Ancient Commentaries

Tiberio Claudio Donato e le sue Interpretationes Vergilianae sono stati a lungo trascurati dalla bibliografia moderna 2 , e solo negli ultimi vent'anni hanno goduto di nuova attenzione 3 . Ciò ha permesso di far luce su molti aspetti prima in ombra o sconosciuti e di affermare che Donato (d'ora in poi, per semplicità, lo chiamerò così), pur presentandosi quale estraneo al mondo della scuola -e, anzi, in esplicita contrapposizione ad esso 4 -per certi versi rimanda anche lui a quel mondo, dal quale trae il materiale e l'ottica critica di cui fa uso: sicché scolastico si direbbe l'ambiente entro il quale egli agisce, e scolastici i problemi dei quali si occupa, che sono poi gli stessi degli scoliasti tardoantichi, Servio e il Servio Danielino in primis. Detto questo, va però aggiunto che Donato, entro tale materiale, si muove con un proprio metodo e un proprio mestiere. Nelle Interpretationes Vergilianae si riconoscono infatti tre esigenze fondamentali 5 :

At the end of their life, after transferring the kingdom to their grown-up sons, several kings of the Sūryavaṃśa chose to retire from the world and devoted their last years to asceticism and meditation. The verses of the Raghuvaṃśa describing these kings show considerable variation mainly along the lines of which āśrama (stage of life) the king enters at the end of his life. In many cases the commentators discuss these variants and argue pro and contra the availability of saṃnyāsa for people of royal status, thus participating in a larger mediaeval debate observable in texts on dharmaśāstra. This paper takes into consideration former studies on the subject by Tsuchida, Olivelle and Goodall, and most importantly discusses both published and unpublished commentaries on the Raghuvaṃśa, examining what authorities they quote to give support to their views on this dharmaśāstric issue, as well as the efforts they make to present the Raghuvaṃśa as being both internally consistent and in harmony with the teachings on dharma they consider valid.

Die Arbeit beschäftigt sich im weitesten Sinne mit dem Verhältnis zwischen einem Text, seinen Lesern und deren Kritikern. Ihr Gegenstand sind Anspielungen auf zeitgeschichtliche Ereignisse in antiken literarischen Texten und die Vermutungen, die die Verfasser antiker exegetischer Literatur darüber äußern. Ziel ist dabei - anders als in den meisten einschlägigen Untersuchungen - nicht die Präsentation neuer Interpretationen zu den klassischen Texten, sondern die Analyse der aus Antike und Spätantike überlieferten Anspielungsdeutungen. An diese wird die Frage gestellt, welche Absichten, Ziele und Verfahren die Exegeten den von ihnen kommentierten Dichtern unterstellten und auf welchem Wege sie selbst zu ihrer Interpretation gelangten. Der Vergleich der einzelnen Interpretationen läßt typische Denkweisen und Interpretationsmuster hervortreten, ermöglicht einen Einblick in den geistigen Hintergrund der antiken Kommentatoren und schafft damit erst die Basis für die Beurteilung ihrer auch heute immer wieder diskutierten Vorschläge.

Lo scopo primario del presente lavoro consiste nell‟individuazione e nell'analisi dei principali filoni di interesse che caratterizzano nella sua peculiarità l'esegesi serviana alle Georgiche. Nonostante il carattere collettaneo del commento di Servio nelle sue due redazioni, recenti analisi hanno dimostrato che ciò non sembra precludere la possibilità di rintracciare e seguire interessi specifici all'interno di un lavoro esegetico che non è affatto privo di una sua continuità e di una sua coerenza interna. Tuttavia, a fronte del rifiorire generale degli studi su Servio che ha caratterizzato gli ultimi decenni, scarsa attenzione ha suscitato proprio quest'ultima parte del suo lavoro esegetico. Il presente lavoro di tesi si propone di colmare, almeno in parte, proprio questa lacuna negli studi serviani.

Alexander of Aphrodisias’s commentary (about AD 200) is the earliest extant commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and it is the most valuable indirect witness to the Metaphysics text and its transmission. This study is a systematic investigation into the version of the Metaphysics that Alexander used when writing his commentary, and into the various ways his text, his commentary, and the texts transmitted through our manuscripts relate to one another. Through a careful analysis of lemmata, quotations, and Alexander’s discussion of Aristotle’s argument I show how to uncover and partly reconstruct a Metaphysics version from the second century AD. I then use this version for improving the text that came down to us by the direct manuscript tradition and for finding solutions to some of the puzzles in this tradition. Through a side-by-side examination of Alexander’s text, his interpretation of Aristotle’s thought, and the directly transmitted versions of the Metaphysics, I reveal how Alexander’s commentary influenced the text of our manuscripts at different stages of the transmission process. This study is the first book-length examination of a commentary as a witness to an ancient philosophical text. This blend of textual criticism and philosophical analysis both expands on existing methodologies in classical scholarship and develops new ones.

