Diomedes Grammaticus was a
Latin grammarian
Grammarian may refer to:
* Alexandrine grammarians, philologists and textual scholars in Hellenistic Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE
* Biblical grammarians, scholars who study the Bible and the Hebrew language
* Grammarian (Greco-Roman ...
who probably lived in the late 4th century AD. He wrote a grammatical treatise, known either as ''De Oratione et Partibus Orationis et Vario Genere Metrorum libri III'' or ''
Ars grammatica
An ''ars grammatica'' ( en, italic=yes, art of grammar) is a generic or proper title for surveys of Latin grammar. The first ''ars grammatica'' seems to have been composed by Remmius Palaemon (first century CE), but is now lost. The most famous '' ...
'' in three books, dedicated to a certain Athanasius. Since he is frequently quoted by
Priscian (e.g. lib. ix. pp. 861, 870, lib. x. 879, 889, 892), he must have lived before the year 500. His third book on poetry is particularly valuable, containing extracts from
Suetonius
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (), commonly referred to as Suetonius ( ; c. AD 69 – after AD 122), was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire.
His most important surviving work is a set of biographies ...
's ''De poetica''. This book contains one of the most complete lists of types of
dactylic hexameters in antiquity, including the ''teres versus'', which may (or may not) be the so-called "
golden line." Diomedes wrote about the same time as
Charisius and used the same sources independently. The works of both grammarians are valuable, but whereas much of Charisius has been lost, the ''Ars'' of Diomedes has come down to us complete (although probably abridged). In book I he discusses the eight parts of speech; in II the elementary ideas of grammar and of style; in III poetry, quantity, and meters. The best edition is in
H. Keil's ''Grammatici Latini'', vol I.
References
*''
Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'' (1849), v. 1, p. 1026
*"Diomedes" in , ''Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity'', The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, volume 11, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 1988
*This entry incorporates material from the respective 1911 ''
Encyclopædia Britannica'' article
External links
Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum: complete texts and full bibliography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grammaticus, Diomedes
Grammarians of Latin
Ancient linguists
4th-century Romans
4th-century Latin writers