking humbly with prayers. Book I of the Disciplinarum concerns grammar, called litteratura, knowledge of what poets, historians, and orators say, with four chief offices: writing, reading, understanding, approving. Since absent people’s words could not be heard, letters were devised marking all sounds, and the utility of numbering was recognized, hence the profession of scribes and accountants, grammar’s infancy, which Varro calls litteratio. Its offices are four — reading, exposition, emendation, judgment — and its beginnings rise from elements to letters, syllables, diction, parts of speech, oration, virtue, and avoidance of faults. Voice, per the Stoics, is thin spirit perceptible to hearing, either articulate (rational, written) or confused (irrational, unwritable, like a horse’s neigh). Of letters, some exist and are spoken (A, B), some are spoken but do not exist (H, X), some neither exist nor are spoken (O, W). Syllables are rough, light, long, dry, barbarous, Greekish, hard, soft.
Textual Problems in the Fragments
The closing stretch of the edition turns to the annotator’s own apparatus, where he wrestles with fragments whose attribution and wording remain unsettled. A Greek inscription, he concedes, can scarcely be rendered better in Latin than de formulis verborum, yet he doubts whether it belongs to the books de formulis verborum rather than to later books of the de lingua latina. Funaioli draws his criticism for assigning to Varro’s nearest book mere adverbs that Charisius would never have introduced with a c; the words that follow in Charisius strike the annotator as thoroughly Varronian, and he reminds us that Varro quotes even from his saturae. He questions whether foculissime should stand at all, arguing that alien words betray themselves: since penitissimo appears in the preceding example, oculissime must be understood not as an adverb but as a perfect formed from an adverb, oculitus, in the manner of penitus.
Plautus, Satura, and the Disciplinae
A lacuna after Plautus is posited with reference to the Mostellaria; Lindsay is faulted for failing to reconsider the passage in his Addenda and for misapplying the Persa to a deleted Plautus, and Funaioli likewise passes the name over. Leo, cited from Kaibel and from Hermes, referred nearly everything Diomedes reported about the name satura back to Varro, while Marx narrowed that claim and conjectured that Varro, starting from the Amphitruo, added the remarks himself. Leo’s view, the annotator notes, sits poorly with the probable findings of the Quaestiones Plautinae, since he and Funaioli attached these fragments to the grammatical books, whereas Wilmanns discarded them among other glossematica — which the annotator also excludes. Keil, he adds, keeps the words ad haec . . . grana far from Varronian vocabulary, hardly correctly. A fragment Wilmanns assigned to book I of the Disciplinae is hesitantly reclaimed for these books, since its sentiment, contrary to the fragment the same grammarian preserves from the same author, seems to belong to a work Varro deliberately set against books VIII and IX de lingua latina — an arrangement that lets the passages be viewed together, though fragment 121 resists joining either. Goetz’s discussion of the book and of de utilitate sermonis is recommended, and the final words, appearing to be Minius’ rather than Varro’s, send the reader to Spengel’s preface.
Dating and the Ordering of Fragments
Ritschl is cited on the publication question: if Cicero’s passage is rightly attributed to Varro, it shows — as does Tyrannio’s book used after 46 — that the books de sermone latino appeared after the books de lingua latina, though it is not otherwise certain Varro used Cicero there. Buecheler is invoked for the placement of a fragment before its successor, contrary to Wilmanns and Funaioli, because it precedes in Gellius and concerns comparing a Greek and Latin word, whereas the following opposes an old Latin form to a recent one; the annotator, mindful of how few fragments survive with a stated book, refuses to overvalue the reasoning. He observes that Varro could have used garment names in comparison, as he adduces the woman’s stola at X 27, and that another fragment almost certainly comes from book V de sermone latino by its similarity to the intervening one.
Praecise and the Index of Names
On praecisum genus the annotator weighs Reuvensius and Buecheler’s conjecture praecise [gener]at: Buecheler rightly hesitated over the vulgate praecise generat affectionem but wrongly altered generat to simplex ad and wrongly joined praecise to passionem, destroying the adverb’s force — the same force by which the author ad Herennium defines praecisio. Hence praecise stands separated, while Lindemann offered praecisio generat. There the continuous argument ends, giving way to the index of names, things, and words, which runs from F through S: falerae and Falerii, fama and familia, the fanorum servi, far and fari, the fasti and fatum, Faunus et Fauna, Februarius and februatio, felix, femina, feriae with their many kinds, ferentarii equites, Feronia, fetiales, fibra, ficta verba, Fides and Fidius, figurae verbi, finis, finitum et infinitum, flamen with its long train of priests, Flora, fons, Fordicidia, forma and formula, Fortuna, forum with its markets, fratres arvales, fruges and frugalissimus, fulmen, fulmentum, and at last Fulvia — the edition closing, as such editions do, in the alphabetical silence of its own apparatus.
