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The Virgil Commentary of Aelius Donatus ‘ Black Hole or ‘Éminence Grise‘?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

David Daintree
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Extract

Helen Waddell, in her charming Medieval Latin Lyrics, surely a book which inspired many a young person, trained in the classics, to become a ‘convert’ to the middle ages, described the collection of poems known as the Appendix Virgiliana, as coming ‘down through the Middle Ages bobbing at a painter's end in the mighty wash of the Aeneid’. This same description can, I think, be prettily applied to the Virgil scholia, the humble and often nameless attempts of innumerable scholars to elucidate the master's poems; notes and glosses sometimes wise and often banal, which exist, not like other literature as an end in themselves, but solely as a means towards a better understanding of Virgil.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , April 1990 , pp. 65 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1990

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References

Notes

1. The substance of this paper was presented at an international seminar on Virgil held at the University of Siena, 11–13 April 1988, under the chairmanship of Professor Mario Geymonat.

2. Penguin edition (London, 1962), p. 294.

3. Is it fanciful to suggest that scholars in those nations where the Reformation prevailed have generally been less sympathetic to medieval scholarship than have their confreres in catholic countries,? I think this is so, but it is naturally difficult to demonstrate. Nevertheless one may with reasonable confidence assert that waspish remarks such as the following by Housman, (CQ 11 (1917), 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar) are commonly encountered if less pungently expressed in the work of Englishspeaking scholars: ‘Philargyrius was quite unintelligent enough to write the note himself; you can hardly expect a man to know Varius from Varus when he does not know Daphnis from Daphne.’

4. The most recent and comprehensive bibliographical surveys of the scholia (and indeed of Virgilian studies in general) are those contained under the appropriate entries in the Enciclopedia Virgiliana (Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome, 1984–)Google Scholar. Three of a projected five volumes have so far appeared, covering A to Pa; volume four, which will include lengthy entries on Servius and the ‘Scholia non serviana’, will probably be published in 1989.

5. Enciclopedia Virgiliana (EV), ii. 127–9.

6. The edition of Servius by G. Thilo and H. Hagen (Servii grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commenlarii, 3 vols, Leipzig 1881, reprinted in 1961) remains the only complete one, the Editio Harvardiana containing the material on Aen. 1 to 5 only. Thilo and Hagen use italics to indicate the danieline portions of the commentary, a practice which, while generally helpful, perhaps presents a too static picture of a highly contaminated manuscript tradition.

7. Timpanaro, S., Per la Storia della Filologia Virgiliana Antica (Rome, 1986), esp. pp. 154—5Google Scholar. G. Brugnoli, in his article ‘Servio’ to be published in vol. 4 of EV, lists over 140 surviving manuscripts from the period up to s. xii which contain Servius wholly or in part.

8. All these are printed together in vol. 3 of the Thilo/Hagen edition of Servius.

9. There is a survey of this material in the article ‘Scholia non serviana’ to be published in EV vol. 4.

10. See Brugnoli, G., ‘Donato, Elio’, EV ii. 125–7Google Scholar.

11. Ibid., esp. 126.

12. ‘Is Donatus's Commentary on Virgil lost?’, CQ 10 (1916), 158–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Mountford, J. F., Quotations from Classical Authors in Medieval Latin Glossaries (New York, 1925Google Scholar) cites eight glossary items which, he says, must have come from a Virgil commentary of Donatus. See esp. p. 33.

14. Santoro, A., ‘II “Servio Danielino” e Donato’, Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica 20 (1943), 79–104Google Scholar; Travis, A. H., ‘Donatus and the Scholia Danielis: a Stylistic Comparison,’ HSCP 53 (1942), 157–69Google Scholar.

