Expositio Notarum

This unique, unpublished text offers a juxtaposition of the classical and the late antique Roman world in a new document used in teaching in North Africa c. AD 400. it also reveals a significant strand in the Latin glossaries surviving from the Anglo-Saxon and early medieval period.

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This is the first edition of a Latin text unlike any other surviving one : at first sight an extensive, jumbled list of words with explanations, on closer inspection a window on the teaching of Latin shorthand in North Africa c. AD 400, when we find notarii, those trained in shorthand, prominently employed everywhere in state and church. The text reveals in detail how that training could relate to literary Latin and the classical Roman past. The single manuscript of it in our possession descends from a copy that must have been in Anglo-Saxon England by AD 700, and we can see how it was used for the earliest Latin glossary from that context. The edition seeks to make this story accessible both in general and in detail, with copious indices for those who may wish to consult it from various viewpoints: classical and later Latin, linguistic and historical.