Inside the Book
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Key Ideas
Varro’s governing conviction is that words carry their history inside them. To explain why Romans say what they say, he reaches for origins: quaestores from quaerendo, because they sought out public money and crimes; pontifices from pons, because the priests of the Sublician bridge performed sacred rites on both banks of the Tiber; pecunia from pecus, because pastoral wealth came first. The derivations are often wrong by modern standards, but the method is the point — language as a record of institutions, and etymology as a form of antiquarian history.
Against the stricter grammarians of his day he stakes out a middle position on analogy. Crates and his followers denied that regularity governed speech; Aristarchus and his insisted on it. Varro argues that the two are not enemies: analogy is born from usage, and usage itself is a mixture of the similar and the dissimilar. He works out the doctrine with real precision, borrowing the language of mathematics — direct and transverse ratios, the four-term proportion, the analogy of albus to albo set beside alba to albae — and then limits it, listing the kinds of words where analogy should not be sought at all: indeclinables, single-case words, unique series, mismatched pairs like socer and socrus.
The survey of places and things in Book V is the most concrete stretch of the work. Varro walks through Rome’s topography and derives its names: the lacus Curtius with its three competing stories of how the lake got its name, the Velabrum from ferrying in boats, the vicus sceleratus from Tullia driving her chariot over her slain father. He does the same for houses, for money from the as up to the centussis, and for the calendar, where each festival is explained — the Fordicidia from the pregnant cows sacrificed in the curiae, the Vinalia with its rule that new wine may not be carried into the city before the proclamation, the Furrinalia for a goddess whose name, Varro notes, is by his own time scarcely known to anyone.
The fragments broaden the picture. Varro distinguished three styles — the grand, the slender, and the middle — and assigned Pacuvius, Lucilius, and Terence as their Latin examples, with the same triad already visible in Homer’s Ulysses, Menelaus, and Nestor. He wrote on the Latin alphabet, counting seventeen letters and calling the rest superfluous; on accent, where he sided with those who recognized four prosodies; on orthography, arguing that E should precede I in plurals but not in singulars. A fragment from the Disciplinarum defines grammar as the knowledge of what poets, historians, and orators say, with four offices: reading, exposition, emendation, and judgment.
Themes
The book is a monument to a lost world of learning, and it knows it. Varro repeatedly marks the distance between his own time and the older Rome whose speech he is reconstructing: the flamen of Furrina, once honored with annual rites and a priest of his own, now barely remembered; the old words cascus and cascum surviving only in Salian hymns and Atellan farces; the nexum, the bond by which a free man gave his labor for debt, abolished in the dictatorship of C. Poetelius Libo Visolus. Etymology becomes a way of taking inventory of what has already slipped away.
Running alongside that antiquarian impulse is a genuine theory of language. Varro treats speech as a natural growth rather than a fixed code, and he is willing to say so against the authority of the schools. He criticizes Crates for leaning on Chrysippus without grasping what either man intended, and he insists that the poet may follow analogy more freely than the orator, that usage has three species — old, current, and neither — and that a missing case no more destroys the regularity of a declension than a headless statue destroys the analogy of its members.
There is also a quieter theme, visible in the editorial matter as much as in the text: transmission. The prolegomena trace how these books survived — copied in the eleventh century at Monte Cassino in Lombard letters, excerpted by Petrus Diaconus, carried to Florence, collated by Petrus Victorius and Iacobus Diacetius in 1521, worked over by Niebuhr, Lachmann, Keil, Groth, and Wilmanns. Boccaccio first certainly knew the books in the fourteenth century; Petrarch probably did; Leonardo Bruni’s dialogue of 1401 shows he did not yet know the codex. The history of the text is itself a story about what gets lost and what gets copied.
Why It Matters
De lingua latina is the fullest surviving statement of ancient Roman thinking about language, and much of what later ages knew about Latin etymology, orthography, and grammar passed through it or through writers who used it. Priscian preserved its largest fragment; Isidore mostly copied Servius; no medieval writer drew on Varro directly. The fact that the work reaches us through a single eleventh-century manuscript, with one book surviving only in an epitome, is a reminder of how thin the thread is.
For readers today the book is valuable on two levels at once. It is a primary document of Roman antiquarianism — a guide to the calendar, the magistracies, the army, the house, the coinage, the very streets of the city — and it is an early attempt to think systematically about how languages work, what regularity means, and where the line falls between nature and custom. Varro’s answers are frequently wrong. His questions are still the ones we ask.
