"This book intends to offer a functional instrument for the exegesis of some of the unregulated norms of the 'Grammar of Legibility' - to use Malcolm Parkes' lucky expression - and a point of departure for further research. Structured on the double track of 'texts' (Virgilian 'uolumina') and 'texts about texts' (late antique grammatical treatises), this survey focuses on the value of graphic accentuation signs. These signs are, actually, a way of reading in praxis, besides being graphematic units, in Latin papyrological documents, and they provide a direct expression of the textual performance and 'material' effect of grammatical precepts. In fact, there is a common denominator in all the sections 'de accentibus' and 'de distinctionibus' in the 'Artes': in scholarly and didactic contexts (in particular, in the eastern Empire), 'accentus' and 'distinctio' were not simply oral realities. They also had their completeness in a written dimension."--Provided by publisher.