A PLACE TO STAND
ars est rei cuiusque scientia usu vel traditione vel ratione percepta tendens ad usum aliquem vitae necessarium.
A skill is the knowledge of any given matter derived from experience, tradition, or reason and aiming at some advantage essential to life.
—Diomedes, Ars grammatica, GL 1.421.4f.
Among the lost works of the ancient grammarians, some no doubt are more to be regretted than others; and no doubt opinions could differ in assessing the losses. For our purposes in this section, we would be especially fortunate to have a work by the grammarian Telephus, onetime teacher of the emperor Lucius Verus, which addressed the question, How much does a grammarian need to know?[1] Telephus's answer, necessarily revealing a grammarian's thoughts about his profession, would have offered us something otherwise hard to come by. Rhetoricians, philosophers, historians, poets—all are given to talking about their craft, their understanding of it, and the claims they would make for it. Not so the grammarians, who among the major participants in the literary culture are the most reticent in staking out their own position. We are for the most part left to draw what inferences we can from the largely impersonal discourse of their technical writings.
Where are we to look, then, to study the grammarian's view of his profession? Time has made the decision easier regarding either side of
the question, the methodical instruction in language or the exegesis of literary texts. Of the latter, only one authentic specimen from the period survives in reasonably complete form, the Vergilian commentary of Servius; and for the former—the side most often mentioned in non-grammatical sources—little in Greek could serve our purpose. To the extent that the efforts of the Greek grammarians survive at all from the fourth, fifth, and early sixth centuries, they survive as scattered excerpts or jejune epitomes. Only one extensive piece has come down to us in its original form, Theodosius's Introductory Rules of Nominal and Verbal Flexion, a work that does not provide much scope for the analysis needed here.[2] The remnants of the Latin grammarians offer more promising material.
In the following pages, therefore, we will examine in some detail two major texts. Each is clearly connected with the grammarian's school; each shows a different facet of the grammarian's work and his understanding of it; and each was composed by a man who on any reasonable estimate must be located in the intellectual foothills of the profession. I have resisted the temptation to make for the summit (say, Priscian), in order to gain a more accurate view of the terrain as a contemporary would have seen it. We will begin with Pompeius's commentary on the Ars of Donatus, which affords an especially vivid glimpse of the grammarian's mind-set and his sense of continuity or rivalry with his predecessors. We will then turn to Servius's commentary on Vergil, where we will be able to gauge the grammarian's sense of his authority over the language and to observe how he behaves when confronted by the authority of a classical text.
Chapter 4
Pompeius
Pompeius taught as a grammarian in Africa in the late fifth or perhaps the early sixth century, the countryman and (in rough terms) contemporary of a clutch of African grammatici ranging in date from Dracontius's teacher, Felicianus, to the young Corippus.[1] We know Pompeius through his Commentum Artis Donati, the most garrulous of grammatical texts and, since its first modern publication by Lindemann in 1820, perhaps the least' esteemed.[2] The harsh modern verdict, although overdone, is not entirely undeserved: the commentary's scholarship is flawed, and its sprawling devotion to one of the most elegant Latin handbooks is a stunning paradox.[3] Nonetheless, that devotion can pay generous dividends to the modem reader, for it is expressed in a distinctive, lively voice that strikingly reveals the concerns of a late-antique teacher.
The object of Pompeius's attention was composed by Donatus in the mid-fourth century; by Pompeius's time it was on its way to becoming a central document of Latin studies in the West.[4] Donatus's work consisted of two parts, the Ars minor and, in three books, the Ars maior. The Ars
[1] On Pompeius's place and date, see Part II no. 125. On the other African grammarians of this period, see Part II nos. 23 (probably but not certainly African), 24, 37, 58, 59, 124, 126 (if a native of Caesarea Mauretania), and perhaps 138. In this chapter Pompeius and Cledonius are cited by page and line of Keil, GL 5; Explanationes 1 and Servius's commentary on Donatus are cited by page and line of Keil, GL 4.
[2] Characterized as a "botch" and a "sham" by Keil, GL 5.90; and by Jeep, Zur Geschichte der Lehre 43f. The judgment was resumed by Helm, RE 21.2313.23f., 2314.63f.
[3] Cf. Holtz, "Tradition" 50, who also offers the best concise and general characterization of Pompeius's work.
[4] See now the massive study of Holtz, Donat, esp. 75ff., on Donatus's relation to the earlier tradition, and 219ff., on the reception of Donatus down through the High Middle Ages.
minor offered a swift introduction to the parts of speech—the heart of the grammarian's doctrine—cast in the form of questions (partes orationis quot sunt? . . . nomen quid est? ) with the appropriate answers. The Ars maior then followed the standard sequence for such handbooks, beginning with brief, introductory definitions (of vox, littera, and so on) before taking up the parts of speech in greater detail and concluding with a rapid survey of the vitia et virtutes orationis.[5] The work is concise, almost clipped, throughout: drawing on several sources for his doctrine, Donatus evidently tried to pare it down to its essentials. By contrast, Pompeius is brief only in his passing glance at the lesser Ars, praising its utility as an introduction and approving its ordering of the partes.[6] He then presses on to exhaust the greater Ars.[7] To appreciate the value of his comments, we must first try to understand Pompeius's method, his style, and the audience he has in mind. And in turn, to understand his method we must understand his relationship to his main source, Servius's early fifth-century commentary on Donatus.
To speak of Pompeius's "relationship" to Servius is to put the matter delicately, or at least neutrally: some would say that Pompeius shamelessly plagiarized Servius, whom in fact he does not name. Although the charge is inaccurate, as we shall see, the dependence is nonetheless plain—not on the extant, abridged version of Servius, but on a more complete version of his original work. Though that original is now lost, it is represented in different ways and in varying degrees by the surviving epitome (405.2-448.17), by Book 1 of "Sergius's" Explanationes in Artem Donati (486.4-534.12), and by Cledonius's commentary on Donatus (9-79).[8] Pompeius drew from Servius much of the substance of his own
[5] With the prominence given the partes orationis in the Ars minor and the modification of the standard sequence thus produced, compare the similar dislocation in Book I of Diomedes; see Jeep, Zur Geschichte der Lehre 57.
[6] See the full form of the preface published by Holtz, "Tradition" 59-60, with GL 5.96.19-98.8.
[7] Apparently Pompeius assumes that his audience was already familiar with the Ars minor ; see 246.32, legistis illas [sc. significationes adverbiorum ] in prima parte artis, adverting to Don. 596.1-5 Holtz. Cf. Pomp. 189.27, quem ad modum legistis in primordiis, with the apparatus in Holtz's edition of Don. at 587.28; and cf. Keil, GL 5.90.
[8] On the relationship of Pompeius, Serv. Comm. Don., and Explan. 1, see Keil, GL 5.92; Helm, RE 21.2313.59ff.; and esp. Schindel, Figurenlehren 21f., 36f., refining Jeep, Zur Geschichte der Lehre 43-53. For dear evidence that Pompeius and Explan. 1 draw on a common source, compare, e.g., Pomp. 208.28f. and Explan. 502.17f. On Cledonius, see Holtz, "Àl'école de Donat" 526, correcting Jeep, Zur Geschichte der Lehre 41f.
I should stress that the matter of Pompeius's main source is probably more complex than previously suspected: I use "Servius" in what follows to mean the version of Servius known to Pompeius. That version had very possibly been interpolated by some intermediary: note, e.g., Pomp. 262.28, where the subject of dicit can be neither Donatus nor Servius; or Pomp. 224.32ff., where the nonsensical statements quam removit and "clam" vult remotam esse omnino may derive from interpolations in Pompeius's source subsequent to Servius; and cf. the appendix to Part II no. 125. It is possible, therefore, that some of Pompeius's departures from Servius discussed below were already present in his main source. It is also conceivable that if Pompeius's version of Servius had already been revised to include non-Servian material, the name of the reviser was Astyagius; see below, nn. 35, 36, and Part II no. 189. (This could, incidentally, account for Pompeius's failure to mention Servius by name: he might not even have known that the work before him was originally Servius's.)
These and other puzzles (e.g., the curious doublet Pomp. 165.19-174.11 vs. 174.12-190.13) need to be considered in a full study of Pompeius (desiderated by Holtz, "Tradition" 50f.), which this chapter does not provide; but such a study must be based on a decent critical edition, a still more pressing need. I have used Keil's text but have tacitly repunctuated in some places.
comments, including the references to pre-Donatan scholars (Varro, Pliny, Caper, Terentianus, the younger Probus, and others) that pepper the work, and many of the illustrative quotations from auctores.[9] The extent of the debt can scarcely be overestimated and can be exemplified by some of the howlers that Pompeius evidently borrowed without blinking an eye,[10] or by a brief passage like the following:
sed sunt aliquae litterae, quae neque ab "e" inchoant neque in "e" desinunt. hae litterae calumniam patiuntur, ut est "x." idcirco non littera dicitur, sed duplex littera. "k" et "q" neque ab "e" inchoant neque in "e" desinunt. "h" et ista similiter in calumniam venit. (101.18-22)
Pompeius means that the letters x, k, q, and h were charged with being illegitimate or unnecessary: so much emerges from the parallel passage in the Explanationes. But Pompeius has reproduced his source so elliptically—as though forgetting his audience would not have Servius open before them, as he did—that his reference to the letters' calumnia becomes
[9] The doubts of Jeep, Zur Geschichte der Lehre 44-53, that Pompeius himself ever saw the work, e.g., of Probus were well founded, although Jeep's discussion of some individual passages is vitiated by the belief that Pompeius used the surviving version of Servius's commentary; see, e.g., a garbled version of Probus clearly taken over by Pompeius from Servius: Pomp. 224.30ff., with Jeep, pp. 44f.