15. So for example Thomson, H. J. in his preface to Lindsay, W. M., Glossaria Latina (Paris, 1926), p. 53Google Scholar.

16. Rand, 159–60.

17. Ibid., 164.

18. Ibid., 159.

19. Lindsay, W. M., in a review of his own Glossaria Latina, Bulletin du Cange 3 (1927), 95Google Scholar.

20. Goold, G. P., ‘Servius and the Helen Episode’, HSCP 74 (1970), 116Google Scholar.

21. Mountford, pp. 15–16.

22. Ibid., p. 26.

23. ‘Gleanings from Glossaries and Scholia’;, part 4, CQ 20 (1926), 106Google Scholar.

24. These are listed in Olsen, B. Munk, L'Étude des Auteurs Classiques Latins aux Xle et Xlle Siècles, 2 vols, CNRS (Paris, 1985)Google Scholar.

25. Thomson, H. J., ‘A New Supplement to the Berne Scholia on Virgil’, JPh 35.70 (1920), 261Google Scholar.

26. The first definition is from the dictionary of Devoto-Oli, 1971; the second is from that of Tosi, 1969.

27. Zetzel, J. E. G., ‘On the History of Latin Scholia II: The Commentum Cornuti in the Ninth Century’, Medievalia et Humanistica NS 10 (1981), 19Google Scholar.

28. Goold, 107.

29. It is not the intention of the present article to deny that traces of Donatus survive, but rather to argue against an excessive and disproportionate emphasis on their importance. Lindsay, W. M. and Thomson, H. J., Ancient Lore in Medieval Latin Glossaries (Oxford, 1921), present a valuable discussion (pp. 56ffGoogle Scholar.), and list (p. 60) a number of glosses which are ascribed by name to Donatus and which also appear more or less verbatim, but omitting Donatus'; name, in the Servian tradition.

30. For examples of the simplistic type of gloss see Hagen's, edition of Explanatio II on Eel. 1Google Scholar. 12 (en id est ecce) and 15 (a id est eheu), but note also the more intelligent exegetical comments in the same context: like all teachers the author had to deal with students of varying ability. As to the suggested prevalence of the Eclogues, an examination of the manuscript listings in Munk Olsen will, I think, confirm the impression.

31. For the reader's immediate inspection I supply a necessarily much abbreviated list of manuscripts drawn from Munk Olsen (ii. 698–796) which he reports as having been written in France in the ninth century. The supposed centre of origin is supplied in brackets (sometimes ‘France’ is the most precise estimate anyone is prepared to hazard at). The list is: Bern 165 (Tours); Bern 167 (Bretagne); Bern 172 (Fleury); Bern 255 + 239 (N.E. France); Bern 455 (Laon); Brussels 5325–5327 (N. France); Einsiedeln 365 (France); Graz 1814 (France?); Hamburg 52 (Paris/St-Germain); Leiden 141 (St Amand-en-Pevele); Melk fragm. (France); Montpellier 253 (N.E. France); Munich 29216 (France); Oxford F.2.6. (St-Germain?); Paris 7925 (Limoges); Paris 7926 (France); Paris 7928 (Reims?); Paris 8093-V (N. France); Paris 8093-VI (France); Paris 10307–11 (E. France); Paris 13043 (Corbie?); Paris 13044 (Corbie?); Paris n.a. 1525-III (France); Fiesole (France); Trier 1086 (Tours); Valenciennes 178 + 220 (N.E. France); Valenciennes 407 (N.E. France); Vatican Reg. 1669 (Reims); Vat. Reg. 2078–1 (Reims); Vat. 1570 (Flavigny); Wolfenbuettel 66 (France or Germany: Arras, Lorsch?); Wolfenbuettel 70 (Lyon); Wolfenbuettel 404.8.4 (‘Zwischen Ost und West’ – Bischoff).

