Nonius Marcellus

Nonius Marcellus was a late Roman grammarian and lexicographer. He lived in the 3rd or early 4th century AD. Nonius Marcellus came from Thubursicu Numidarum in the province of Numidia in North Africa and is nicknamed peripateticus Tubursicensis ( " the Peripatetic from Thubursicu ").

Work

In addition to lost letters A doctrinis de peregrinando he wrote as a major work De compendiosa doctrina, a compilation, some of voice, partly in kind lexicon serves as: The first twelve of the twenty chapters deal with questions of word meaning and grammatical properties of words that remaining eight with names for objects from areas such as shipping, clothing, food, weapons, colors and relationships.

The work is essentially a schematic compilation of quotations. Its value lies not in the stand-alone commentary justified by vernier, but the fact that he has preserved and handed down many passages of older authors. Nonius drew his evidence mainly from authors of the Republican period to Cicero and Varro. He initially was based on previous grammatical and lexical works, in particular Marcus Verrius Flaccus Aulus Gellius and he then added with additional quotes from 41 authors. The arrangement of the quotations for each term always follows a fixed sequence Author: vernier begins with quotations from Plautus and ends with Varro and Cato. Multiple citations of a single author are in the order in which they appear in the work of this author. The fact that vernier his sources always went in consistent order, to determine the arrangement of fragments from lost works allowed.

The grammarian Priscian and Fulgentius have used the work of Nonius extensively. The dating of his work, and thus its lifetime is based on the fact that Aulus Gellius vernier used and was in turn used by Priscian.