teachers, and his contemporaries, hardly one of them can be taken
seriously.
Upon a first reading of his works (they are wholly devoted to grammatical subjects, and consist of two series of Epitomae and Epistles) the reader feels that he is confronted with a piece of pure mystification. A striking, but yet fairly typical example of the extravagances we encounter is the passage in which he describes, on the authority of a certain Virgil of Asia, the "twelve Latinities." The first of these is the usitata, that in which (ordinary) Latin writings are "inked" (atramentantur). Of the eleven others, ten, it is safe to say, have never been used either by Virgilius or anyone else. The second, called assena or notaria, may possibly be intended to mean the Tironian notes; it employs a single letter for a whole word. But the lumbrosa, which expands a single word into four or five, the sincolla, which condenses a whole line into two syllables, and the rest of the series, correspond to nothing in heaven or earth[1].
Not only is the vocabulary of Virgilius abnormal; the authors whom he cites have left no trace anywhere else. There is a Cicero, and a Horace; there are three Virgils and three Lucans, and so on: but none of them are identical with those known to fame. There are, too, numerous grammarians, of whom Aeneas, Galbungus, and Terrentius are among the most prominent; but what is told of them does not carry conviction to the mind. Galbungus and Terrentius disputed for fourteen consecutive days and nights as to whether ego had a voeative. Regulus of Cappadocia and Sedulius of Rome went without food and sleep for a similar period while they were discussing the inchoative and frequentative forms of the verb: three soldiers in the employ of each were in attendance ready to arbitrate by force of arms if required.
In all, some ninety writers and teachers are named or quoted. Do they correspond to anything that ever existed? Of late a suggestion has found favour that they represent an academy which had its headquarters at Toulouse, and that the great names of Cicero, Lucan, Virgil and so on, were adopted by its members, just as Charlemagne and his friends called themselves David, Homer, Flaceus, and Naso. Perhaps, it is added, the Carolingian fashion was a conscious innitation of the Tolosan. If this be the truth of the matter, it is surely very strange that while we do hear of Virgilius himself before the end of the seventh century, no single trace of any of his "authorities" has ever been pointed out. Morcover, he claims a high antiquity and a wide range of influence for his school of thought: he traces his writers back to the time of Romulus, nay, even to the days before the Flood. Some of them lived at Troy, others in Egypt, Arabia, India. The variety, again, of books which he quotes is large; there are poems, histories, epistles, orations, as well as works on grammar; far too many—supposing them to be
- ↑ A notion recently broached that Arabic influence is discernible in his nomenclature of metres (and numerals) has yet to be sifted.
