Le citazioni di Lucrezio in Prisciano

This paper aims to examine Lucretius’ quotations in Priscian’s Ars in order to assess their origin and their contribution to the reconstruction of the text of the De rerum natura. For the fìrst question, the origin of the quotations cannot be traced only to Priscian’s autonomous fìling, but in many cases, they derive from the erudite and glossographic literature he used. However, a manuscript of Lucretius must have been available to the grammarian of Caesarea, who may have used it to verify and check the text coming from his sources. This manuscript seems to date back to an autonomous branch, if compared with the medieval transmission, and in some cases allows the recovery of better lessons than those coming from the direct tradition. The Lucretius quotations in Priscianus also sometimes influenced the humanist tradition of the De rerum natura.