Sextus Pompeius Festus () was a Roman grammarian who probably flourished in the later 2nd century AD, perhaps at Narbo (Narbonne) in Gaul.
Festus's modern editors sum up his importance:
The text, even in its present mutilated state, is an important source for scholars of Roman history. It is a treasury of historical, grammatical, legal and antiquarian learning, providing sometimes unique evidence for the culture, language, political, social and religious institutions, deities, laws, lost monuments, and topographical traditions of ancient Italy.
Contents
-
Work 1
-
Manuscript 2
-
Sources 3
-
External links 4
Work
He made an epitome in 20 volumes of the encyclopedic treatise in many volumes De verborum significatu, of Verrius Flaccus, a celebrated grammarian who flourished in the reign of Augustus. Festus gives the etymology as well as the meaning of many words, and his work throws considerable light on the language, mythology and antiquities of ancient Rome. He made a few alterations, and inserted some critical remarks of his own. He also omitted such ancient Latin words as had long been obsolete; these he apparently discussed in a separate work now lost, entitled Priscorum verborum cum exemplis. Even incomplete, Festus's lexicon reflects at second hand the enormous intellectual effort that had been made in the Augustan Age to put together information on the traditions of the Roman world, which was already in a state of flux and change.
Of Flaccus's work only a few fragments remain, of Festus's epitome only one damaged, fragmentary manuscript. The rest is further abridged in a summary made at the close of the 8th century, by Paul the Deacon.
Manuscript
The sole surviving Festus manuscript, the Codex Farnesianus at Naples, is an 11th-century manuscript. When it was rediscovered during the early Renaissance half of it was already missing, so that it only contains the alphabetized entries M-V, and that not in a perfect condition. It has been scorched by fire and disassembled.
Collating these fragmentary abridgments, and republishing them with translations, is a project being coordinated at University College London with several objectives in view: to make this mass of information available to researchers in a usable form; to stimulate debate on Festus and on the Augustan antiquarian tradition on which he drew, and generally to enrich and renew studies on Roman life, on which Festus provides such essential information.
Sources
-
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:
External links
-
Festus Lexicon site, University of London.
-
(French) Partial translations of De verborum significatione
-
-
-
This article was sourced from Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. World Heritage Encyclopedia content is assembled from numerous content providers, Open Access Publishing, and in compliance with The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., Public Library of Science, The Encyclopedia of Life, Open Book Publishers (OBP), PubMed, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and USA.gov, which sources content from all federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government publication portals (.gov, .mil, .edu). Funding for USA.gov and content contributors is made possible from the U.S. Congress, E-Government Act of 2002.
Crowd sourced content that is contributed to World Heritage Encyclopedia is peer reviewed and edited by our editorial staff to ensure quality scholarly research articles.
By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. World Heritage Encyclopedia™ is a registered trademark of the World Public Library Association, a non-profit organization.