This chapter compares the readings of Cicero found in two of his ancient commentators, Asconius Pedianus and Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius. Asconius’ commentary, the earliest to survive in Latin, focuses on Cicero’s speeches, and offers practical information in order to aid understanding of their historical circumstances. As I show, Asconius’ decision to write his work in the form of a historical commentary is due to the influence of the Greek scholarly approach to Demosthenes. Macrobius’ work is in an entirely different vein. Looking to the tradition of Neoplatonic allegorizing commentary, he interprets Cicero much as the Neoplatonists interpreted Plato. The work he produces is thus less a commentary than a sprawling philosophical account, with Cicero’s text anchoring various mystical digressions. I conclude that Asconius and Macrobius’ choice of Greek models constrained and controlled their own reading of Cicero, as well as constraining and controlling Cicero’s later Nachleben.

Strategie del commento a testi greci e latini Atti del Convegno [Fisciano 16-18 novembre 2006] a cura di Paolo Esposito e Paola Volpe Cacciatore Rubbettino © 2008 -Università degli Studi di Salerno © 2008 -Rubbettino Editore 88049 Soveria Mannelli -Viale Rosario Rubbettino, 10 -Tel. (0968) 6664201 www.rubbettino.it 240 Les manuscrits des lexiques et glossaires de l'antiquité tardive à la fin du Moyen Âge, Actes du colloque international organisé par le «Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture», Erice, 23-30 septembre 1994, Louvain-la-neuve 1996, pp. 254-282; Ead., "Un glossaire carolingien inédit de mots rares extraits des satires de Juvénal", in C. Leonardi (a cura di), Gli umanesimi medievali, Atti del II Congresso dell'«Internationales Mittellateinerkomitee», Certosa del Galluzzo, Firenze 11-15 settembre 1993, Tavarnuzze-Impruneta-Firenze 1998, pp. 273-282. Sulla scuola di Auxerre vd. L'école carolingienne d'Auxerre. De Murethach à Remi, 830-908, Entretiens d'Auxerre 1989, publiés par D. Iogna-Prat, C. Jeudy, G. Lobrichon, préf. de G. Duby, Paris 1991. Per quanto riguarda i commenti più tardi vd. G. de Conches, Glosae in Iuvenalem, edited with introduction and notes by B. Wilson, Paris 1980 e B. Löfstedt, Vier Juvenal-Kommentare aus dem 12 Jh., Amsterdam 1995. 4 Riproduco l'apparato dell'edizione di W.V. Clausen (Oxford 1992 2 ), a cui rimando per maggiori dettagli sui testimoni: P = Montepessulanus 125; S = lemmata scholiorum quae in P et Sang. servata sunt (cioè gli scholia vetustiora); R = Parisinus 8072; Arov. = fragmenta Aroviensia; S = scholia vetustiora.

The paper discusses the authenticity of one of the so-called "Fragments" of the Hippocratic Lexicon written in the I century A.D. by Erotianus (Fr. 19 in Nachmanson's edition), as It is transmitted by the scholia found in some Hippocratic manuscripts. The fragment focuses on the explanation of a difficult word found in the text of the fifth book of Hippocrates' "Epidemics": dertron. One of the literary sources quoted in the fragment, Metrodorus, is the author of an interpretamentum: the identification of this writer is one of the main issues examined. This leads to reconsider this scholium as a meeting point between Homeric and Hippocratic lexicography.

This paper focuses on the four preserved commentaries to a Pythagorean poem known as the Golden Verses. It deals with two Greek texts—Iamblichus' Protrepticus and Hierocles' Commentary to the Golden Verses—as well as two commentaries preserved in Arabic, attributed to Iamblichus and Proclus. The article analyses how each of these commentators understood the relationship between man and god in the context of the eschatological vision presented in the poem. It also demonstrates how differences in the interpretation of particular verses and ideas within the poem were dependent on an author's philosophical views and cultural background.

What makes a text a "commentary" ? The question is naıf enough to allow a complicated answer. In Sanskrit there is not a single word for "commentary". The present study focuses on an exemplary case-study, that of Venkatanatha's commentary on the Seśvaramīmāṃsā, and concludes that Sanskrit philosophical commentaries share certain characteristics: 1. several given texts are their main interlocu-tors/they are mainly about a set of particular texts; 2. they belong to a genre in its own right and are not a minor specialisation for authors at the beginnings of their careers; 3. they are characterised by a varied but strong degree of textual reuse; 4. they are characterised by a shared interlanguage that their authors must have assumed was well known to their audiences; 5. they allow for a signiiicant degree of innovation. The use of the plural in point No. 1 is discussed extensively within the paper.

