Reference edition:

Abrégé de la grammaire de Saint Augustin, ed. G. Bonnet, Paris 2013 [Augustinus, Ars breviata].

A dense compendium of Latin grammar—about 25 pages in print—is transmitted to us under the title Ars Sancti Augustini pro fratrum mediocritate breviata by three closely related manuscripts (V, B, and P, with B and P probably descripti of V).  The treatise begins by defining Latinitas as “the observance of proper speech according to the language of Rome,” then passes immediately to the familiar classification of the eight parts of speech: noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, participle, conjunction, preposition, and interjection.  It ends with a discussion of solecisms and barbarisms (inverting the normal order that treats barbarisms first) and a list of proper rules for verbs and nouns.

The text seems to be intended for an African audience.  The Marist fathers placed the work among Augustine’s apocrypha in their edition of 1679 owing to its rather scanty form and its excessively technical subject-matter; recent scholars (Vivien Law, Guillaume Bonnet) have nevertheless accepted its authenticity. [M. Manca; tr. C. L. Caterine].