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More on Donatus' Commentary on Virgil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. J. Savage
J. J. Savage
Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island, U.S.A.
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Extract

The spirit of Aelius Donatus must be uneasy of late years; so many scholars have attempted to evoke his ghost. Professor H. J. Thomson professes to see in the additional notes to Servius (S) an image once removed from the true Donatus. ‘The question’, he writes, ‘how far we can assume that the words of Donatus are directly reproduced [in the additions first published by Daniel (D)] can hardly be satisfactorily answered.’ That Donatus was not the immediate source of D, Thomson endeavours to show from three instances, in two of which (on Geo. II. 139 and Aen. IX. 675) we know for certain, either from the Glossaries or from Servius himself, the substance of a part, at least, of the note of Donatus on these passages. In the other (on Geo. I. 260) the argument rests on the comparative meagreness of the note in the enlarged Servius. In all three cases, according to this theory, we have a rehandling of the D comment. The note on the passage from the Aeneid has already been discussed by Professor Thomson in his study of the Virgil scholia in the Abstrusa glossary. The conclusions reached there (“Donatus has been revised; and not by the combiner') are repeated, though perhaps not so positively, in the article under discussion. I hold with Professor Rand that we have in Servius auctus substantially the voice of Donatus, though in a fragmentary form, due to the work of a compiler (or compilers) who, with Servius as a basis, has worked in with more or less success explanatory matter which departed from, or was an addition to, the information supplied by an interpreter who himself derived most of his material from Donatus.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , January 1929 , pp. 56 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1929

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References

1 ‘Servius auctus and Donatus’ in ClassicalQuarterly XXI. (1927), p. 205Google Scholar. The arguments which he presents in this article are an elaboration of those in his introduction to Ancient Lore in Mediaeval Latin Glossaries (1921), pp. 56 sqq.

2 Ancient Lore, p. 58.

3 See Rand, , Classical Quarterly X. (1916), p. 158CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For a critical estimate of these scholia, see the edition of Thilo and Hagen, III. 2, praef., pp. xi sq.

5 See Thilo, apparatus criticus. Many of the notes found in the edition of Fabricius occur in the eleventh century Paris, lat. 7930.

6 The preferred comment of Vaticanus on Geo. III. 408 (‘sed magis de Hispania’) is also that of Servius. This manuscript contains an amended text of Servius; see Thilo, , I.e., p. xvi, n. 1Google Scholar. In one case where Donatus is cited with approval, this manuscript passes over the state-ment with the words: ‘cetera de hoc inepta dicuntur’ (on Geo. IV. 150). The Lemovicensis likewise (on Geo. I.198) substitutes for ‘sic enim Donatus sensit’ in S the phrase: ‘sic enim in omnibus commentatoribus.’ This would seem to imply that the compiler was unaware that the commentary which he was collating with Servius was that of Donatus—if such it was. But to hold that scattered marginalia could be anything else but anonymous—especially in the case of a variorum commentary such as was that of Donatus—is to accord to mediaeval commentators more intuition than is usually expected of modern editors of texts. The whole quwill have to be adjudged on the basis of the greater probabilities.

page 57 note 1 The Sdwlia in the Virgil of Tours, Bernensis 3 165 in Harvard Studies in Class. Phil., Vol.XXXVI., pp. 155–156.

page 57 note 2 Cf. the critical note of Thilo, here and on Aen. X. 145Google Scholar where the S note (p. 403. 3–8) is omitted by the Floriacensis: lines 4 sq. = 13; lines 6 sq. = 16 sq. Another example of the compiler accommodating himself to a basic Servian text is furnished by the DS, note on Aen. X. 244Google Scholar. One should overlook Thilo's arrangement of the text here as elsewhere and study the critical notes. This is true also of the compiler as represented by the Vaticanns; see critical note on Geo. II. 479 and 481. More often, however, the Vaticanus, which stands for what one might call a pre-fusion stage of the DS commentary, repeats the S comment in the addition. For examples see Thilo, Vol. III. 2, p. xiii, n. 5. Cf.Barwick, , Zur Servius-frage in Philologus LXX. (1911), p. 134Google Scholar. The Lemovicensis, to which we owe the D notes on the Bucolics and on part of the first Georgic, follows the same principle of omission of that part of the S note which the comment in covers, D. Cf. critical notes on Geo. I. 8 and 164Google Scholar.

page 57 note 3 In the D note, lines 8 sq., there seems to be a development not found in S of the interpretation of Cornutus.

page 57 note 4 See Harvard Studies, p. 107.

page 57 note 5 It can, I think, be safely stated that all the manuscripts of Servius used by Thilo as a basis for his text are of such a nature, whereas the major part (on Aen. III.-XII.) of Servius auctus exists only as a marginal commentary to the textof Virgil.

page 57 note 6 This accounts, I think, for the existence of the many important notes in the Turonensis not found elsewhere and of stray citations not found elsewhere of Varro, Naevius, and Sallust in the margin of Paris, lat. 7930. See T.A.P.A., Vol.LVI., pp. 232 sq. There is an illuminating discussion of the citation from Varro byMrNock, A. D., The Lyra of Orpheus, in Class. Rev. XLI., p. 169Google Scholar.

