On the Latin language
By: Varro ; with an English translation by Roland G. Kent
Contributors: Kent, Roland Grubb, 1877-1952
Series: The Loeb classical library : Latin authors -- 333-334
Publisher: Harvard University Press; Heinemann
Published: 1977
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass; London
Language: eng; lat
Number of pages: 675
Subjects: Latin language -- Grammar -- Early works to 1800
Genres: Early works to 1800
Other titles: De lingua Latina
Description: Varro (M. Terentius), 116-27 BC, of Reate, renowned for his vast learning, was an antiquarian, historian, philologist, student of science, agriculturist, and poet. He was a republican who was reconciled to Julius Caesar and was marked out by him to supervise an intended national library. Of Varro's seventy works involving hundreds of volumes we have only his treatise On Agriculture and part of his monumental achievement De Liingua Latina, On the Latin Language, a work typical of its author's interest not only in antiquarian matters but also in the collection of scientific facts. Originally it consisted of twenty-five books in three parts: etymology of Latin words (books 1-7); their inflexions and other changes (books 8-13); and syntax (books 14-25). Of the work survive (somewhat imperfectly) books 5 to 10. These are from the section (books 4-6) which applied etymology to words of time and place and to poetic expressions; the section (books 7-9) on analogy as it occurs in word formation; and the section (books 10-12) which applied analogy to word derivation. Varro's work contains much that is of very great value to the study of the Latin language. -- Jacket.
Notes: First printed 1938

Latin and English on opposite pages

Title on spine: De lingua Latina

Includes indexes

Bibliography: v. 1, p. xxxiii-xlix

1977 reprint contains supplementary bibliography: p. li-lii