Ancient Witnesses on Deponency in Greek 5 2. Dionysius Thrax 2.1 Authenticity Dionysius Thrax, who lived ca. 170-90 b.c., was born in Alexandria, but he took the name Thracian (Thrax) because his father was from Thrace. He was a disciple of the grammarian Aristarchus of Alexandria. Dionysius Thrax’s most famous work, Technē Grammatikē8, was pro- duced in ca. 100 b.c. This date, which is linked to authenticity for Technē Grammatikē, is disputed today9. If this early date is accepted, then Art of Grammar was the grammar upon which all Greek grammars for eighteen hundred years were based10! Although its authenticity was questioned in antiquity, it came to be regarded as the authentic work of Dionysius Thrax. Law and Sluiter write, “Assuming that Dionysius’s own grammar in fact existed in the first cen- tury BC, could it plausibly have got lost, in whole or in part? Who would have wanted to rewrite it, and why”11? If these questions can be answered, then most of the arguments against authenticity can be answered. These questions relate to the grammatical Sitz im Leben in the ancient world. 8 Technē Grammatikē is also called Art of Grammar. The Latin form of that title is found in titles of two works: Dionysii Thracis, “Ars Grammatica”, in G. Uhlig (ed.), Grammatici Graeci, vol. 1.1 (Leipzig 1883; repr., Hildesheim1965); B.I. Wheeler, review of Dionysii Thracis Ars Grammatica qualem exemplaria vetustissima exhibent subscriptis discrepantiis et testimoniis quae in codicibus recentioribus scholiis erotematis apud alios scriptores interpretem Armenium reperiuntur, ed. G. Uhlig, AJP 6, no. 2 (1885). The first mentioned work is the standard edition of Dionysius Thrax’s grammar. 9 T. Davidson, introduction, in Dionysios Thrax, The Grammar of Dionysios Thrax, trans. T. Davidson (St. Louis 1874) 3; V. Di Benedetto, “Dionysius Thrax and the Téknē Grammatik”, in S. Auroux et al. (eds.), History of the Language Sciences: An International Handbook on the Evolution of the Study of Language from the Beginnings to the Present, 3 vols. (Handbook of Linguistics and Communication Science 18; Berlin 2000) 394. In recent decades, denial of the authenticity of Technē Grammatikē has been spearheaded by Vincenzo Di Benedetto. For a fuller treatment of the arguments for inauthenticity, see Ladewig, “Defining Deponency”, 22-26. 10 D.A. Black, “The Study of New Testament Greek in the Light of Ancient and Modern Linguistics”, in D.A. Black and D.S. Dockery (eds.), Interpreting the New Testament: Es- says on Methods and Issues, rev. ed. (Nashville 2001) 236. “Dionysius’ Τέχνη Γραμματική served as the model for every handbook of Greek grammar at least until the end of the XVIIIth century. Even in the Greek grammars now in use both the arrangement of the material and the grammatical terminology still largely go back to his manual” (A. Wouters, The Grammatical Papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt: Contributions to the Study of the ‘Ars Grammatica’ in Antiquity [Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Weten- schappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van Belgie: Klasse der Letteren 41, no. 92; Brussel 1979] 35). 11 V. Law and I. Sluiter, “Introduction”, in V. Law and I. Sluiter (eds.), Dionysius Thrax and the Technē Grammatikē (The Henry Sweet Society Studies in the History of Linguistics 1; Münster 1995) 11.