Auct. de praen.

The term auct. de praen. or auctor de praenominibus (from Latin auctor "originator, author" and praenomen "first name") is the common but outdated auxiliary term for the unknown author of a Latin treatise on first names, de praenominibus .

The treatise can be found as an appendix in the so-called Epitome des Paris , a 4th century work by Julius Paris , the main part of which is a summary of Valerius Maximus ' extensive work Facta et dicta memorabilia . The attached treatise has nothing to do with it; it also seems to be incomplete, because its introduction shows that it originally dealt with other topics and that on the whole it was probably a late antique (short) grammar.

At the end of the treatise, Gaius Titius Probus is named as the author, but in the 19th and 20th centuries it was long suspected that he only summarized the treatise and that the actual author is unknown. More recent representations, however, see him as the author; de nomine et verbo is now used as the (overall) title of his work .

literature

• Martin Schanz , Carl Hosius : The Roman literature in the time of the monarchy up to Hadrian (= handbook of classical studies . Department 8, volume 2). CH Beck, Munich 1980 (3rd unmodified reprint of the 4th edition 1935), ISBN 978-3-406-01392-8 , pp. 592-593.
• Reinhart Herzog [Hrsg.]: Handbuch der Latinischen Literatur der Antike (= Handbook of Classical Studies. Department 8, Volume 5 of the revision). CH Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 978-3-406-31863-4 , pp. 121-122.