LATE CICERONIAN SCHOLARSHIP AND VIRGILIAN EXEGESIS: SERVIUS AND PS.-ASCONIUS

Abstract

Late Antiquity witnessed intense scholarly activity on Virgil's poems. Aelius Donatus’ commentary, the twelve-book Interpretationes Vergilianae composed by the fourth-century or fifth-century rhetorician Tiberius Claudius Donatus and other sets of scholia testify to the richness of late ‘Virgilian literature’. Servius’ full-scale commentary on Virgil's poetry (early fifth century) marked a watershed in the history of the reception of Virgil and in Latin criticism in general. Primarily ‘the instrument of a teacher’, Servius’ commentary was intended to teach students and readers to read and write good Latin through Virgil. Lauded by Macrobius for his ‘learning’ (doctrina) and ‘modesty’ (uerecundia), Servius attained supremacy as both a literary critic and an interpreter of Virgil, the master of Latin poetry. His auctoritas had a profound impact on later Virgilian erudition. As Cameron notes, Servius’ commentary ‘eclipsed all competition, even Donatus’. Significantly, it permeated non-Virgilian scholarship from the fifth century onwards. The earliest bodies of scholia on Lucan, the tenth-century or eleventh-century Commenta Bernensia and Adnotationes super Lucanum and the scholia uetustiora on Juvenal contain material that can be traced as far back as Servius’ scholarly masterpiece.