Dionysius Thrax ( grc-gre, Διονύσιος ὁ Θρᾷξ ''Dionýsios ho Thrâix'', 170–90 BC) was a
Greek 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 ...
and a pupil of
Aristarchus of Samothrace
Aristarchus of Samothrace ( grc-gre, Ἀρίσταρχος ὁ Σαμόθραξ ''Aristarchos o Samothrax''; c. 220 – c. 143 BC) was an ancient Greek grammarian, noted as the most influential of all scholars of Homeric poetry. He was the h ...
. He was long considered to be the author of the earliest grammatical text on the Greek language, one that was used as a standard manual for perhaps some 1,500 years, and which was until recently regarded as the groundwork of the entire Western grammatical tradition.
Life
His place of origin was not
Thrace as the epithet "Thrax" denotes, but probably
Alexandria
Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandri ...
. His Thracian background was inferred from the name of his father Tērēs (Τήρης), which is considered to be a Thracian name. One of his co-students during his studies in Alexandria under
Aristarchus was
Apollodorus of Athens
Apollodorus of Athens ( el, Ἀπολλόδωρος ὁ Ἀθηναῖος, ''Apollodoros ho Athenaios''; c. 180 BC – after 120 BC) son of Asclepiades, was a Greek scholar, historian, and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Pan ...
, who also became a distinguished grammarian.
Rudolf Pfeiffer
Rudolf Carl Franz Otto Pfeiffer (20 September 1889 – 5 May 1979) was a German classical philologist. He is known today primarily for his landmark, two-volume edition of Callimachus and the two volumes of his ''History of Classical Scholars ...
dates his shift to the isle of
Rhodes to around 144/143 BC, when political upheavals associated with the policies of
Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II
Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II Tryphon ( gr, Πτολεμαῖος Εὐεργέτης Τρύφων, ''Ptolemaĩos Euergétēs Tryphon'' "Ptolemy the Benefactor; c. 184 BC – 28 June 116 BC), nicknamed Physcon ( "Fatty"), was a king of the Ptolemai ...
are thought to have led to his exile. According to a report in
Athenaeus
Athenaeus of Naucratis (; grc, Ἀθήναιος ὁ Nαυκρατίτης or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; la, Athenaeus Naucratita) was a Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourishing about the end of th ...
'
Deipnosophistae
The ''Deipnosophistae'' is an early 3rd-century AD Greek work ( grc, Δειπνοσοφισταί, ''Deipnosophistaí'', lit. "The Dinner Sophists/Philosophers/Experts") by the Greek author Athenaeus of Naucratis. It is a long work of liter ...
(11,489a, b), his Rhodian pupils, grateful for his learning, gathered enough silver to enable him to fashion a cup whose shape aspired to recreate
that
''That'' is an English language word used for several grammatical purposes. These include use as an adjective, conjunction, pronoun, adverb, and intensifier; it has distance from the speaker, as opposed to words like ''this''. The word did not or ...
of
Nestor
Nestor may refer to:
* Nestor (mythology), King of Pylos in Greek mythology
Arts and entertainment
* "Nestor" (''Ulysses'' episode) an episode in James Joyce's novel ''Ulysses''
* Nestor Studios, first-ever motion picture studio in Hollywood, L ...
mentioned in the
IliadBook 11, lines 632–637.
Dionysius was primarily an
Homeric scholar, which was integral to his training under Aristarchus in Alexandria. His work shows some influence of earlier
Stoic grammatical theory, particular on word classes. He is also reported by
Varro to have been an erudite analyst of Greek lyric poetry, perhaps referring to his linguistic and
prosodic use of that material. He wrote prolifically in three genres: philological questions (γραμματικά); running commentaries (ὑπομνήματα) and treatises (συνταγματικά). Of the last genre, he wrote a polemical monograph criticizing the Homeric interpretations of
Krates. Another work he is said to have written was the Περὶ ποσοτήτων (
On quantities). From the
scholia preserved from the critical works of
Aristonicus and
Didymus who excerpted Dionysius' work it is clear that he was decidedly independent in his textual judgements on the Homeric corpus, since he frequently contradicts his master's known readings. His teaching may have exercised a formative impact on the rise of Roman grammatical studies, if as an entry in the
Suda suggests, the elder
Tyrannion was one of his pupils. The founder of classical scholarship in Rome,
L. Aelius Stilo may have profited from Dionysius' instruction, since he accompanied to Rhodes
Q. Metellus Numidicus when the latter went into voluntary exile, and while Dionysius was still teaching there.
Tékhnē grammatikē
Dionysius Thrax was credited traditionally as the author of the first extant grammar of
Greek, ''
Art of Grammar
''The Art of Grammar'' ( el, Τέχνη Γραμματική - or romanized, Téchnē Grammatikḗ) is a treatise on Greek grammar, attributed to Dionysius Thrax, who wrote in the 2nd century BC.