[10] E.g., Pomp. 215.24f. (cf. Serv. 411.35-37; Explan. 504.5f.); and cf. Pomp. 185.33-186.6, the assertion that mille in the clause habeo mille servorum is in the genitive: the presence of a supporting citation from Cicero suggests that the lesson was already in his source. Note, however, that Pompeius does not reproduce Servius's equally astonishing claim that vulgus is attested in the feminine: Serv. 431.27f., citing in vulgum ambiguam, evidently a faulty recollection of Aen. 2.95f., spargere voces / in vulgum ambiguas.
intelligible only when it is compared with the passage in the Explanationes derived from the common source.[11]
The way Pompeius mined his Servius can be illustrated from his discussion of the participle, a passage that also exemplifies some of his more peculiar habits. The discussion begins as follows:
pleraque dicit quae et in superiore arte memoravit, pleraque addit. participium dictum est pars orationis ab eo, quod pattern capit nominis, partem verbi, ut siqui dicat "legens" "scribens" "currens": ista participia sunt. ham habent haec quae dixi: "legens" habet et casus et genera et tempora et significationes. quod casus et genera habet, nominis sunt: nam et casus nomini accidit, et genus nomini accidit. quod tempora et significationes habet, haec duo verbi sunt: nam tempus verbo accidit, significatio verbo accidit. ergo participium habet a nomine partes, habet a verbo partes. ideo dicitur participium, quasi particapium. (256.9-17)
The striking feature of the paragraph is Pompeius's cross-reference to an earlier mention of the participle's accidents (256.12, nam habent haec quae dixi )—striking because Pompeius has previously said nothing whatever about the specific attributes of the participle and their relation to the attributes of nouns and verbs. But Servius, who worked through both parts of Donatus's text, had earlier reviewed the accidents of the participle in his comments on the Ars minor. Pompeius here has simply taken over a cross-reference from Servius: compare participium est quasi particapium: habet enim a nomine genera et casus, a verbo tempora et significationes, ab utroque numerum et figuram et cetera, quae in superioribus dicta sunt (440.17-19). This is not an isolated symptom; Pompeius's discussion as a whole is articulated by the introductory statement pleraque dicit quae et in superiore arte memoravit, pleraque addit (256.9) and by the transitional statement hoc est quod legimus etiam in arte superiore. iam addit alia propria et utilia (260.39). And both the introduction and the transition correspond to Servius's quae in superioribus dicta sunt. in posterioribus illud adicit (440.19).
We can see what Pompeius has done with his source in this passage. He starts from the introduction (256.9ff.), with its reference back to Donatus's Ars minor, that he found in Servius's discussion of the participle in his commentary on the Ars maior ; and he offers a preliminary clarification of the difference between the participle and the noun, antequam tractemus hoc participium, debes scire discretionem participii ipsius a nomine (256.18f.), which is also derived from Servius's commentary on the Ars
[11] Explan. 520.20-26; cf. also Serv. 422.34ff.
maior.[12] He then makes a new beginning, repeating the definition of the participle (258.6-8 = Don. 644.2-4H.; cf. 597.5-6H.) and the review of its accidents (258.8-10), and discusses the accidents as they occur in Donatus (258.12-260.38 = Don. 644.6-645.3H.). But for this purpose he has turned back to Servius's commentary on the Ars minor (416.32ff.), which he follows until the transition hoc est quod legimus etiam in arte superiore. iam addit . . . (260.39f.).[13] At this point he resumes Servius's commentary on the Ars maior, which he uses until the end of the chapter,[14] garbling its account at one point and disagreeing with it at another.[15] Pompeius's general procedure, flipping back and forth between different sections of his Servius, is especially transparent here, but it is not at all unusual, and requires little comment. To understand the way Pompeius works, however, we must examine his other peculiarities glimpsed above (particularly his tendency toward confusion) and the marks of independence amid his general and profound reliance on his main source.
We can begin with Pompeius's curiously inconstant attitude toward that source. As was noted earlier, Pompeius does not mention Servius by name; but this does not prevent him from occasionally revealing he is aware of his debt. When, for example, Pompeius is about to retail an easy way to distinguish the proper accents of words (127.1ff.), he says, et hoc traditum est ; he then goes on to present the lesson he found in Servius. Similarly, Pompeius repeats Servius's doctrine that if any part of speech "ceases to be what it is," it becomes an adverb (250.36ff.);[16] when he has occasion farther on to refer to the same lesson, Pompeius says, legimus enim talem regulam, omnis pars orationis, cum desierit esse quod est, nihil est aliud nisi adverbium (273.34f.), where legimus suggests he was conscious of
[12] See esp. Pomp. 256.;58-258.5, with Serv. 441.16-21; and cf. Don. 646.3-6H. For this sort of preliminary ground-clearing in Pompeius, cf. 112.6ff., 128.15ff.
[13] Note that Pompeius omits discussion of numerus and figura, which occur in Donatus (645.9-12H.) only after the material (645.4-8H.) that provokes his return to Servius on the Ars maior.
[14] Cf. Pomp. 261.1-264.15, with Serv. 440.19-441.15 and 441.21-27—i.e., all of Servius's discussion except 441.16-21, which had already contributed to Pompeius's preliminary remarks; see n. 12 above.
[15] Disagreement: compare Pomp. 262.26-33 and 263.5-9 vs. Serv. 441.4-10; for other examples of Pompeius's independence, see pp. 150ff. below. Garbling: compare Pomp. 261.21-26 and Serv. 440.27-29; similar instances occur, e.g., at Pomp. 101.27ff. (cf. Serv. 421.16ff., Explan. 520.27ff., with Keil's apparatus on p. 102), 105.19-29 (cf. Explan. 521.21ff., with Don. 604.5-6H.), 231.9f. (cf. Serv. 437.14f.), 286.7ff. (cf. Serv. 445.8-10, with p. 157 below).
[16] Cf. Serv. 439.22f. The notion does not appear in Donatus.
having read the lesson in Servius and is in effect citing his source.[17] But Pompeius is far from consistent in this. Discussing communes praepositiones Pompeius concludes his series of examples for in with the remark iam de aliis [sc. exemplis ] saepius dixit (275.28f.); the subject of dixit here cannot be Donatus but must be Pompeius's source.[18] A bit earlier, however, in his comments on the prepositions, Pompeius includes the cross-reference sicut . . . diximus (275.6). As in the passage on the participle, Pompeius here refers back to the discussion of a topic he has nowhere treated before; like haec quae dixi (256.12), the clause sicut . . . diximus must have been lifted from his source. In the space of less than a page, then, Pompeius wavers between nonsensically reproducing his source and consciously referring to it as a separate entity. The example is not unique.
Elsewhere, to conclude his explanation of why the nominative is regarded as a casus even though cadit cannot accurately be said of a noun in the nominative, Pompeius draws an analogy with the positive degree of comparison, so regarded even though the positivus gradus does not make comparisons. He introduces the analogy by saying, habet hoc etiam exemplum de gradibus (182.15f.). Once again, the subject of the verb (here, habet ) must be his source; the clause functions as an acknowledgment of a debt, like et hoc traditum est (127.1). But when he offered the same analogy a bit earlier, he said, diximus etiam talem rem de gradu positivo (171.1ff.)—another cross-reference with no antecedent, which must have been taken over from his version of Servius. The clause, like haec quae dixi (256.9) and sicut . . . diximus (275.6), is only one more example of a habit first discerned in Pompeius long ago. The most notorious instance is found where Pompeius says, sed diximaus in illa priore parte artis, id est in superioribus (208.11f.), a reference to a comment on the Ars minor that of course does not occur earlier in Pompeius's text: Servius had already made the cross-reference (cf. 436.7, qua ratione fiant, diximus superius ) to a passage in his commentary on the Ars minor (cf. 410.32ff.).[19]
[17] Cf. also Pomp. 243.23, legimus in principio, referring to material provided at Pomp. 149.19ff. that remedies an omission for which Donatus is criticized (Pompeius cannot therefore refer to what was read in Donatus); Pomp. 274.4f., nam legimus praepositionem adverbio non iungi, referring to the lesson presented at Pomp. 255.6ff.
[18] Cf. Serv. 443.9f.: "in" autem et "sub" qua ratione servantur in superiore arte tractatum est.
[19] See Keil, GL 5.90; Jeep, Zur Geschichte der Lehre 44; Schindel, Figurenlehren 21; Holtz, Donat 237 n. 45. For such confusions, see also Pomp. 135.36, et iam saepius hoc tractavimus, with Serv. 416.19ff.; Pomp. 227.4, diximus etiam in principio, with Serv. 413.35-38. A similar borrowing may explain the inconsequence of Pomp. 199.10f., dixi hoc saepius: multi dicunt, utrum "lac" dicamus an "lact" (contrast Pomp. 165.15); cf. also the appendix to Part II no. 125.