The belief in the immortality of the soul has been described as one of the “twin pillars of Platonism” and is famously defended by Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo. The ancient commentaries on the dialogue by Olympiodorus and Damascius offer a unique perspective on the reception of this belief in the Platonic tradition. Through a detailed discussion of topics such as suicide, the life of the philosopher and arguments for immortality, this study demonstrates the commentators’ serious engagement with problems in Plato’s text as well as the dialogue's importance to Neoplatonic ethics. The book will be of interest to students of Plato and the Platonic tradition, and to those working on ancient ethics and psychology.

Copertina: La Tholos di Delfi (santuario di Athena Pronaia, Delfi, 380-370 a.C.) © Foto Valeria Melis Studio ed elaborazione grafica copertina: Litteralia Impaginazione: Litteralia © Edizioni Saecula -Litteralia Zermeghedo (Vi) www.edizionisaecula.it Responsabile editoriale: Gabriella Gavioli Stampato nel dicembre 2018 presso Universal Book Srl -Rende (Cs) Il commentario del P. Louvre inv. 7733 verso... Chiara Martis Il commentario del P. Louvre inv. 7733 verso: un esempio di esegesi antica L'oggetto del presente studio occupa il verso di un rotolo, il PLouvre 7733, 1 rinvenuto a Saqqarah 2 nel 1869 dall'egittologo A. Mariette che lo donò al Museo del Louvre di Parigi. Nel complesso, i venti frammenti che costituiscono il papirodatabile tra il I a.C. e il I d.C. -ricevettero poca attenzione fino al 1968, quando suscitarono l'interesse di F. Lasserre. Fino ad allora il papiro era stato studiato senza serio esame dell'originale e senza prendere in considerazione il verso. Nel contributo pubblicato nel 1975, 3

As other commentaries on the Somnium Scipionis by Cicero, Favonius Eulogius’ develops an essay about the properties of the numbers one to nine. Among them, number seven is specially related to human beings and particularly to pregnancy. The arithmetically perfect number seven makes a perfect seven month pregnancy. But a seven month pregnancy is not the standard one, a complex problem which these treatises face in different ways. In addition, Favonius Eulogius’ text is concise and tricky.

La costitutiva natura stratificata dei commenti rende spesso poco agevole valutare quale sia lo 'strato' a cui può risalire una singola esegesi, cioè la sua origine nella serie diacronica dei commenti confluiti nel testo a noi pervenuto. Nel caso dell'esegesi virgiliana il problema è reso più complesso dall'antichità della catena esegetica, che ebbe inizio all'indomani della pubblicazione dell'Eneide, forse anche in concomitanza con essa, se si ipotizza che Vario Rufo abbia divulgato qualche propria osservazione sul poema di cui allestì la pubblicazione 1. Allo strato più antico dell'esegesi virgiliana appartengono certamente le osservazioni esegetiche che la tradizione attribuisce ad Igino, il liberto a cui Augusto aveva affidato la direzione della Biblioteca Palatina.

Scholia corpora which reached us share a common peculiarity: they contain particularly detailed notes on the myths told by the auctores in their texts. This field of research makes clear the relationships among the commentators and the analogies with other scholastic material for which a dependence from Servius is supposable. This work analyse three myths, also considering their presence in Servius: Pelops and Hippodamia, the metamorphoses of Procne and Philomela, Daedalus' adventures in Italic country. The aim the work will try to achive, through the analysis of these three myths, is to highlight the exegetical dynamics in the school of the grammaticus, the importance of the myth for other scholarly digressions, the relationships among the commentators known to us.

Amici complici amanti: Eurialo e Niso nelle Interpretationes Vergilianae di Tiberio Claudio Donato 1 12 Ed è questa un'innovazione rispetto al modello omerico. In Hom. Il. XXIII 773-777, infatti, Aiace-che è in testa-scivola e cade perché così vuole Atena, che favorisce Odisseo. Una mossa scorretta è semmai quella con cui Antiloco, nella corsa con i cocchi, sorpassa e mette in difficoltà Menelao (vv. 423-441). A fine gara Menelao protesta e si fa consegnare il premio toccato al rivale, ma poi lo restituisce, colpito dalle parole di Antiloco (vv.