Contents
It is the first work on grammar in Gree ...
'' (, ''Tékhnē grammatikē''). The Greek text, in
August Immanuel Bekker's edition, runs to fifty pages. Its importance in Byzantine scholarship is attested by the fact that commentaries on it by Byzantine scholiasts run to some 600 pages. The text itself was thought to be the unique extant example of a work by
Hellenistic scholars. This general consensus began to break down when examinations of grammatical texts datable to a later period emerged among the finds of the
Oxyrhynchus Papyri
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt (, moder ...
which, until relatively late, showed no awareness of key elements in the text attributed to Dionysius Thrax. It concerns itself primarily with a
morphological description of Greek, lacking any treatment of
syntax. The work was translated into
Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
sometime around the 5th to 6th centuries AD, and into
Syriac Syriac may refer to:
*Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic
*Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region
* Syriac alphabet
** Syriac (Unicode block)
** Syriac Supplement
* Neo-Aramaic languages ...
by
Joseph Huzaya around that same period.
Dionysius defines grammar at the beginning of the ''Tékhnē'' as "the empirical knowledge of what is for the most part being said by poets and prose writers". He states that ''grammatikē'', what we might nowadays call "literary criticism", comprises six parts:
''Grammatikḗ''
* (a) ἀνάγνωσις ἐντριβὴς κατὰ προσῳδίαν (''anagnōsis...''): reading aloud with correct pronunciation, accent and punctuation.
* (b) ἐξήγησις κατὰ τοὺς ἐνυπάρχοντας ποιητικοὺς τρόπους (''exēgēsis...''): exposition of the
tropes/τρόποι, the figurative language of texts.
* (c) ἀπόδοσις πρόχειρος γλωσσῶν τε καὶ ἰστοριῶν (''apodosis...''): common exposition of obsolete words and subject matter.
* (d) εὕρεσις ἐτυμολογίας (''heuresis...''): finding the correct meaning of words according to their origin (etymology).
* (e) ἐκλογισμὸς ἀναλογίας (''eklogismos...''): setting forth or considering analogies.
* (f) κρίσις ποιημάτων (''krisis...''): critical judgement of the works examined.
Paragraph 6 outlines the στοιχεῖα (''stoikheia'') or letters of the alphabet, together with the divisions into vowels, diphthongs and consonants.
Paragraphs 7–10 deal with syllables, long (μακραὶ συλλαβαί), short (βραχεῖαι συλλαβαί) and ''
anceps
In languages with quantitative poetic metres, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, and classical Persian, an anceps (plural ''ancipitia'' or ''(syllabae) ancipites'') is a position in a metrical pattern which can be filled by either a l ...
'' (κοιναὶ συλλαβαί).
Paragraph 11 treats the
eight word classes, though strong doubts exist as to whether or not this division goes back to Dionysius Thrax, since ancient testimonies assert that he conflated proper nouns and appellatives, and classified
the article together with
pronouns. In the text attributed to Dionysius, the eight classes. which Di Benedetto and others argue was probably developed by
Tryphon several decades after Dionysius, are as follows:
* (a) the 'name' (ὄνομα ''ónoma''), translated as
noun: a part of speech inflected for
case
Case or CASE may refer to:
Containers
* Case (goods), a package of related merchandise
* Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component
* Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books
* Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to ca ...
. Its three genders: masculine (ἀρσενικόν), feminine (θηλυκόν) and neutral (οὐδέτερον) are distinguished, together with the five case endings. He also notes however that two other terms are also in use: κοινόν (common) designating those words whose gender varies depending on the sex of the creature, such as ἵππος (''hippos'' 'horse') and ἐπίκοινον (epicene) used to define words whose gender is stable, but which can refer to either sex, instancing χελιδών (''khelidōn'' 'swallow'). The ''name'' inludes various ''species'' like
nouns,
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
s, proper nouns, appelatives, collectives, ordinals, numerals and more.
[The term ' onoma' at Dionysius Thrax, ''Τέχνη γραμματική'' (Art of Grammar)]
14. Περὶ ὀνόματος
translated by Thomas Davidson
On the noun
: καὶ αὐτὰ εἴδη προσαγορεύεται· κύριον, προσηγορικόν, ἐπίθετον, πρός τι ἔχον, ὡς πρός τι ἔχον, ὁμώνυμον, συνώνυμον, διώνυμον, ἐπώνυμον, ἐθνικόν, ἐρωτηματικόν, ἀόριστον, ἀναφορικὸν ὃ καὶ ὁμοιωματικὸν καὶ δεικτικὸν καὶ ἀνταποδοτικὸν καλεῖται, περιληπτικόν, ἐπιμεριζόμενον, περιεκτικόν, πεποιημένον, γενικόν, ἰδικόν, τακτικόν, ἀριθμητικόν, ἀπολελυμένον, μετουσιαστικόν.