At times, then, Pompeius seems to remember that he is drawing on the commentary open before him, referring to its doctrine impersonally (traditum est ) or to its author in the third person singular (dixit, habet ). At other times, perhaps more frequently, that awareness seems completely submerged—he simply borrows his source's references, apt or not. The vagueness makes itself felt in another, more unsettling form: Pompeius's inconsistent discrimination between Donatus and Servius, the text on which he is supposed to be commenting and the commentary he is using as his source. In this respect, his use of dixit and habet is a disturbing sign. Although one might naturally expect that the subject of those verbs is Donatus, whose text he is ostensibly reviewing, sometimes such statements can only refer to Servius, and much more often the subject remains ambiguous.[20]
Pompeius is capable of drawing the distinction. When he says, for example, Donatus ait, "quinque sunt adverbia, quae non debemus iungere nisi positivo tantum, 'tam' 'magis' 'maxime' 'minus' et 'minime.'" . . . et reddita est ratio non a Donato, sed ab aliis, quare non iunguntur ista adverbia comparativo et superlativo, sed tantum positivo (156.1-8), the former reference must look back to the text of Donatus,[21] and the latter statement—despite the generalizing ab aliis —is clearly Pompeius's way of referring to Servius.[22] But Pompeius attaches little significance to the distinction, or at least he is concerned to maintain it only flickeringly. At one point Pompeius assures his reader, hoc quod dicit tenendum nobis fideliter: omnis pars orationis, cum desierit esse quod est, adverbium est (250.36f.). Although it becomes plain farther on in the paragraph that Pompeius is in general dealing with a Donatan doctrine (cf. 643.4-8H.), the specific lesson introduced by hoc quod dicit corresponds to nothing in Donatus; it is the formulation of Servius.[23] Yet at the end of the same paragraph Pompeius reports, "sed plane," ait, "in his rebus aliqua discernimus accentu, sensu aliqua" (251.33-34), referring to Donatus's horum quaedam accentu discernimus, quaedam sensu (643.7-8H.). In this instance we can follow the shift that occurs in the space of less than a page from dicit to ait, from Servius to Donatus.
Whether Pompeius himself was aware of the shift is much more difficult to determine; the distinction is effaced often enough to indicate he was not. For example, when introducing his discussion of adverbs ending in -e and
[20] Cf. Keil, GL 5.91f.
[21] Don. 618.14-15H., of which Pompeius's text is an accurate paraphrase; see below at n. 26.
[22] So Serv. 431.15ff., giving the explanation reproduced by Pompeius, beginning ea scilicet ratione, quoniam. . . .
[23] Cf. Serv. 439.22f., and above at n. 16.
et ait sic, "omnia adverbia 'e' terminata producuntur, omnia penitus . . . exceptis tribus regulis" (244.21-26). The statement after ait sic corresponds in substance to Donatus: adverbia quae in "e" exeunt produci debent praeter illa quae aut . . . aut . . . aut . . . (640.12-14H.). But in form it much more closely resembles—and must surely refer directly to—the formulation in Servius, omnia adverbia "e" terminata in positivo semper producuntur . . . exceptis tribus regulis eorum adverbiorum quae aut . . . vel . . . vel . . . (438.22ff.). This example in effect shows Pompeius commenting on the commentary, and the examples could easily be multiplied.[24]
Such confusions may tell us something not only about Pompeius's work habits but about his resources as well. Even the most careless of men would not blend Ars and source commentary so frequently if he were constantly reminded of the distinction as he turned from the text of Donatus spread open before him to his copy of Servius. But the confusion would be readily explained if Pompeius did not have separate copies of the two works. One is tempted to suggest, therefore, that Pompeius was not reading Donatus independently but was working directly from a version of Servius that like Cledonius's commentary had lemmata from Donatus's text.
The instances where Pompeius's text coincides with Donatus against Servius seem to guarantee that he had at least lemmata before him.[25] But there is much evidence that Pompeius was not following Donatus line by line, hanging on every word. He can, for example, be hair-raisingly inexact, even when he clearly has Donatus in mind, especially in his tendency to paraphrase instead of quoting.[26] This habit is harmless when the paraphrase is tolerably accurate. Less innocuous, however, and
[24] For clear instances of this sort of confusion, see Pomp. 103.22-24, with Serv. 421.26-28 vs. Don. 604.1-2H.; Pomp. 135.8ff., with Serv. 436.25f. vs. Don. 631.12-632.1H.; Pomp. 219.10f., with Serv. 412.29ff. and Explan. 505.15ff. vs. Don. 633.6-7H.; Pomp. 232.16-17, with Serv. 437.23f. vs. Don. 636.8-9H. (remarked by Holtz, Donat 237 n. 43); Pomp. 241.11-12, with Serv. 415.7-8 and 438.7 vs. Don. 640.2-3H.; Pomp. 274.17-19, with Serv. 442.23-25. Probable or possible instances also occur at Pomp. 98.21, with Explan. 519.11f. vs. Don. 605.5-6H.; Pomp. 189.35-37 (contrast Don. 626.19-627.6H.); Pomp. 225.16f., dicit, correcting Donatus; Pomp. 278.24ff. (contrast Don. 651.9-10H.); Pomp. 298.10f. (see Schindel, Figurenlehren 25 n. 42).
[25] E.g., Pomp. 281.9f., on the definition of the interjection, with Don. 602.2H. and 652.5-6H. vs. Serv. 420.19f. and 443.19f.; Pomp. 269.22ff., on the irregular use of conjunctions, with Don. 648.1-2H. vs. Serv. 441.30.
[26] Cf. above at n. 21; and for this feature of Pompeius's text in general, see Keil, GL 5.91 and, e.g., Pomp. 164.13ff. vs. Don. 621.7-9H.; Pomp. 170.2ff. vs. Don. 624.5 and 10-11H.; Pomp. 188.28ff. vs. Don. 626.5-7H.; Pomp. 177.20f. vs. Don. 623.6H.; Pomp. 186.34ff. vs. Don. 625.10H.; Pomp. 240.3-5 vs. Don. 639.8-10H.; Pomp. 279.14ff. vs. Don. 651.11-12H.; Pomp. 288.6-8 vs. Don. 655.1-2H.; Pomp. 292.8-11 vs. Don. 658.1-2H.; Pomp. 302.3-4 vs. Don. 664.9-10H. (but cf. also Schindel, Figurenlehren 32 n. 75).
perhaps more revealing, are the places where Pompeius offers an inaccurate, interpretive version of Donatus's words and then criticizes Donatus on the basis of the inaccurate interpretation. Thus in his chapter on the pronoun Donatus observed, sunt alia demonstrativa, quae rem praesentem notant, ut "hic" "haec" "hoc" (629.12-13H.), and went on to add, sunt alia magis demonstrativa, ut "eccum" "ellum" "ellam" (630.1-2H.). The corresponding passage in Pompeius reads, sunt aliqua pronomina quae rem praesentem significant, ut diximus [= 203.10ff.], "hic" "haec" "hoc." sunt aliqua quae magis significant (205.25-26). Pompeius then continues, hoc quid sit nescio. omnis res aut praesens est aut non est praesens: "magis praesens" quid sit nescio (205.26-28). The absurdity of magis praesens that troubled Pompeius does not of course appear in Donatus's text; it is a careless combination—based, moreover, not on Donatus's ipsissima verba but on the version of Donatus that Pompeius transmits: rem praesentem significant blended with magis significant, so that the latter is taken to mean rem magis praesentem significant.[27]
Whether Pompeius would have stumbled here if he had been reading the text of Donatus is difficult to say. But the error is indistinguishable from the confusions and imprecisions in other passages where Pompeius was obviously commenting on Donatus only through Servius. For example, semper Donatus "clam" conputat inter ablativas praepositiones: et in alia parte artis [= Ars min. 601.1, 3H.] hoc fecit, et hic [= Ars mai. 649.17, 19H.] fecit hoc. . . . falsum est, sed est utriusque casus (274.33ff.). The criticism has been taken over directly from Servius (cf. 419.25-27), as has a cross-reference farther on in the discussion that cannot be Pompeius's.[28] Pompeius has not noticed that Servius missed a statement by Donatus, "clam" praepositio casibus seroit ambobus (650.2-3H.), which undercuts the criticism (contrast Pompeius's semper Donatus, evidently a case of secondhand confidence). Or, omne verbum aut agere aliquid aut pati significat (213.21). The statement corresponds to the second half of Donatus's definition of the verb, aut agere aliquid aut pati aut neutrum significans (632.5-6H.), except that it omits aut neutrum —no doubt because Servius had already rejected that part of Donatus's definition.[29] But Pompeius betrays no knowledge that he is departing from Donatus and commenting on an improved version. In such places (and again the examples could be multiplied) it is
[27] For another criticism based on an inaccurate paraphrase, see Pomp. 117.29-118.25, with reference to Don. 606.11-12H., and cf. Serv. 4114.21-28.
[28] Pomp. 275.6f.: sicut in illis diximus. See p. 144 above.
[29] Cf. Explan. 503.6ff., with Serv. 413.35ff., Explan. 507.3ff., Pomp. 227.3ff.
difficult to believe Pompeius was consulting the full text of Donatus directly, independent of his source.[30]
There is little question, then, that Pompeius was hugely indebted to Servius for much of the substance of his commentary; and the preceding paragraphs argue that Pompeius more than occasionally misunderstood or poorly presented or ill digested that substance.[31] It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that Pompeius was merely reproducing Servius, that he did not use other sources, or that he brought nothing of his own to the work. Eclecticism is characteristic of the late-antique grammarians: heirs to a long tradition, they could draw on large resources, adapting to their own purposes the variations they found in one branch of the tradition or another. For the individual grammarian, the question was not whether he would help himself to this varied heritage, but how much, and how; depending largely on circumstances and inclinations, the answer could differ considerably from one man to the next.