Some ancient readers of
Plato's Phaedo were just as sceptical of the ‘final argument’ as many modern scholars are.
The exchange between one of Plato’s most notorious critics in antiquity, namely Strato of Lampsacus, and, on the defence, the last Athenian Neoplatonist Damascius, is particularly
instructive in this regard. Even Damascius, when trying to defend the Phaedo’s final argument, agrees that it does not fully rule out the possibility that the soul may perish when it is by itself, having been separated from the body.

According to Tiberius Claudius Donatus, in the struggle between Pyrrhus and Priamus in the second book of Vergil''s Aeneid the Trojan king causes of his own will the reactions of Achilles'' son, in order to be killed by him. His main weapon is the deformatio of Pyrrhus, a rhetorical device blaming not only Pyrrhus, but Achilles too.

Classiques Garnier L'Énéide dans le commentaire de l'Eunuque de Térence attribué à Aelius Donat Citations éclatées ou fragments d'intertextualités ? Type de publication: Article de collectif Collectif: Stylus : la parole dans ses formes. Mélanges en l'honneur du professeur Jacqueline Dangel Auteur: Bureau (Bruno)

The volume under review is the second edition of a collection of seminal papers on Philoponus originally published in 1987. With a striking cover image showing a detail from a larger fresco by the Renaissance painter Sodoma and a fine colour frontispiece, it is visually more enticing than its earlier incarnation. The main novelty of the book, however, is a two-part introduction by Richard Sorabji (hereafter S.): over the space of 40 pages, it takes the reader on a guided tour of new findings on Philoponus.

Tous les lecteurs du commentaire de Térence par Donat 1 ont été frappés par l'abondance des références virgiliennes qui s'y trouvent, au point qu'on peut se demander si le Mantouan n'intéressait finalement pas davantage que le poète comique un grammairien dont on sait, même si son texte est perdu, qu'il avait consacré à Virgile une part de ses activités de commentateur 2 .

In the olden days, as my children used to say and as now seems more and more appropriate, when I was a graduate student, I had a conflicted relationship with commentaries on classical Greek and Latin texts. When faced with what seemed to be an impossibly huge reading list of texts to prepare in both languages for qualifying exams, I tried hard to avoid both commentaries and translations except when I had no choice. There was just no time, so my constant companions were the dictionaries in each language and a set of blank journals that I filled with two-column lists of the vocabulary in them that I was trying to learn. In those prehistoric times, there were no online tools-in fact, there was no online anything, so even having at hand a commentary or a translation for every text I had to read was by no means a given. On the other hand, there was no way to avoid consulting commentaries in preparing classes and seminars as a student and in teaching. In fact, that was the obvious way to rise to the level of preparation that students and instructors anticipated and that my peers at the very least attained. But my general experience of commentaries-in the '60's, which is the era I'm talking about, most of the commentaries we used were British-was marked by frustration. The typical commentary was not discursive or explanatory but authoritarian. The major element of content was cross-references to other texts in either Greek or Latin or both, texts that established a primary frame of reference on the basis of diction or content but did nothing more than cite intrinsically useful information with minimal analysis or explanation. Unsolicited opinions of the quality of the thought and writing of the ancient author were commonplace and usually negative; the only thing more negative than judgments of the authors themselves were the commentator's opinions of other scholars or, worse still, of the poor, pathetic scribes responsible for messing up the transmission of the Greek or Latin. (I'm exaggerating, of course, but not that much). When I encountered a difficult passage that I could not translate and sought help in a commentary, most of the time, there was no help offered. The reason for that, I assumed, was that the problem was my own inability to read the language, not the failure of the commentator to recognize or solve a real difficulty in the Greek or Latin; in such cases, the only thing that the commentary produced was demoralization. Lastly, when these commentators actually ventured beyond grammatical and textual questions into the interpretation of the text, which was rare, my overwhelming sense was that, although they had and displayed vast knowledge of other, similar texts as evidenced by citations of blinding arrays of cross-references that I could never hope to equal (remember, there were no computers to search with), they had no basic understanding of the literary context that gave meaning to the text beyond the most basic level.

How does one go from words on a page, to visual images painted on canvas, set on stage, or merely pictured in one's mind?  This talk was given as the 2017 Michael C.J. Putnam Lecture at Brown University.  It focuses on two of Virgil's most vibrantly colored scenes: the Feast of Dido in book 1 of the Aeneid, and the Death of Camilla in book 11.  It will look at the sensory cues that these stories use to draw us up from the flat medium of words into a three-dimensional sensory experience of images, sounds, and sense.  More importantly, it will look at the way that colors are used to tell stories of their own; stories that nuance, and sometimes run counter to, the words on the page.

To view the lecture, click on the URL above, or paste the following into your web browser:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EvV5Q6LGjT4u99UqKhAKl29VpEG1qxpu/view?ts=5a7331ff