Teaching ‘correct’ Latin in late antique Rome

Abstract

ABSTRACT Roman grammatici taught formal registers of Latin language through reading Latin poets. By late antiquity, there was an ever widening gap between ‘correct’ formal Latin and the language which students used in daily contexts. Equally, the texts used in schools were centuries old and written in highly contrived literary registers. In addition, students at even the most traditional and elite schools in Rome may well have come from all over the empire, and were not necessarily native Latin speakers. One grammaticus, the late antique teacher and writer Servius (fl. 390–410), has left a vast commentary which indicates some of the approaches he used in teaching ‘correct’ Latin usage. We can tell, from his commentary, the linguistic difficulties his students seem to have encountered with Latin. In this paper, I examine how Servius addressed multiple purposes: reading Latin verse, daily communication and ‘correct’ formal Latin. I show instances in which Servius addresses students of differing linguistic backgrounds, although he only uses the target language in his Commentary, and perhaps in his classroom.