For example, we have noted that Donatus drew on a fairly small number of sources for his Ars and attempted to weave them seamlessly together. Diomedes, in contrast, had very different intentions and methods: expansive where Donatus is terse, Diomedes wished to produce a wide-ranging collection of excerpts from earlier works in order to display to its best advantage the tradition that (he said) "the brilliance of human talent has brought to a state of high polish" (GL 1.299.3). Where Donatus had tried to achieve a tight weave, Diomedes created from his excerpts a mosaic, in which the junctures between the individual pieces remain visible while the pieces combine to form a coherent pattern. lie plainly exerted himself in hunting out the byways of the tradition, so that, for example, his long treatment of verbal coniugatio (1.346.30-388.9) can be seen to derive from at least five different major sources and an indeterminate number of lesser works. Whether because of his own inertia or (at least equally possible) because of limited resources,
[30] Compare esp. Pomp. 217.28-219.4, a vindication of the gerundi modus, after Servius (cf. Serv. 412.18-26 and Explan. 504.30-505.2; Donatus ignored this modus ); Pomp. 293.14ff., on three kinds of cacenphata (cf. Serv. 447.16f.; Donatus had recognized only two, 658.11-12H.); Pomp. 298.32ff., a double departure from Donatus's comments on antithesis (663.1H.; Pompeius gives no hint that he is aware of any such departure). See. also Pomp. 100.5f., with Explan. 519.29f.; Pomp. 200.5-7, with Keil, GL 5.91 and his app. crit. on p. 200; Pomp. 164.28-165.18, where Pompeius cannot be following the order or substance of Donatus's text.
[31] Note that Pompeius sometimes ignores in his own usage the regulae he transmits: e.g., contrast 157.20ff., Pompeius's strictures on the proper use of cases with the comparative degree (after Servius: cf. Serv. 407.28f.; Explan. 492.11ff.), with his phrasing at 110.18 [regula ] melior ab antiqua (similarly Pomp. 127.6, 10; 148.2, 5; 151.28; 155.5f.; 280.15f.).
Pompeius does not show anything like the eclecticism of a Diomedes.[32] But that characteristic is nonetheless discernible in his work.
So, for example, Ulrich Schindel has demonstrated that Pompeius exploited Donatus's commentaries on Vergil and Terence in order to supplement the literary examples with which he corroborated various lessons.[33] He used still other sources to expand or refine the lessons, most obviously in the case of Astyagius.[34] Pompeius cites this otherwise unknown authority twice. On the first occasion, he provides an expanded argument to demonstrate that the first-person-singular pronoun does not possess a vocative.[35] The second citation shows that Astyagius like Pompeius must have been active after Servius and must have been influenced by him.[36]
More tentatively, we can point to a deficiency of Servius that Pompeius criticized and remedied in a matter of prosody: et nusquam voluerunt hoc dicere isti qui instituerunt artem, quare quattuor breves pro duabus longis ponantur. legimus tamen in antiquis, quae sit ratio (119.32ff.). Pompeius does not make plain just what distinction he has in mind in the antithesis isti qui instituerunt artem versus in antiquis.[37] But with the former phrase, "those who have drawn up the ars," he appears to be referring to his source commentary: for when he goes on to unveil the ratio he has found, Pompeius applies that explanation to the same examples (except one) that had already been noted, without explanation, by Servius (425.17-19). A similar supplement seems to occur, with less fanfare, at 197.24ff.: here Pompeius announces eight modi of analogy and proceeds to review them as they occur in Servius (cf. 435.16ff.); but Pompeius ultimately includes a ninth modus (cf. 197.28-29, 198.14-15), not found in Servius and presumably imported from another source.[38]
[32] For Pompeius's dependence on Servius for his knowledge of much of the pre-Donatan scholarship, see above at n. 9. For Diomedes, see Part II no. 47. For brief accounts of his method, see Jeep, Zur Geschichte der Lehre 59f., and "Jetzige Gestalt" 408f.; Barwick, Remmius 11f.
[33] Schindel, Figurenlehren 29ff., 101ff., esp. 113f.
[34] See Part II no. 189.
[35] Pomp. 209.3ff. The vocative was already denied to ego by Servius (cf. 436.7), whom Astyagius here supplements.
[36] Pomp. 211.5ff. Pompeius quotes Astyagius's definition of the pronoun—precisely the same definition, illustrated by the same example, that Pompeius himself elsewhere reproduces from Servius: cf. Pomp. 96.32f. and 199.26, with Serv. 409.35f., Explan. 488.18f. and 499.12.
[37] With the latter phrase, cf. Pomp. 141.12, habes in antiquis artibus ; Pomp. 150.34, ita definierunt antiqui ; Pomp. 151.14, habes hoc in antiquo tractatu.
[38] Note also Pomp. 284.30-285.9, Pompeius's comments on the form of barbarism that occurs pronuntiatu, which differ both from the meaning of Don. 653.5-7H. and from the doctrine of Serv. 444.13-14.
At other times Pompeius seems to furnish differences in judgment or extensions of a lesson that may be all his own. Some of these are little more than departures in minor details.[39] In other places, however, more substantive issues are involved. At 214.33ff. Pompeius comes to accept the promissivus modus as an authentic part of the verbal system, although Donatus had rejected it out of hand (632.10H.) and Servius had apparently left the question open, merely noting the arguments on both sides.[40] Pompeius similarly stakes out a position independent of Servius at 273.25ff., when he confronts the problem of usque in the Vergilian phrase ad usque columnas (Aen. 11.262). Pompeius first applies the rule (273.25) that a preposition cannot be joined with a preposition, in order to show that usque here cannot be a preposition. Then, recalling the principle that if any part of speech "ceases to be what it is," it becomes an adverb,[41] he shows that this in turn is in conflict with the rule (274.4-5; cf. 255.6ff.) that a preposition (here, ad ) cannot be joined with an adverb. He therefore concludes that since the rules are in conflict, usque can be regarded as either an adverb or a preposition:
ob hanc causam, quoniam nec illud nec illud verum est, utrumque accipitur. habemus enim hoc in iure: in plerisque regulis, ubi neque illa firmissima est neque illa firmissima est, utrique consentimus. quoniam nec illud firmissimum est nec illud firmissimum est, ita fit ut defendatur utraque pars. (274.9-14)
Although Pompeius knew Servius's discussion of this problem,[42] the last rule of thumb has no counterpart here or elsewhere in Servius, who takes a different position on the matter.[43] Moreover, Pompeius applies that same rule of thumb at one other point in the commentary, where again he appears to be independent of Servius.[44]
[39] E.g., Pomp. 288.28-35 vs. Serv. 445.36-446.2 (with Schindel, Figurenlehren 22), on the origins of the term soloecismus ; Pomp. 269.22ff. vs. Serv. 441.30f., a license granted by Servius but emphatically denied by Pompeius.
[40] Cf. Serv. 412.6-12; Explan. 503.30-504.3. Note that one of Pompeius's arguments (215.10-17) shows no trace in the surviving versions of Servius's commentary and may be Pompeius's invention.
[41] Pomp. 273.34f., legimus enim talem regulam, referring to Pomp. 250.36ff. Cf. pp. 143ff. above.
[42] Cf. Pomp. 274.17-19, with Serv. 442.23-25.
[43] See Serv. 419.16-21 and 442.15-25, denying that usque can be an adverb and identifying it as a praepositio novo modo sibi aliam [coniungens ] praepositionem.
[44] See Pomp. 166.6ff., on the accusative forms duolduos, ambolambos. Neither the extant version of Servius nor Explan. contributes anything on this point, and Servius is silent on the morphology of duo (s ) and ambo (s ) in his commentary on Vergil; contrast DServ. at Ecl. 5.68 and 6.18, and at Aen. 12.342 (on this form of the Servian commentary, see Chap. 5, n. 2). Cf. also below at n. 66: Pomp. 136.18ff. vs. Serv. 428.26-31.
Pompeius's independent forays are not all equally successful. When discussing how the doubling of medial consonantal -i - can lengthen the preceding syllable in a word such as Troi (i )a ,[45] Pompeius cites arma virum tabulasque et Troia gaza per undas (Aen . 1.119). He appears to have chosen the example himself; he also appears to be unaware that Troia in that verse cannot possibly be scanned to support his point.[46] Pompeius stumbles similarly elsewhere.[47] And in at least one place, we can watch as Pompeius's self-sufficiency rebounds to leave him noticeably discomfited.
When taking up the topic of barbarism (283.37ff.), Pompeius draws a traditional distinction, noting that what would be a barbarism in prose is regarded as a metaplasm in poetry.[48] But Pompeius goes on to add, sed plerumque contingit ut etiam in versibus deprehendamus barbarismos (283.37f.), explaining that if a barbarism in verse is not justified by the demands of meter, it is a barbarism no less than in prose and cannot be passed off as a metaplasm (284.3ff.).[49] Pompeius here is extending the doctrine of barbarism in the direction of greater strictness; he goes on to make the analogous claim when he comes to the section on solecism (289.2-6), insisting that a solecism remains such in verse and cannot be excused as a figura if it is not justified metri necessitate . The unusual stringency of Pompeius's teaching in both places is owed to no one else—certainly not to Servius[50] —and it causes Pompeius difficulty when he encounters the different doctrine of solecism that Servius transmitted from the elder Pliny:
Plinius sic dicit, "quando sit soloecismus, quando sit schema [= figura , "figure"], sola intellegentia discernit." noli te referre ad illud, quod
[45] Pomp. 105.37-106.3. Pompeius, like Servius (cf. 422.6, 423.28ff.), believed that the -o - was short by nature.
[46] The example does not occur in the corresponding passages of Servius and Explan. ; Servius gives a different, if equally false, explanation of the scansion of Aen . 1.119 in his commentary ad loc .
[47] E.g., Pomp. 158.16, an inept and apparently independent citation of Aen . 1.343: cf. Serv. 407.32, 431.25; Explan . 492.2f. Or Pomp. 210.16ff., where Pompeius adduces Ecl . 3.1, dic mihi, Damoeta, cuium pecus , to illustrate the supposed genitive forms cuia and cuium ; the example does not appear in Serv. or Explan ., and Servius's Vergilian commentary ad loc . gives the correct explanation.
