Among the numerous commentators of Donatus’s Ars minor and maior, the African Pompeius, active V-VI century, is conspicuous for the characteristic verve in which he proceeds to illustrate every aspect of the traditional grammatical lore of which he is a proud mouthpiece. A peculiar character of his Commentum is an asymmetrical style, replete with spontaneous traits calling to one’s mind aspects of a spoken and oral performance – a feature suggestive to some of a quasi-stenographic transcription, perhaps from Pompeius’s viva voce teaching. A study of Pompeius’s work therefore proves of fundamental importance for our knowledge of school practices at the empire’s periphery. Anna Zago’s set of volumes includes a new critical edition of the third part of the Commentum of Donatus’s Ars maior, the so-called Barbarismus, devoted to vitia and virtutes orationis, the ‘flaws’ and ‘virtues’ of ‘speech’: Pompeius’ work opens a very interesting window on the late grammatical writers’ growing awareness of the evolution of the Latin language, and his text is an important witness for some of the linguistic changes defining the so-called late Latin neo-standard. The edition is based on complete collations of all the manuscripts transmitting this part of the work (19, against the 4 manuscripts used in Keil’s Grammatici Latini) and it is introduced by an exhaustive presentation of the work’s transmission, its textual history and its philological problems. The volume has been provided with indices and an Italian translation has also been included, as a complementary tool for understanding the often complex Latin of the Commentum. The second volume contains a fully-fledged commentary in which all the most important textual problems receive an apt illustration; on a wider scale, the commentary also contextualizes the study of vitia and virtutes orationis in the Latin grammatical tradition.
