Il concetto di Latinitas da Varrone ai grammatici latini

The paper deals with the notion of Latinitas in the Latin grammatical tradition; after a short excursus about the prevalence of Latinus, instead of Romanus, to qualify the language spoken in Rome, the paper collect a number of witnesses about the beginning of the use of Latinitas (coined from Greek ἑλληνισμός), starting from the Rhetorica ad Herennium up to Cicero and Varro, who gives a definition of Latinitas and its criteria in a problematic fragment preserved by Charisius and Diomedes. In the Roman grammatical tradition we can observe two different meanings of this term: the first, found already in the Rhet. Her., qualifies the correct use of Latin language and is at the base of the treatises De Latinitate; the second, attested especially in late Latin grammarians, defines just the Latin language, even in relation to its grammatical rules.