[48] Cf. Don. 653.2-3H., Serv. 444.8-11.
[49] Cf. Pomp. 284.13ff., the examples Catilinna vs. Catilina .
[50] The statement concerning barbarism might be thought a case of Pompeius's making explicit what was implied by Servius; see Serv. 444.8-11, with 447.22f. = Pomp. 296.4f. But the extension to solecism, which corresponds to nothing in Servius and is inconsistent with, e.g., Serv. 447.22f., is certainly Pompeius's.
diximus de metaplasmis. ham [et][51] in soloecismo hoc quaeritur, utrum sciens hoc fecerit an nesciens: si sciens fecerit, erit schema; si nesciens fecerit, erit soloecismus. (292.13-17 = Serv. 447.5-10 = Plin. frg. 125 della Casa)
Confronted with Pliny's claim, Pompeius begins to thrash about, adverting to his doctrine de metaplasmis but insisting it does not apply in soloecismo —seeming to ignore the fact that he had himself extended the same doctrine to solecisms a few pages earlier. The reason for Pompeius's uneasiness is clear. In order to extend that doctrine to solecism, Pompeius now realizes, he must be prepared—as he is not—explicitly to convict Vergil of solecism:
in hoc loco quid dicimus? "pars in frusta secant"[52] et "pars in frusta secat": et ita et ita stat versus, unde apparet quoniam adfectavit novitatem.[53] nefas est autem de isto tanto viro credere per inperitiam hoc fecisse, non per scientiam adfectasse novitatem. (292.20-23)
According to Pompeius's earlier lesson, Vergil's coupling of a singular subject with a plural verb should be judged a solecism in this line, since it plainly cannot be justified metri necessitate: et ita et ita stat versus . But Pompeius recoils—nefas est —and in excusing Vergil must swallow his own inconsistency. The disgruntled note on which he ends the discussion shows that he is conscious of doing so, and not entirely pleased:
hoc [= the restatement of Pliny's formulation, 292.23-27] quidem dixit [sc. Plinius]. tamen quivis potest facere soloecismum et dicere "figuram feci," si noluerit rationem reddere. nihil est hoc, licentia est prava. (292.27-29)
Pompeius's piety before Vergil may overcome the logic of his rule, but he is not willing to Met go of the rule gracefully.
These displays of independence, if they do not uniformly increase our regard for Pompeius as a scholar, should nonetheless soften the impression that he was a simple plagiarist. They scarcely touch at all, however, on what is distinctly Pompeius, the tone and style of the text. More than any other Latin grammatical work, the commentary allows us to hear a
[51] Although printed by Keil, et here cannot be correct.
[52] Aen . 1.212, from Servius; cf. Serv. 447.11, with 446.37f. = Pomp. 291.20; and Serv. 448.2f. On this stock example, see also Chap. 5 n. 77.
[53] Cf. Serv. 447.8: novitatis cupidi .
living, idiosyncratic voice.[54] To that voice and its nuances we can now turn our attention.
The most conspicuous characteristic, perhaps already revealed in some of the excerpts above, is Pompeius's prolixity. Pompeius evidently believed that he had not made his point unless he had made it at least twice. He repeats himself launching a piece of instruction; he repeats himself referring to scholars; he repeats himself registering approval. So in his pleasure that the pronoun stands second in the order of the parts of speech—et hoc bene secundum est. bene secunda est ista particula (97.3-4)—he sounds uncannily like a distant ancestor of Polonius: "That's good. 'Mobbled queen' is good."[55] Above all, he repeats himself to make certain the abstract principle he is stating does not merely receive the necessary stress but is given specific application through an example: a typical passage will find him first stating the rule twice, once with direct reference to his audience and himself (tu hoc scire debes; conputamus ) and again with reference to the world at large (quisquis vult ), then repeating the rule twice more with a specific example, as he responds to an imagined request from his audience (quando dicis mihi . . .).[56]
Often the examples are vivid and seem to bubble up spontaneously, to reveal now a taste for the amenities (bene olebant in hospitio meo rosae ),[57] now a touch of the macabre: when he wants to clarify the meaning of totus , he says, "What's this that I've said? Pay attention. Take, for example, 'The whole man was eaten up by a bear': look now, what does it mean? The whole man all at once, so that nothing was left. 'The whole man was eaten up,' that is, his hands, feet, back, everything" (204.11-14). In like fashion Pompeius tosses off allusions to simple features of contemporary life as he flows along. He expects his audience to regard "Gaudentius" as a typical slave name or to recognize that birrus was a corrupt noun in the communis sermo .[58] When he comes to the treatment of proper names in the Ars , he passes along the traditional distinction between nomen and cognomen —then in the same breath acknowledges
[54] Cf. Holtz, "Tradition" 50, Donat 236f.
[55] Cf., e.g., Pomp. 182.30-32, 184.12-15, 227.23-25, 249.13-19; examples could be gathered from any page.
[56] See, e.g., Pomp. 112.6-15, his instructions for distinguishing the length of syllables; and contrast the parallel passage at Serv. 423.14-15.
[57] Pomp. 102.8, prompted by the single word rosa , which appears to have stood as the example in Servius: cf. Serv. 428.18f.; Explan . 520.30f.
that the old system of nomenclature has passed out of use: "We can't nowadays say, 'What is your cognomen?' We'd get laughed at if we did" (140.35-141.3). Similarly, he breaks off a discussion of nouns that occur only in the plural to pursue a tangent—a quaestio concerning the morphology of Pascha —in a way that suggests the matter was of some personal interest:
idcirco etiam debemus hoc animadvertere, quod aliquis obiecit. quaerebatur "Pascha" cuius est numeri. dies festus est: omnia nomina dierum festorum numeri sunt tantum pluralis, "Vulcanalia," "Compitalia." dicebat ille qui obiciebat etiam hoc numeri esse tantum pluralis. sed sunt causae quae repugnant: primo, quod. . . . deinde. . . . unde constat non esse numeri pluralis. (177.3ff.)
This is the only indication in the work that Pompeius was a Christian (as we should anyway expect), and it is probably fair to infer that he himself had been nettled by ille qui obiciebat . The passage suggests a vignette from the life of Pompeius's African town, a group of local learned men in conversation, perhaps, falling into debate over a matter of grammatical detail: quaerebatur . . . A reminder of the time that Gellius and his mentors spent pondering the sense of nani in the vestibule of the imperial palace or that Libanius and his friend Eudaemon of Pelusium spent discussing the vocative of "Heracles" while awaiting the arrival of the governor at Antioch, the passage is also a token of the continuity that can be traced through changes of place and time.[59]
To match emphatic repetitions and vivid examples, there are turns of phrase to rivet his audience. Most common is Pompeius's beloved ecce , his constant gesture of satisfaction, whether in producing an illustration, launching into an explanation he likes, or rounding off a lesson.[60] Only slightly less constant, and equally flexible, is Pompeius's vide , now warning, now peremptory, now patently excited.[61] He conveys a similar excitement in the clipped quare . . . ? quare? quoniam . . .,[62] or in the questions (or statements, or commands) cast in the form numquid [or non , or ne ] . . . ? non. sed [or nam , or autem ] . . . —a question, when Pompeius is
[60] E.g., Pomp. 103.14, 123.20f., 128.37, 129.12f., 134.23f., 194.36f., and passim .
[61] E.g., Pomp. 104.16f.: quando "u" nihil est? tunc "u" nihil est—vide qua subtilitate nihil est!—si dicas "quoniam." Cf. Pomp. 127.25ff., 139.26f., 144.16f., 163.7, 184.17, 224.36, 227.23, and passim .
[62] E.g., Pomp. 116.33f.; cf. Pomp. 149.37ff.
trying to make plain the sound of vocalic u;[63] a flat statement, when he is treating the quality of the letter a;[64] or an abrupt command, when he is discussing the prosody of cano in the first line of the Aeneid .[65] These and other features of Pompeius's language can best be savored in a characteristic passage such as the following, in which Pompeius discusses the questions that arise when a nomen (i.e., an adjective) is used as an adverb, or an adverb is used as a nomen (i.e., a noun);[66]
Don't let anyone tell you, "If we sometimes use an adverb as a noun, we are also obliged to decline the adverb itself." Impossible. For when a nomen is put in place of an adverb, it maintains its cases; but when an adverb passes into the place of a nomen , there's no way it can take on a case. Don't say to me, "hoc mane :[67] now, if hoc mane is a noun, you ought to decline huius manis, huic mani. " We don't find that sort of explanation [ratio ista ]; it can't follow that it's declined. "Nonetheless, we read that very declension, a primo mani , in Plautus.[68] Where did a mani come from, if there isn't the declension mane, manis, mani?" mane , from which a primo mani came, produced the declension. But we still shouldn't decline it. Why? You want to know why? Because an adverb absolutely cannot be declined. . . . When we say toroum clamat ,[69]toroum is now an adverb, and toroum stands for torve . I'm not allowed, am I, to say, for example, torvi clamat, torvo clamat, a torvo clamat ? I'm not, but I pick up that one case for the special use [ad usurpationem ]. If, therefore, I pick up that one case when I produce the adverb, and I can't pick up the other cases, so too when I use an adverb in place of a noun, I'm not allowed to decline it, but have to put the adverb itself in place of the noun. (136.18-35)
Logic is not the argument's strong point: "But we still shouldn't decline it. Why? You want to know why? Because an adverb absolutely cannot be declined." The passage does have a brute movement about it, though,
[63] E.g., Pomp. 103.34ff.; cf. Pomp. 143.22f., 230.1-3.
