Grammar

I am called _grammatike_ in Greece, because _gramme_ means a line and _grammata_ letters, and it was assigned to me to draw the forms of letters with proper strokes. … My office was then to write and read learnedly. Now there has been added also this, that it is mine to understand and judge with erudition. These two seem to me to be common even with philosophers and critics. Of these four, then, two must be called active, two contemplative; for we devote action when we write or read, but we are held by the spectacle of the latter when we understand or judge what is written; although they are joined to one another by a certain kinship, as is shown in the other arts. For the actor first learns what he can perform, and the astronomer does certain things so as to know by them what he ought to prove. The geometer mixes both, since he makes and knows the forms of theorems with sure reasons. My parts are four: letters, literature, the lettered man, and learnedly. Letters are what I teach; literature is the very thing I teach; the lettered man is the one I shall have taught; learnedly is what he who is formed by me has handled skillfully.

Grammar is the science of speaking correctly, and the origin and foundation of the liberal letters. Among the disciplines it was invented after the common letters, so that those who had already learned their letters might know by it the method of correct speech. Grammar takes its name from letters (_litterae_). For the Greeks call letters _grammata_. It is called an art because it consists of the precepts and rules of art. Others say the word is drawn from the Greek _aretē_, that is, from virtue, which they called knowledge. Speech (_oratio_) is so called as if _oris ratio_, the reckoning of the mouth. For _orare_ is to speak and to say. Speech is a weaving together of words with sense. A weaving without sense is not speech, because it is not the reckoning of the mouth. Speech is full in sense, voice and letter.