page 57 note 7 The compiler has, it is true, quoted Catoverbatim elsewhere in this manuscript (on Buc. VI. 76; Geo. I. 46 and 75), but these are rather illustrations of usage, not of differences in meaning.

page 58 note 1 I have no hesitation in preferring the version of the commentator, ‘Cato properare dicit eos qui prima quaeque ordine suo mature transigunt, festinare autem illos qui multa incipiunt eaque adnectendo nee terminando praepediant’, to Catp's own words, ‘Marcus Cato sic distinguit dicens “qui unumquodque mature transigit, is properat; qui multa simul incipit neque perficit, is festinat. ego unumquodque quod adortus eram transigebam.”’

page 58 note 2 Cf. D, Aen. XI. 201Google Scholar for the difference in meaning between bustum and ustrinum, introduced by alii dicunt.

page 58 note 3 I still hold substantially to the position taken in 1916 by Rand, op. cit., p. 164, whose conclusions are couched in similar language. I believe that Ican now go further and can point towards Tours as a centre of the tradition relating to Donatus. Two scholiasts, undoubtedly of that school, were influenced by such a commentary as that of Aelius Donatus. Cf. Liudramnus, on Aen. I. 85, 140Google Scholar; II. 3, 286 (Harvard Studies, p. 106, n. 5, and pp. 144–147); andBerno, on Geo. II. 514, 529Google Scholar; III. 305 (ibid., p. 105, n. 6, and p. 137). I am not so sure, however, asProfessorRand, seems to be (op. cit., p. 163Google Scholar, on Aen. I. 179) thatLiudramnus, , who, as I have shown (Harvard Studies, p. 108)Google Scholar, is responsible for the two citations of Donatus in the Virgil of Tours, had access to the actual commentary of Donatus. The Ars grammatica of Donatus could have furnished the kind of comment there given. All that can safely be maintained is that the scholiasts of that manuscript worked in a tradition that derived its information from that still unexhausted source—which might be termed the Ur.Donatus—from which the compilers of the Servius auctus manuscripts obtained their material. The ‘revision’ to which Mr. Thomson holds must, in the case of the Lemovicensis, have been done before the year 650; cf.Thomas, E., Essai sur Servius et son commentaire sur Virgile (1879), p. 52Google Scholar.

page 58 note 4 Besides the glossaries edited byThomson, , there is the suggestive work of Mountford, J. F., Quotations from Classical A uthors in Mediaeval Latin Glossaries (Longmans, 1925)Google Scholar. We are thus made to realize the importance of the valuable scholia on Virgil which have been lost. Fragments of this commentary may perhaps be found in the citations of Varro in the margins of two manuscripts, one of St. Augustine, the other of Orosius; see 3 Boll, F., Marica, in Archiv f. Religionswiss. XIII. (1910), p. 569Google Scholar; andLehmann, P., Rests und Spuren antiker Gelehrsamkeit in mittelalterlichen Texten, in Philologus, LXXXIII. p. 201Google Scholar.

page 59 note 1 Sanas Cormaic, an Old-Irish Glossary, ed. Meyer, K. [Anecdota from Irish Manuscripts, Vol. IV. (1912)], No. 1272Google Scholar.

page 59 note 2 Cf. Harvard Studies, p. 151. This scholium, which is found only in the Tours manuscript, has been unskilfully abbreviated. The coneluding sentence in the Irish gloss may be either a development of ‘ab nucibus Abellanis Abellanomen accepit’, or from some phrase, omitted by the scholiast, dealing with the propagation of apples from seed derived from Abella. The S note states that Punica mala were grown there.

page 59 note 3 Cf. Thilo, Praef. III. 2, p. xvi, for examples Probus, showing his use of the adverb ‘noue.’ For a similar omission of a proper name (‘Iulius Suavis’ for ‘alii') seeMountford, , op. cit., p. 22Google Scholar; but Lehmann, compare P., op cit., p. 201Google Scholar.

page 59 note 4 Seeinter alia, Harvard Studies, pp. 117, 122, 125 (Nonius); pp. 119, 131 (Macrobius); pp. 137, 138 (Festus' Pauli). Tiberius Claudius Donatus is the only one of the four who is cited by name. This occurs in two instances only, ibid., pp. 107.

page 59 note 5 This might very well have been in the period of Irish influence at Tours before the coming of Alcuin. Cf.Rand, E. K., Harvard Theological Review, XVII. (1922), pp.197Google Scholar sq. Dungal, who was a ‘rhetor’ at the court school of Charle magne, seems to have had access to the D comment on Aen. I. 12. In citing the words ‘Tyrii tenuere coloni’ lib. adv. Claudian. Taurin., in Pair. lat. CV., col. 484, ed Migne) he remarks: ‘Ab incolendo enim colonos uocauit, non ab agricultura’ This contradicts the note of Servius who speaks of ‘coloni’ as ‘cultores aduenae’, and is more in accord with the uariorum comment in Servius auctus. Dungal was connected also with Pavia: seeCorcoran, T., J., S., Ireland and Pavia, in Studies XIV. (1925), pp. 595–610Google Scholar.

page 59 note 6 Harvard Studies, p. 163.

page 59 note 7 Ibid., p. 162.