[64] E.g., Pomp. 106.16f.; cf. Pomp. 138.36ff., 139.16f.
[65] E.g., Pomp. 118.7f.; cf. Pomp. 138.2f., 191.31ff., 240.10ff., 252.30f.
[66] The discussion is directed implicitly against Servius's position; cf. Serv. 428.26-31. Pompeius probably has Servius in mind when he begins, nequi tibi dicat, "si aliquotiens fungimur adverbio pro nomine, debemus etiam declinare hoc ipsum adverbium" (Pomp. 136.18-20): cf. Serv. 428.26f., item adverbium si transeat in significationem nominis, non nunquam declinatur ; and cf. n. 68 below.
[67] Alluding to Georg . 3.325, dum mane novum , cited earlier at Pomp. 136.3f.
[68] Most. 767, usque a mani ad vesperum , the example on which Servius based his case; see Serv. 428.28-30.
[69] Aen . 7.399, cited earlier at Pomp. 135.38.
as the repetitions, warnings, and emphatic questions hammer the point home.
In this passage, as in any number of others, it is also notable that Pompeius speaks as though to one other person, the second person singular, tu .[70] Here he imagines the reader offering an objection or counterexample—ne dicas mihi, "hoc mane "—or exposed to some third-party influence: nequi tibi dicat, 'si aliquotiens. . . ." Similar turns of thought appear frequently in the small dialogues with which Pompeius spices the commentary. Compare, for instance, Pompeius's ruminations on the letter u ,
puta si dicas mihi, "'unus,' 'u' qualis est?" dico tibi, "nescio utrum brevis sit an producta, nisi . . ." (106.31ff.),
or on barbarisms,
et dico tibi, "in versu barbarismus est." tu dicis mihi, "quo modo mihi dixisti . . .? quo modo?" (284.38ff.).
Such dialogues, to which we shall return below, reinforce the impression Pompeius's discourse creates with its freely flowing repetitions, its spontaneous tangents, or its abrupt questions and commands. Pompeius is a man talking, not writing, and talking with his audience either face-to-face or vividly fixed in his imagination. The impression has been noted before,[71] although doubtless these features of Pompeius's style could equally occur in a work composed at the writing desk. It is, however, possible to go beyond the mere impression that Pompeius was speaking, with his words taken down by a notary; for Pompeius has left unequivocal indications that that is just what he was doing.
The best evidence occurs where Pompeius takes up the notion of vox and the distinction between vox articulata and vox confusa :
vox dicitur quicquid sonuerit, sive strepitus sit ruinae sive fluvii currentis, sive vox nostra, sive mugitus boum: omnis sonus vox dicitur.
[70] Against the several hundred times that the second person singular occurs, the second person plural is found in just over two dozen places, mostly in references either to auctores (e.g., Pomp. 167.10, legite in Petronio et invenietis , a citation certainly taken over from Servius [cf. Serv. 432.24f.]; Pomp. 186.2, habetis in ipso Cicerone ; sim. Pomp. 153.12, 242.5, 293.27f., 305.7f., 306.17ff.) or to the technical literature (e.g., Pomp. 114.1, habetis hanc rationem in Iuba ; Pomp. 138.20, legite artem Probi et invenietis ; sim. Pomp. 109.34, 137.33, 139.34f., 246.34f., 269.10, 280.12f., 295.34ff., 297.34f.), only once in one of Pompeius's warnings to the reader (253.23f.), never in one of the characteristic dialogues.
[71] Cf. Holtz, "Tradition" 50, Donat 236f.
verum hae duae sunt partes, articulata et confusa. articulata est vox quae potest scribi: ut ecce hoc ipsum quod dixi potest scribi. (99.9-12)
As the characteristically extended list of examples shows, Pompeius is thinking of vox as real sound, the physical phenomenon; and when he exemplifies vox articulata by saying, ut ecce hoc ipsum quod dixi , he must be referring self-consciously to his own speech, the sonus he is making—which, as he is also aware, is being written down as he speaks: potest scribi .[72] The statement scarcely makes sense otherwise, and some other passages are most naturally interpreted in the same way.
Listen, for example, to the following, where Pompeius expands on Donatus's mention (612.7-8H.) of the periodos :
et non dixit quem ad modum fiant, aut quare quaerantur periodi, aut qui sint periodi—vel quae periodi (nam feminino genere dicimus hoc nomen). (281.22-24)
Here Pompeius realizes he has made a slip in the gender of periodos , and we can suppose it was more likely a lapsus linguae than a lapsus still : although the error obviously occurred to him immediately, he did not simply remove it with a stroke, but flowed right along, adding the correct phrase in midstream.[73] Another, perhaps still better sign of oral composition comes in Pompeius`s treatment of iotacism:[74]
iotacismi sunt qui fiunt per "i" litteram, siqui ita dicat "Titius" pro eo quod est "Titius" [i.e., "Titsius"], "Aventius" pro eo quod est "Aventius" [i.e., "Aventsius"], "Amantius" pro eo quod est "Amantius" [i.e., "Amantsius"]. . . . non debemus dicere ita, quem ad modum scribitur "Titius," sed "Titius" [i.e., "Titsius"]: media illa syllaba mutatur in sibilum. ergo si volueris dicere "ti" vel "di," noli, quem ad modum scribitur, sic proferre, sed sibilo profer. (286.7-9, 14-16)[75]
[72] With ut ecce hoc ipsum quod dixi potest scribi contrast the parallel passage at Explan . 519.15-18: articulata est quae scribi potest, quae subest articulis [= Pomp. 99.12ff.], id est digitis, qui scribunt, vel quod artem habeat aut exprimat. . . . ergo si dicas "orator," articulata vox est.
[73] Compare Pomp. 252.14-18, 297.19-27: in both places Pompeius begins to illustrate a lesson with an example, then realizes that the example was not well chosen and abruptly shifts to another, leaving the inept example in his wake. Cf. also the shift from quo vadis? to quo festinas? in the example used at Pomp. 235.16ff., quoted at p. 158 below.
[74] Pompeius here reverses the correct doctrine concerning iotacism (contrast Serv. 445.8-10), but the confusion does not affect the point under discussion.
[75] See also Pomp. 286.20-24, on dies vs. meridies ; Pomp. 286.24-28, on castius . For Titius , see also Pomp. 104.6f.
The passage makes sense only if Pompeius distinguished the forms as he spoke: evidently Pompeius did say "Titsius," but his amanuensis simply rendered the word in its usual written form, quem ad modum scribitur .[76] It is appropriate, therefore, to note that elsewhere one of Pompeius's illustrations for the nomen proprium presumes he would as a matter of course have had a notary.[77]
We can pause here to piece together the picture of Pompeius that has emerged so far. We should first of all imagine Pompeius sitting with his version of Servius open before him, a version probably supplied with lemmata from Donatus's text. He sometimes reads directly from his Servius, but more commonly he paraphrases or elaborates upon it; at times he ignores the distinction between what his source has said and what he is saying himself, and at times he confuses Donatus with Servius. As he goes along, he might supplement or alter the commentary in front of him, relying on a few written sources at hand, or on his memory, or on his own mother wit, striking out on tangents or repeating and emphasizing his point ad libitum in his own distinctive voice, while his notary takes it all down. The picture is consistent and almost complete: one question remains, concerning his audience. Who, after all, are "you"?
We can begin to sketch an answer by recalling Louis Holtz's sympathetic observation that more than any other Latin grammatical work, Pompeius brings us directly into the grammarian's classroom.[78] The remark is just, in the sense that we hear in Pompeius's text a teacher's voice, speaking with some immediacy. But I would like to suggest that the text does not bring us directly into the classroom—the second person singular by itself tells against this—and to refine Holtz's observation by drawing attention to a set of passages in which Pompeius reveals the audience he has in mind.
Consider, for example, the implications of the following vignettes Pompeius uses to illustrate the proper application of the future tense:
festinanter vadis nescio quo per plateam, occurrit tibi amicus et dicit tibi, "quo vadis?"—ut advertas, quam gravia sic fiunt vitia—dicit tibi, "quo festinas?," dicis, "ad auditorium festino." "quare?" melius, si
[76] Keil resisted the urge to print Titsius , etc. (see his app. crit., ad loc .), against Lindemann and against Wilmanns, "Katalog" 402.
[77] Pomp. 141.28f.: puta notarium meum volo vocare "Africanum."
[78] Holtz, "Tradition" 50, "ce text n'a pas son équivalent pour nous faire réellement pénétrer dans l'école du grammaticus "; and more specifically Donat 236, "le seul texte de l'Antiquité romaine qui nous faire entendre les paroles mêmes du maître en présence de ses élèves"; with n. 37, suggesting "un cours publié d'après les notes sténographiques." Cf. also Keil, GL 5.89, 90; Helm, RE 21.2313.31ff. We should not, however, forget the fragment of the Ars grammatica accepta ex auditorio Donatiani (GL 6.275.11, with Part II no. 51); and cf. Chap. 5, on Servius.
participialiter utaris et dicas, "quoniam dicturus sum." ecce per par-ticipium sane locutus es: dixisti enim te necdum fecisse, sed facturum esse. si autem sic dicas—"quo festinas?" "ad auditorium." "quare?" "hodie dico."—soloecismum fecisti. "dico" enim non est nisi eius qui agit, qui iam tacit hoc ipsum. ergo siqui dicit, "hodie dico," qui adhuc vadit ad dicendum, iam videtur soloecismum facere. (235.16-24)
ergo siquis tibi hoc iterum dicat, "exponis mihi hodie lectionem?," si dicam, "expono," soloecismus est. non enim exponis, non adhuc facis, sed facturus es. (236.19-21)
In the first passage the reader is imagined to be hurrying across the town square on his way to speak in the schoolroom (auditorium ). In the second, related passage, he is asked if he plans to lecture on a text (exponere lectionem ).[79] In other words, the reader seems to be thought of as a teacher, setting out on his day, fielding questions from fellow townsmen interested in his plans. The scene might remind one of the grammarian in Juvenal, stopped on his way to the baths to answer less innocuous questions (7.232ff.), and such scenes were doubtless a part of Pompeius's own experience.
