Chapter 3: On the ordinary letters

1. The foundations of the grammatic art are the ordinary letters, which elementary teachers[176] are occupied with, instruction in which is, as it were, the infancy of the grammatic art. Whence Varro calls it _litteratio_. Letters are signs of things, symbols of words, whose power is so great that without a voice they speak to us the words of the absent; for they introduce words by the eye, not by the ear.

[176] _Librarii et calculatores._

2. The use of the letters was invented in order to remember things. For things are fettered by letters in order that they may not escape through forgetfulness. For in such a variety of things all could not be learned by hearing and held in the memory.

4. Latin and Greek letters have evidently come from the Hebrew. For among the latter _aleph_ was first so named; then [judging] by the similarity of sound it was transmitted to the Greeks as _alpha_; likewise to the Latins as _a_. For the borrower fashioned the letter of the second language according to similarity of sound, so that we can know that the Hebrew language is the mother of all languages and alphabets.[177]

[177] From Jerome, _ad Soph._, in Migne, _Patr. Lat._, 6, 7, 30.

7. The letter Υ Pythagoras of Samos first made, after the model of human life, whose lower stem denotes the first of life, which is unsettled and has not yet devoted itself to the vices or the virtues. The double part which is above, begins in youth; of which the right side is steep, but leads to the blessed life; the left is easier, but leads down to ruin and destruction....

8. Among the Greeks there are five mystic letters.[178] The first is Υ, which denotes human life, of which we have just spoken. The second is Θ, which denotes death. For judges used to place this letter, theta, at the names of those whom they condemned to death; and it is called theta ἀπὸ τοῦ θανάτου, _i.e._, from death. Whence also it has a weapon through its middle, _i.e._, the sign of death. Of which a certain one speaks thus:

O multum ante alias infelix littera theta!

[178] This sentence, as many others, is in the accusative and
infinitive without any governing verb.

9. The third is Τ, indicating the shape of the cross of the Lord.... The remaining two, the first and the last, Christ claims for himself. For he is himself the beginning, himself the end, saying: “I am α and ω,” for they pass into one another in turn, and alpha passes in regular succession to ω and again ω returns to alpha; in order that the Lord might show in himself that he was the way from the beginning to the end and from the end to the beginning.

Chapter 4. On the Latin alphabet.

17. The nations gave the names of the letters in accordance with the sound in their own language, noting and distinguishing the sounds of the voice. After they had noted them, they gave them names and forms; and they made the forms in part at pleasure, in part according to the sound of the letters; as, for example, i and o, of which one has a slender stem, just as it has a thin sound; the sound of the other is gross (_pinguis_), just as its form is full.

Chapter 5. On grammar.

1. Grammar is the science of speaking correctly, and is the source and foundation of literature.[179] This one of the disciplines was discovered next after the ordinary letters, so that those who have already learned the letters may learn by it the method of speaking correctly. Grammar took its name from letters, for the Greeks call letters γράμματα.

[179] _Liberalium litterarum._

4. The divisions of the grammatic art are enumerated by certain authorities as thirty; namely, eight parts of speech, the articulate voice, the letter, the syllable, metrical feet, accent, marks of punctuation, signs and abbreviations, orthography, analogy, etymology, glosses, synonyms, barbarisms, solecisms, [other] faults, metaplasms, schemata, tropes, prose, metres, fables, histories.

Chapter 6. On the parts of speech.

1. Aristotle first taught two parts of speech, the noun and the verb. Then Donatus defined eight. But all revert to these two chief ones, that is, to the noun and the verb, which indicate the person and the act. The remainder are appendages, and trace their origin to these.

2. For the pronoun arises from the noun and performs its function, as _orator_, _ille_. The adverb arises from the noun, as _doctus_, _docte_. The participle from the noun and verb, as _lego_, _legens_. But the conjunction and preposition and interjection are included in those mentioned.[180] Many therefore have defined five parts because these are superfluous.

[180] _In complexum istarum cadunt._

Chapter 21. On critical marks (_notae sententiarum_).

1. In addition there were certain marks in the writings of celebrated authors, which the ancients set in poems and histories to discriminate among the passages. A mark is a separate form placed like a letter, to indicate some judgment about a word, thought or verse. There are twenty-six marks used in annotating verses, which are enumerated below with their names.[181]

[181] See _Etym._, 1, 21, 2–28.

Chapter 22. On shorthand.

1. Ennius[182] first invented 1,100 shorthand signs. The use of the signs was that scribes wrote whatever was said in public meeting or in court, several standing by at one time and deciding among themselves how many words and in what order each should write. At Rome Tullius Tiro, Cicero’s freedman, was the first to invent shorthand, but only for prepositions.[183]

[182] The grammarian.

[183] _Notas sed tantum praepositionum._ Probably abbreviations
for prepositions and other connectives that were in frequent use.

2. After him Vipsanius Philargius and Aquila, Maecenas’s freedman, each added a number of signs. Then Seneca, collecting them all and arranging them and increasing their number, raised the total to 5,000. The signs (_notae_) are so-called because they _denote_ words or syllables by marks,[184] and bring them again to the _notice_ of readers, and they who have learned them are now properly called _notarii_.

[184] _Praefixis characteribus._

Chapter 27. On orthography.

1. Orthography is Greek, and it means in the Latin correct writing; for ὀρθή in the Greek means correct, and γραφή means writing. This branch of knowledge teaches us how we ought to write. For as the art[185] treats of the inflection of the parts of speech, so orthography deals with the knowledge of writing, as, for example,

_ad_, when it is a preposition, takes the letter _d_; when it is a conjunction, the letter _t_.

[185] Among the seven liberal arts grammar is the art _par
excellence_.

2. _Haud_, when it is an adverb of negation, is terminated by the letter _d_ and is aspirated at the beginning; but when it is a conjunction, it is written with the letter _t_ and is without aspiration.

7. Forsitan ought to be written with _n_ at the end, because its uncorrupted form is _forte si tandem_.