Varrone in Prisciano, un interlocutore mancato

Quoted about fifty times in the Ars, Varro is for Priscian only one of the many auctores veteres or vetustissimi whose linguistic peculiarities he considered worthy of mention in his grammatical treatises. Indeed, no echoes of Varronian theories (except for three short passages, GL, ii pp. 8 2-4 and 30 14-21 about nomina and formae litterarum and GL, ii p. 333 1-16 about the inflection of Greek nouns) can be surely detected in the Ars, not even in books xvii and xviii about syntax, even though it is likely that Varro, the only one among the Romans, had extensively dealt with syntactical problems (verba coniuncta) in the De lingua Latina xiv-xxv. In this paper I argue that almost all quotations of Varronian passages in Priscian’s works are taken from intermediate sources, such as Flavius Caper; only two of the passages mentioned above could possibly have been taken directly from Varro’s works, namely the very rare De antiquitate litterarum and De origine linguae Latinae.