Constantinus Lascaris, Greek Grammar (1476)

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ἑκηβόλος
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Constantinus Lascaris, Greek Grammar (1476)

Post by ἑκηβόλος »

The Greek Grammar by Constantinus Lascaris (Κωνσταντῖνος Λάσκαρις) is perhaps the oldest printed work in Greek, dating from 1476.

Two questions. . .

First:
I read through this work, once as an undergraduate and once later, but can't recall seeing any indication as to what Lascaris' own sources were. It is too comprehensive and systematic to have been written ad hoc, and even if it were from memory, it would need a model for organisation. Has scholarship been able to determine whether he was working from manuscript of the earlier grammarians (Apollonius Dyscolus 2nd Century CE), or later ones (such as Georgius Choeroboscus 9th century, or Manuel Moschopulus 13 - 14th centuries), or from his own notes brought from Constantinople / Rhodes, or was he given Latin tables for which he supplied Greek glosses. Presumably those manuscripts are not among those in the Spanish National Library.

A related question to that is "What was the date of the division of Latin declensions and conjugations into such and so many?" In other words, what was the standard arrangement for Latin tables at that time, and is Lascaris' work similarly structured? Lascaris' work predates Lorenz Rhodomann formal division of Greek into 3 declensions, to be sure, but was Latin also not yet formally divided before the 16th century?

A second question:
The 1966 facsimile edition of Lascaris' grammar published at Amsterdam by A.M. Hakkert is not yet out of copyright, but are there manuscript editions of Lascaris' own 1476 work available online?
τί δὲ ἀγαθὸν τῇ πομφόλυγι συνεστώσῃ ἢ κακὸν διαλυθείσῃ;

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Re: Constantinus Lascaris, Greek Grammar (1476)

Post by Scribo »

On the tradition: A. Pertusi (1962) "Erotemata, Per la storia e le fonti delle prime grammatiche greche a stampa", Italia Mediaevale e Umanistica, 5

There's also a book called Donati Graeci by F Ciccolella which has a great variety of related information and bibliography. Most anything on this subject is in Italian, interestingly enough. There's also: (copying and pasting as unformatted text from JSTOR, sorry!)

Learning Greek in Western Europe, 1396-1529: Grammars, Lexica, and Classroom Texts
Paul Botley
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society
New Series, Vol. 100, No. 2 (2010), pp. iii-xiii, 1-270

Manuscripts: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDispla ... d_MS_17998 A variety, you might find the right one there. I recall a few bad PDFs some years ago, will try to find.

http://teca.bmlonline.it/ImageViewer/se ... 4/mode/1up

http://library.princeton.edu/byzantine/ ... e-lascaris
(Occasionally) Working on the following tutorials:

(P)Aristotle, Theophrastus and Peripatetic Greek
Intro Greek Poetry
Latin Historical Prose

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