Marcus Antonius Gnipho (''fl.'' 1st century BC) was a

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 ...

McNelis, C. (2007) "Grammarians and rhetoricians" in Dominik, W. and Hall, J. (eds.) ''A companion to Roman rhetoric''. Oxford:

Blackwell Publishing Wiley-Blackwell is an international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons. It was formed by the merger of John Wiley & Sons Global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business with Blackwell Publish ...

, pp. 285-296. and teacher of

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate par ...

Gaulish Gaulish was an ancient Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerl ...

origin who taught in

ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–50 ...

. Born in

Gaul Gaul ( la, Gallia) was a region of Western Europe first described by the Romans. It was inhabited by Celtic and Aquitani tribes, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, most of Switzerland, parts of Northern Italy (only durin ...

, he was exposed as a child, but was found, and grew up a

slave Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

. He was later freed, and according to

Roman naming conventions Over the course of some fourteen centuries, the Romans and other peoples of Italy employed a system of nomenclature that differed from that used by other cultures of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, consisting of a combination of personal and fa ...

took the ''nomen'' and ''praenomen'' of his former master, one Marcus Antonius. He may have been educated in

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, Alexandr ...

. He had a great memory and was well-read in both

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

. He was first employed as the private tutor of the young Julius Caesar, and later set up a school in his own house, where it is said he never haggled over pay, but relied on his pupils' generosity. The great orator

Marcus Tullius Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the est ...

is said to have frequented his school while ''

praetor Praetor ( , ), also pretor, was the title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to a man acting in one of two official capacities: (i) the commander of an army, and (ii) as an elected ''magistratus'' (magistrate), assigned to discharge vario ...

'' in 66 BC. Ateius the Philologist was another of his pupils.Suetonius. ''Gram''. 10.3 Gnipho wrote a number of works, including ''De Latino Sermone'' ("On the Latin Language") in two books. The surviving ''

Rhetorica ad Herennium The ''Rhetorica ad Herennium'' (''Rhetoric for Herennius''), formerly attributed to Cicero or Cornificius, but in fact of unknown authorship, sometimes ascribed to an unnamed doctor, is the oldest surviving Latin book on rhetoric, dating from the ...

'' has been ascribed to him, but this is not widely accepted; otherwise, none of Gnipho's works survive. Scholarly opinion in antiquity was that only ''De Latino Sermone'' was his, and that all other works ascribed to him were written by his disciples. He died at the age of fifty.

References and sources

;References ;Sources *

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 ...

, ''Lives of Eminent Grammarians'' 7, 10 *

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 Quintili ...

, ''Institutio Oratoria'
1:6.23
*

Macrobius Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, usually referred to as Macrobius (fl. AD 400), was a Roman provincial who lived during the early fifth century, during late antiquity, the period of time corresponding to the Later Roman Empire, and when Latin was ...

, ''Saturnalia'
3.12
* William Smith, ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'', 1870
Vol. 2 p. 297

External links

*

' (English translation) {{DEFAULTSORT:Antonius Gnipho, Marcus Ancient Roman rhetoricians Republican era slaves and freedmen 1st-century BC Gallo-Roman people 1st-century BC writers Gnipho, Marcus