: also called ''species'': proper, appellative, adjective, relative, quasi-relative, homonym, synonym, pheronym, dionym, eponym, national, interrogative, indefinite, anaphoric (also called assimilative, demonstrative, and retributive), collective, distributive, inclusive, onomatopoetic, general, special, ordinal, numeral, participative, independent.
** For example, the appellative (προσηγορία), which he considers a species (
εἶδος) of the proper noun, not a distinct part of speech.
* (b) the verb (ῥῆμα) with its tenses.
* (c) the participle (μετοχή)
* (d) the article (ἄρθρον)
* (e) the pronoun (ἀντωνυμία)
* (f) the preposition (πρόθεσις)
* (g) the adverb (ἐπίρρημα)
* (h) the conjunction (σύνδεσμος)
Paragraphs 12-20 then elaborates successively on the parts of speech.
Authorship
Modern scepticism over the attribution is associated with the pioneering work of
Vincenzo Di Benedetto
Vincenzo Di Benedetto (12 January 1934 – 19 or 20 July 2013) was an Italian classical philologist.
Life
Born to the tailor Saverio Di Benedetto and his wife Maria Gaetana (née Santoro) he grew up in Saracena (Calabria) and acquired a sou ...
in particular, though as early as 1822
Karl Wilhelm Göttling
Karl Wilhelm Göttling (Latin: Carolus Guilielmus Goettling; January 19, 1793 – January 20, 1869) was a German philologist and classical scholar.
Biography
He was born in Jena, the son of chemist Johann Friedrich August Göttling (1753–1820 ...
, by analyzing the scholia on the text that had recently been collected and published by A. I. Bekker, concluded that the text as we have it was to be dated, not to the Hellenistic period but rather to the
Byzantine period
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
. Göttling's thesis convinced neither
Moritz Schmidt nor
Gustav Uhlig, and disappeared from view. In 1958/1959, Di Benedetto revived doubts by comparing the received text with ancient grammatical papyri that had since come to light. He argued that before the 3rd to 4th centuries AD, no papyri on Greek grammar reveal material structured in a way similar to the exposition we have in Dionysius's treatise, that the surviving witnesses for the period before that late date, namely authors such as
Sextus Empiricus,
Aelius Herodianus
Aelius Herodianus ( grc-gre, Αἴλιος Ἡρωδιανός) or Herodian (fl. 2nd century CE) was one of the most celebrated grammarians of Greco-Roman antiquity. He is usually known as Herodian except when there is a danger of confusion with t ...
,
Apollonius Dyscolus and
Quintilian
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (; 35 – 100 AD) was a Roman educator and rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing. In English translation, he is usually referred to as Quintilian ...
, fail to cite him, and that Dionysius's work only begins to receive explicit mention in the works written from the 5th century onwards by such scholars as
Timotheus of Gaza
Timotheus of Gaza ( el, Τιμόθεος ὁ Γαζαῖος), sometimes referred to as Timothy of Gaza, was a Greek grammarian active during the reign of Anastasius, i.e. 491–518. He is the author of a book on animals which may have been one o ...
,
Ammonius Hermiae
Ammonius Hermiae (; grc-gre, Ἀμμώνιος ὁ Ἑρμείου, Ammōnios ho Hermeiou, Ammonius, son of Hermias; – between 517 and 526) was a Greek philosopher from Alexandria in the eastern Roman empire during Late Antiquity. A Neoplatoni ...
and
Priscian. Di Benedetto concluded that only the first five paragraphs of the treatise came from Dionysius' hand.
Though initially rebuffed by scholars of the caliber of Pfeiffer and
Hartmut Erbse
Hartmut Erbse (23 November 1915 – 7 July 2004) was a German classical philologist.
Life
The son of a dentist from Thüringen, Erbse studied classical philology in Hamburg, where he was well known for his lively hat-wear and received his doctora ...
, Di Benedetto's argument today has found general acceptance among specialists.
Notes
Citations
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
*
* .
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dionysius Thrax
170 BC births
90 BC deaths
Ancient Greek grammarians
Ancient Thracian Greeks
Koine Greek
Linguists from Greece
Thracian people
Ancient Alexandrians