Marcus Valerius Probus

Marcus Valerius Probus was a famous Latin grammarian of the 1st century AD, who came from the Roman colony of Berytos in Syria .

Probus first served in the Roman army and then turned to literature, presumably in Rome. In the manner of the Alexandrian scholars, he treated the most important Roman poets such as Lucretius , Virgil and Horace critically; He had a particular preference for archaic literature.

During his lifetime, Probus published only a few shorter studies, from which an explanation of common abbreviations ( de notis iuris ) has been preserved, perhaps only as an extract. Lost Epistula ad Marcellum , De genetivo Graeco and De temporum connexione .

His extensive records on Roman writers were evaluated by later grammarians and are thus preserved in fragmentary form or as quotations. Various late antique works based on Probus' work have been handed down under his name, such as a commentary on Virgil's Bucolica and Georgica and a commentary on Persius , from which the poet's biography, probably originally from Suetonius , has been preserved. Other works that bear his name are not by him, but by a grammarist of the 4th century ( Catholica , dealing with nouns and verbs; Instituta artium , an adaptation of the entire grammar).

A brief biographical outline of the Probus has come down to us from Suetonius.

expenditure

• Heinrich Keil: Grammatici latini . Volume 4. Leipzig 1864.
• Hermann Hagen: Appendix Serviana ceteros praeter Servium et Scholia Bernensia Vergilii commentatores continens . Leipzig 1902. p. 321 ff.

literature

• Peter L. Schmidt: Probus 3. In: Der Kleine Pauly , Volume 4, 1972, Sp. 1147-1148.

Remarks

1. ^ Suetonius, de grammaticis 24 .