DONATUS, AELIUS

This article appears in Volume V08, Page 411 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: DIO-DRO

DONATUS, AELIUS , Roman grammarian and teacher of rhetoric, flourished in the middle of the 4th century A.D. The only fact known regarding his

life

LIFE

is that he was the tutor of St Jerome. He was the author of a number of professional works, of which there are still extant:Ars grarnmatica; the larger portion of his commentary on Terence (a compilation from other commentaries), but probably not in its

original

ORIGINAL

form; and a few fragments of his notes on Virgil, preserved and severely criticized by Servius, together with the

preface

PREFACE (Med. Lat. prefatia, for classical praefatio, praefari, to speak beforehand)

and introduction, and

life

LIFE

of Virgil. The first of these works, and especially the section on the eight parts of speech, though possessing little claim to originality, and in fact evidently based on the same authorities which were used by the grammarians Charisius and

Diomedes

DIOMEDES

, attained such popularity as a school-book that in the middle ages the writer's name, like the French Calepin, became a common metonymy (in the form Bonet) for a rudimentary treatise of any sort. On the introduction of printing editions of the little book were multiplied to an enormous extent. It is extant in the form of an Ars

Minor

, which only treats of the parts of speech, and an Ars Major, which deals with grammar in general at greater length.
Aelius Donatus is to be distinguished from Tiberius

Claudius

CLAUDIUS
CLAUDIUS [TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS DRUSUS NERO GERMANICUS]
CLAUDIUS, MARCUS AURELIUS
CLAUDIUS,
MATTHIAS
- MATTHIAS
- MATTHIAS (1557-1619)
(174o-1815)

Donatus, the author of a commentary (Interpretations) on the Aeneid (of far less value than that of Servius), who lived about fifty years later.
The best text of the Ars and the commentaries upon it by Servius and others is in H. Keil, Grammatici

Latini

LATINI, BRUNETTO (c. 1210-C. 1294)

, iv.; of the commentary on Terence there is an edition by P. Wessner (1902, Tei.ibner

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

), with bibliography and full account of MSS. See generally E. A. Grafenhan, Geschichte der klassischen Philologie im Allertum, iv. (185o); P. Rosenstock, De Donato, Terenti . . explicatore (1886); H. T.

Karsten

KARSTEN, KARL JOHANN BERNHARD (1782-1853)

, De comm. Don. ad Terenti fabulas origine et corrtpositione (Leiden, 1907). For the commentary of Tiberius Donatus see 0. Ribbeck, Prolegomena to Virgil, Grafenhan (as above), and V. Burkas, De Tiberii Claudii Donali in Aeneidem commentario (1889). The text will be found in G. Fabricius's edition of Virgil (1561), ed. by H. George, i. (1905 foil.).

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