That the tu of the commentary is thought of as a teacher much like Pompeius himself is confirmed in other passages. After setting out the rules of antepenultimate accent, Pompeius advises the reader not to concern himself with unnecessary details when he is discussing the matter: ergo noli te in diversas ambages mittere, sed tracta quando debeat accentum habere (129.32f.). The significant word is the verb tracta , virtually a technical term of the grammarian's professional activity, applied by Pompeius throughout the work both to himself (e.g., tractaturus sum , 98.25) and to Donatus (e.g., tractaturus est , 98.21-22).[80]
When explaining how poor punctuation can undermine the rules of accentuation, Pompeius warns the reader of the risk of misleading a student through his own error: si male distinguas, potest errare puer (130.31ff.). The reference to the student (puer ) in the third person shows that the text does not derive from Pompeius's schoolroom; rather, the reader himself appears to be thought of as a teacher, who must guard against setting a bad example for the student.[81] A passage on punctuation
[79] On Pomp. 236.20, dicam , see below at n. 84. For lectio meaning "text" in a similar context, see Pomp. 141.34ff.; and cf. n. 82 below.
[80] With reference to Pompeius, see also Pomp. 128.16f., 132.5f., 135.36, 256.18, 289.14; with reference to Donatus, Pomp. 96.10ff., 133.4, 155.1, 156.11, 159.23, 162.3, 164.28, 165.15f., 231.32, 238.38, 244.21, 281.27 (bis ), 289.15, 292.30f. (bis ), 305.2, 305.34; similarly Pomp. 180.31, of Probus.
[81] For pueri , beyond the passages quoted below, see also Pomp. 293.19f.; and cf. the version of the preface published by Holtz, "Tradition" 59f.
proper that follows shortly—quod si vis codicem distinguere, ita distingue (132.1)—makes my point plainer still. Once more the reader is warned against leading the student into error: ne erret puer et male pronuntiet . . . . ne erret puer et dicat . . . (132.7ff.). And from the context it is clear Pompeius is thinking of the grammarian's task of praelectio and of the punctuation of his codex for that purpose.[82]
In discussing the correct definition of the noun, Pompeius stresses the importance of making the definition clear to the student: ut possit puer intellegere (137.18). Here again Pompeius is thinking of the reader as a teacher, and note that he immediately thinks of Donatus in the same terms: idcirco laborat [sc. Donatus ] ut definitionem nominis propriam reddat (137.20). A few pages farther on, Pompeius offers another bit of coaching, this time in the classroom practice of question and answer (142.35-143.8). Pompeius provides two examples of how a teacher ought to handle the questions put to and by a student. In the first example (142.36ff.) Pompeius plays the teacher as interrogator , and the purr replies—the format, to take only the most obvious example, of Donatus's Ars minor . In the second example, ceterum, si te interroget [sc. puer ] (143.4f.), the reader takes Pompeius's place and responds to the student's question—ineptly, as it happens, so that Pompeius can reinforce his advice by pointing out the correct procedure.[83]
There are other, comparable passages, to which we will come shortly; but these examples should suffice to show how Pompeius thinks of his audience. Pompeius is talking to another grammaticus —or, more strictly, he is talking to an imagined audience presumed to share the point of view and concerns of Pompeius himself as grammaticus .[84] Notionally, then,
[82] On punctuation for reading by the grammarian, see Bonner, Education 220-22, esp. 221, citing Pomp. 133.4ff. Bonner assumes, no doubt rightly for most circumstances, that only the teacher would have a text: in the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana, colloquia Monacensia (CGL 3.122.26-29 = 3.646), clamatus ad lectionem audio expositiones, sensus, personas seems to imply that the student listened while the teacher lectured from his own text; the version of the Hermeneumata published by Dionisotti, "From Ausonius' Schooldays?" 100 (line 37, eunt 'priores ad magistrum, legunt lectionem de Iliade, aliam de Odysseia ; and cf. line 39, tunc revertitur quisque, in suo loco considunt. quisque legit lectionem sibi subtraditam ), seems to show students reading from a text prepared by the teacher. Cf. also Lib. Or . 1.9: Libanius stands by his teacher's chair while reading Acharnians .
[83] For questions put to teachers by their students, see the general comment of Eutyches, GL 5.447.1ff. (quoted at Part II no. 57); and the questions put by Filocalus and Rusticus at Explan . 498.23ff., with Part II no. 217.
[84] Tu does not denote a specific listener but is used in the generalizing sense of "one," "someone in our position": note esp. the shift from second to first person and back again in Pomp. 236.19-21 at p. 159 above (siquis tibi . . . dicat, "exponis mihi hodie lectionem?," si dicam, "expono," soloecismus est. non enim exponis ) and the interchangeability of probas and probamus in the formulas unde hoc probas? (Pomp. 114.13, 151.37f., 200.20, 225.23) and unde hoc probamus? (Pomp. 159.5, 180.12ff., 185.31f., 196.13); cf. Pomp. 191.38, unde hoc probem?
the commentary is a manual for colleagues. In this respect Pompeius's work is comparable to Donatus's variorum commentary on Vergil, expressly composed as an aid "for the grammaticus still wet behind the ears."[85] Pompeius no doubt assumed his audience would use his commentary as he used Servius's, as part of the inherited Gemeingut of the profession, taking it over as his own. At the same time, and because it is intended as a manual for colleagues, the commentary offers the closest approximation that we have to a grammarian's extended musings on his profession—often oblique, offhand, and rambling, to be sure, but for that reason more unself-conscious, more revealing, than the poise of formal reflection. Whatever its other shortcomings, Pompeius's text is exceptionally vivid evidence for the grammarian's mind-set.
To appreciate this cast of mind we might look first at a passage similar to those just noted. While reviewing the category of nouns defective in two or more cases, Pompeius says, vide autem, quid dicit ipse Donatus: ait "sed haec, quae dico deficere, secundum usum dico, ceterum scio me legisse haec ipsa quae deficiunt " (186.34ff.). The statement attributed to Donatus is in fact an extended paraphrase of sunt nomina quorum nominativus in usu non est (625.10H.). Leaving aside the question how far Pompeius has stretched Donatus's intended meaning here, we can identify the motive behind the paraphrase easily enough. For Pompeius soon points out that the nominative forms of certain words (later, Iovis ), although not in common use, can indeed be found in literary texts (in auctoritate ); and he concludes, ideo dixi, ne putes istum [viz., Donatum ] inperitum esse aut te omnia debere dicere. ita enim locutus est, "sunt aliqua quorum nominativus in usu non est " [i.e., 625.10H.; see above]; non dixit "quorum nominativus non est quidem," sed "in usu non est." ergo vides quia docuit lecta esse, sed non debere poni (187.13-16). Thus the passage has two purposes beyond the stringent lesson of the last sentence, which Pompeius has inferred from or imposed on Donatus's text. First, Pompeius is intent on defending Donatus—ne pules istum inperitum esse —by claiming that Donatus of course knew the rare forms and signaled his knowledge in the phrase in usu non est . Second, Pompeius takes the opportunity to offer an object lesson to his reader, evidently imagined as a teacher in the same position and subject to the same criticisms as Donatus, by assuring the reader that he is not obliged to tell everything he knows: ne pules . . . te omnia debere dicere . A well-chosen formula—like Donatus's in usu non est —can make a point clearly, economically, and blamelessly, without a parade of learning that might in the end obscure the teaching.
[85] Don. Epist. praef . 17 Hardie: grammatico . . . rudi ac nuper exorto .
The passage is reminiscent of Pompeius's comments, remarked above, on the proper definition of the noun; there his injunction to the reader is linked with praise for Donatus's effort:
quid si ita definias nomen, ut possit puer intellegere quid sit nomen, ut dicas, "nomen est pars orationis cum casu"? idcirco laborat [sc. Donatus] ut definitionem nominis propriam reddat. (137.18-20)
The two passages are symptomatic of the work's sustained demand for clarity, precision, and logic. (Here, as elsewhere, the disparity between Pompeius's values and his own achievement is not without poignancy.) So, when Donatus is praised, typically the economy and exactness of his organization or his definitions are singled out: in presenting the accidents of the verb, Donatus tenuit conpendium optimum (240.3f.); when touching on the period—which strictly "pertains to rhetoricians, not to grammarians"—Donatus noluit dilatare, ut doceret aperte (281.27f.); Donatus's definition of the pronoun's qualitas is preferred to competing views as vera . . . et brevis et utilis , earning Donatus a "well done."[86] Pompeius dispenses similar praise when he thinks he has spotted similar virtues in the doctrine he has inherited from other grammarians, who made their points "carefully" or "plainly" or "vigorously."[87]
Conversely, when Donatus is criticized, the fault is usually superfluity or confusion in presentation, or imprecision in a definition, or the failure to teach aperte .[88] Pompeius occasionally softens such criticisms by magisterially assuring the reader that Donatus really did know what he was talking about, even if he expressed himself badly.[89] But he is unforgiving when he finds faults of logic, in explanations or positions that lay themselves open to a reductio ad absurdum or are internally inconsistent. His distaste is apparent when he rejects as stupid the belief of many that de intus venio is a proper expression and observes that for consistency
[86] Pomp. 200.31: bene hoc fecit Donatus . See also Pomp. 96.15-17 (with Pomp. 98.6f. and the version of Pompeius's preface published by Holtz, "Tradition" 59f.), 281.9, 289.29, 292.9-11, 307.28f.
