Otha Wingo E. Latin Punctuation in the Classical Age

Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 1972. — 169 p. — (Janua Linguarum. Series Practica, Vol. 133).This treatise is an attempt to answer, insofar as it is possible, the question whether or not the classical writers, such as Cicero or Vergil or Livy, were read by their contemporaries in copies that had punctuation. I shall give, therefore, as complete an account as possible of the types and functions of punctuation in Latin writing of the classical age. Every published inscription, papyrus, and manuscript that antedates the fall of the Roman Empire in the West has been considered, provided that enough of the text remains to be intelligible and thus show the meaning of punctuation where that is used. For this study I have checked every inscription in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum and in L'Annee Hpigraphique (1944—1961) and every papyrus listed in Cavenaile's Corpus Papyrorum Latinarum, using also such facsimiles as were available in other publications whenever there was reason to believe that the original contained punctuation.