32. Munk Olsen, ii. 797–836. The French manuscripts are: Bayreuth fragm. (N.E. France); Chartres 13–1 (Chartes); Florence Plut. 45.14 (France); Florence Santa Croce 22 (France); Laon 468 (France); Leiden 135-III (N.E. France); Leiden Voss 79 (France); Leiden Voss 80 (W. France); London Harley 2782 (N.E. France); London Harley 3072-IV (France); Metz 292 (N. France); Montpellier 358–1 (Lyon region); Paris 7761–11 (Corbie); Paris 7959 (W. France); Paris 7960 (Auxerre?); Paris 7962 (Paris region); Paris 8208–1 (Corbie); Paris 11308 (Reims); Paris n.a. 1907–1 (N.E. France); Paris n.a. 2442–XXVII (Corbie?); Trier 1086 (Tours); Valenciennes 394 (N.E. France); Vatican Reg. 1484 (Tours); Vat. Reg. 1625-V (Fleury?); Vat. Reg. 1674 (Corbie); Vat. lat. 1511 (France). The Irish possibility is Valenciennes 412. It must be borne in mind that this and the preceding list are very cursory; the interested reader is referred to the pages of Munk Olsen. There he will be impressed by the number of manuscripts of ninth- (and early tenth-) century origin whose provenance is not stated. Some of these may well be French also. Moreover modern political divisions may obscure the fact that manuscripts described as ‘German’ or ‘Swiss’, and written at St Gall or Reichenau, for example, may well be seen as part of a cultural tradition whose centre of gravity lay in central-northern France.

33. Vatican MS Reg. 1484.

34. Laon MS 468.

35. Munk Olsen, ii. 704, gives a useful bibliography of this manuscript.

36. I base this assertion on the numerous instances in the manuscripts of Virgil (and other classical authors) of what editors and palaeographers would call ‘contemporary corrections’, emendations of a kind well known to anyone who has worked with manuscripts.

37. It may be doubted whether ‘policy’ is too strong a word to use here. In support of it I would begin by offering the evidence of Charlemagne's, Epistola de litteris colendis (ed. Boretius, , MGH Capitularia, I, 78ffGoogle Scholar.) with its emphasis on the study of arts as a prerequisite to a study of the scriptures. But the strongest evidence, though inferential, is the diffusion of the ‘carolingian minuscule’ script, the significance of which surely cannot be measured in isolation from the material which it was used to disseminate.

38. For a discussion of one such area where Irish influence was strong, see Contreni, J. J., ‘The Irish “Colony” at Laon during the time of John Scottus’, Jean Scot Erigene et L'Histoire de la Philosophic CNRS (Paris, 1977), 59–67Google Scholar.

39. ‘La Tradition textual de Petronio’, Euphrosyne, NS 1 (1967), 106Google Scholar. Diaz y Diaz was in fact speaking here of the textual tradition of Petronius! I think it is important to note that a number of classical scholars, working in distinct and unrelated fields, have observed what might be described as an Irish connexion in their manuscript traditions, but I think it is fair to say that reports of this kind have not yet been properly integrated by specialists on early medieval Ireland.

40. See Goold, 116, for evidence of this attitude.

41. Cuiv, B. O., ‘Medieval Irish Scholars and Classical Latin Literature’, PRIA 81, c, 9 (1981), 239–48Google Scholar; Picard, J.-M., ‘Une préfiguration du latin carolingien: la syntaxe de la Vita Columbae d'Adomnan, auteur irlandais du Vile siècle’, Romanobarbarica 6 (1981–1982), 235–89, esp. 247 and 254Google Scholar. There is an interesting parallel in Wright, N., ‘Bede and Vergil’, Romanobarbarica (same number), 361–79Google Scholar, where a good case is made for overturning the scepticism of Hunter Blair as to Bede's personal familiarity with Virgil.

42. Savage, J. J., ‘Was the Commentary on Virgil by Aelius Donatus extant in the Ninth Century?’, CPh 26 (1931), 405–11Google Scholar.

43. Goold, 110.

44. Comparetti, D., Vergil in the Middle Ages, tr. Benecke, (London, 1966), p. 55Google Scholar. The original edition was published in 1895.

45. Funaioli, G., Esegesi Virgiliana Antica (Milan, 1930), pp. 233–4Google Scholar. This is the most important work on the scholia published this century. It has not yet been translated into English.