A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

a Latin grammarian, the author of an important treatise, which in MSS. is designated as Nonü Marcelli Peripatetici Tuburticensis de Compendiosa Doctrina per Litteras ad Filium, for the latter portion of which title many printed copies substitute erroneously De Proprietate Sermonis. The most recent editor is obliged to confess, after a full investigation of every source from which information could be derived, that we are totally unacquainted with the personal history of this writer, that we cannot fix with certainty either the place or the time of his birth, that it is difficult to detect the plan pursued in the compilation of the work, that no satisfactory classification of the numerous codices has yet been accomplished, and that no sure estimate has been formed of their relative value. The epithet Tuburticensis, which appears also under the varying shapes, Tuburcicensis, Tuburgiceesis, Tiburticensis, Thiburticensis, Tiburiensis, does not lead readily to any conclusion. We can scarcely agree with Wass in considering it equivalent to Tiburtinus, a word which occurs so frequently elsewhere, that even the most ignorant transcribers would not have transformed it so rudely; nor can we persuade ourselves that Gerlach has succeeded in proving that it must be derived from Tubursicumor Tubasrsicca, in Numidia, near the river Ampsaga, a town which became at an early period the seat of a Christian bishopric, and is to be distinguished from Tubursicum, in the proconsular province of Africa, also a bishop's see, the inhabitants of which unquestionably termed themselves Thibursicenses (see Orelli, Corp. Inscrip. No. 3691), from the Colonia Tuburnica, the Oppidum Tuburnicense of Pliny (Plin. Nat. 7.4), and from the Oppidum Tuburbitunue, Majus and Oppidum Minus of the ecclesiastical writers. It is equally difficult to determine within narrow limits the epoch when Nonius flourished: he must be later than the middle of the second century, since once at least (p. 49, ed. Gerl.) he refers to Appuleius, and frequently copies A. Gellius, although he nowhere refers to him by name. He must be earlier than the sixth century, since he is himself quoted repeatedly by Priscian (pp. 43, 278, 477, ed. Krehl.). Two points are thus fixed, but they are unfortunately far asunder, and we are left to wander over a space of three centuries, while the very nature of the piece almost entirely excludes the possibility of drawing any inference from style; all that can be said upon this head is, that the various words ond expressions which have been adduced for the purpose of proving that he must belong to the fifth century, will, without exception, be found, upon examination, to fail in establishing this proposition; and on the other hand, the arguments employed to demonstrate that he ought to be placed at the commencement of the third are equally powerless. He may be the same person with the grammarian Marcellus addressed by Ausonius (Care. xix.), but there is no evidence whatever in favour of the supposition except the identity of a very common name.

[W.R]