[87] Pomp. 111.13 and 118.15f. (Terentianus), 139.34 (Apollonius), 154.13f. (Caper), 227.23f. and 283.13f. (Pliny).
[88] Superfluity or confusion: Pomp. 140.20, with Don. 614.8-9H. (contrast Pomp. 237.10f., with Don. 638.5-8H.); Pomp. 231.15f., on Don. 636.6-7H. Imprecision: Pomp. 138.12ff., concerning Probus as well. Failure to teach fully and plainly: Pomp. 305.33f., introducing a supplement to Don. 668.7H.; cf. also the omissions criticized at Pomp. 105.19ff., 149.24ff., 151.5ff., 192.12ff., 302.2ff. (with Schindel, Figurenlehren 35, 101-2).
[89] See Pomp. 279.14ff., a correction already made—but tacitly, it appears, and without the attempted extenuation—in Servius (cf. Serv. 420.8-9, 443.4-5); Pomp. 220.13ff. (a similar correction: cf. Serv. 413.10-13, Explan . 506.14-18).
such people would have to embrace the equally awful ad intro .[90] So too, it was "extremely stupid" of Probus to include accent among the accidents of the noun, for he might as well have gone on to include letter and syllable and all the other attributes the noun shares with the remaining parts of speech.[91]
A demand for ratio —both "reason" and the "clear and systematic account" it provides—pervades the commentary. What does not "make sense" (habet rationem ) is simply stultum and is easily dismissed.[92] But what reason demands is codified in the ars and its regulae , to produce the rigor artis and the rigor regularum .[93] It is consistent with this rigor that when faced with the two traditional etymologies of ars , from the Greek 
and from the Latin artus , Pompeius should prefer the latter, because of the power of the ars to embrace the language with its "tight" or "firm precepts" (artis praeceptis ).[94] Surrounded by these, Pompeius is conscious of the special sphere of expertise the ars defines for him and other grammatici , centering above all on the partes orationis , which distinguish the grammarian's territory alike froth that of the teacher of letters and from that of the rhetorician.[95] The ars fortifies Pompeius and fills him with exuberant confidence: so, for example, he can differentiate between the definitions of the noun according to the grammatici and according to the philosophi , dismissing the latter as ridiculum .[96]
That verdict is characteristic of Pompeius's magisterial tone, as he complacently delights in the support his profession's traditional doctrine lends and in the certain belief that he can separate the precious metal in
[90] Pomp. 248.16ff., with 248.38ff.
[91] Pomp. 138.22ff., with reference to Prob. GL 4.51.22, 74.32ff. (But from Pomp. 139.16ff., Probus . . . dixit "nomini accidunt qualitas, genus, numerus, figura, casus," et non dat conparationem nomini , it is clear that Pompeius never set eyes on Probus's text and is probably basing his comments on the report that he found in the full commentary of Servius; this seems preferable to the suggestion of Jeep, Zur Geschichte der Lehre 51, that Probus in the last sentence is a corruption.) For similar criticisms, see Pomp. 169.19ff. (cf. Explan . 495.11, with Jeep, pp. 48f.), 173.26ff. (cf. Jeep, p. 47), 240.34ff. For seeming inconsistencies in Donatus explained away, see Pomp. 170.2ff., 217.10ff.; and cf. below, pp. 164f., on Pomp. 230.19ff.
[92] Stultum est vs. habet rationem , in the vice of perissologia , Pomp. 294.11ff.; for the virtue of rationabiliter dicere (= regulariter dicere , to speak according to the rules laid down by ratio ), see Pomp. 276.16, 290.31, 310.21f.
[93] Ratio exigit : Pomp. 185.23, 195.14. Rigor artis (vs. auctores confuderunt ): Pomp. 268.8. Rigor regularum : Pomp. 196.9.
[94] Pomp. 95.5-96.2, agreeing with the preference of Serv. 405.2.
[95] Pomp. 96.2-18. For the sphere of the grammarian distinguished from that of the rhetorician, see also Pomp. 281.25f., 282.34f., 299.20ff. = 300.1ff.
[96] Pomp. 137.26f., with 137.36. To judge from Explan . 489.22ff., the distinction was already included in Servius's commentary, without the ridicule.
one vein of the tradition from the fool's gold in another. Criticism he metes out with a curt stultum or, if the victim is lucky, a simple falsum , and he adjudicates firmly and surely between competing views.[97] When the received doctrine works, his pleasure is audible: vide quam bonam brevitatem invenerunt Latini , he exclaims three times in reviewing word accent (127.25, 128.1, 128.6), and then concludes, vides quanta brevitate utantur Latini. Graeci vero chaos fecerunt, totum confuderunt, ut quamvis mille legas tractatus non te convenias (130.1f.). And he is plainly satisfied when the maiores —the ancients, the classical authors—can be thought to have followed ratio .[98] He is satisfied, that is, when the maiores seem to behave as he and his colleagues behave. But when their auctoritas goes against the regulae firmissimae he has inherited, his satisfaction gives way to a strong warning against literary blandishments.[99] The shift is only to be expected, since the past practitioners who built up the tradition of firm rules piece by piece have an auctoritas of their own,[100] a match for the auctoritas of antiquity. In the coordination of verbal person and nominal case, Donatus laid down the law and resolved the confusiones antiquitatis :[101] just so, Pompeius later with a flourish produces a regula to resolve a "great difficulty."[102]
Here as elsewhere we see Pompeius taking his place in the authoritative tradition and identifying with it. He is ready, not surprisingly, to make its strengths his own: when he declares, "I have three rules" to deal with the genitive plural of the third declension, he seems oblivious of the fact that the rules are not his, but Donatus's.[103] Yet before we conclude that he is simply pilfering from Donatus, we should remember that he identifies as readily with the vulnerability of the inherited doctrine as with its strength. When he touches on the verbs pudet and taedet (230.19ff.), he notes an apparent contradiction with what he has said
[97] Stultum : Pomp. 108.19 (Varro), 110.12 (Iuba), 125.9ff. (non nulli metrici ), 138.32 and 178.15ff. (Probus), 186.12ff. and 248.17ff. (multi ), 180.32ff. (Donatus; subsequently mitigated). Falsum : Pomp. 174.21ff. and 222.30ff. (non nulli ), 193.31ff. (the elder Pliny), 228.18ff. (in artibus istis vulgaribus ). Adjudication: e.g., Pomp. 108.29ff. (multi and levis ratio vs. multi and valentissima [ratio ]), 144.14ff. (Caesar vs. the elder Pliny), 151.18ff. (multi vs. multi ), 164.33ff. (Probus vs. alii and auctoritas ), 209.2ff. (plerique vs. Astyagius).
[98] Pomp. 193.10ff.; cf. Pomp. 197.4ff., 199.21ff.
[99] Pomp. 253.23ff.; cf. Pomp. 232.2-8 and 12-14, 255.31ff., 263.11ff., 269.22ff.
[100] See Pomp. 156.32, secundum auctoritatem Donati ; Pomp. 159.24, auctoritatem ipsius [viz., Varronis ]; Pomp. 169.19, eius [viz., Probi ] auctoritatem ; cf. Pomp. 144.31, melius est ut sequaris praeceptum tanti viri, Plinii Secundi .
[101] Pomp. 237.11-22; cf. Pomp. 110.18.
[102] Pomp. 242.15ff., on the derivation of adverbs from proper nouns. On regulae, auctoritas, maiores , and their interrelation, see Chap. 5 pp. 182ff.
[103] Pomp. 191.16ff. = Don. 626.19-627.4H.
previously, then affirms he has not made an error after all: et illo loco bene . . . dixi et hoc loco bene . . . dixi . The noteworthy point is that the inconsistency is in fact due to Donatus; but instead of attributing the contradiction to Donatus and treating it in those terms,[104] Pompeius regards the lapse as his own and defends himself.
Pompeius's need for self-defense is virtually a reflex, inseparable from his magisterial tone. His confidence in passing the verdict stultum is constantly shadowed by his anxiety in contemplating an attack on his own expertise; his avoidance of calumnia and his search for excusationes , to show he is not guilty of inperitia , are leitmotifs of the commentary.[105] So, for example, in the dialogues with the reader there recur anticipated objections or the dreaded counterexamples that can upset one's ratio :[106]
scire debes. . . . ne dicas mihi, "sed. . . ."(138.1f.)
non potest inveniri. . . . ne dicas mihi. . . . (240.10f.)
sed tamen illud meminisse debes. . . . ne dicas mihi ergo, "quoniam. . . ."(269.22ff.)
Above all, Pompeius is intent on preparing the reader, the alter ego of his tu , for situations in which he can expect to be put on his mettle. "If anyone asks you" is a constant refrain,[107] together with the negative counterpart, "Take care lest anyone put a question to you in this matter."[108] You must anticipate the question, How do you prove this?[109] and can expect to be challenged especially on doubtful or ambiguous points.[110] As a result, you must also be on guard against being deceived, sometimes by the language itself,[111] but also by the tricks and cross-grained ingenuity of your fellow men:
[104] As at Pomp. 217.10ff. (referring to Don. 633.2-4H., 639.10-12H.; cf. Serv. 437.8-10), explaining that the contradiction was only superficial; cf. n. 91 above.
[105] Calumnia : Pomp. 153.25ff., 158.34ff., 205.7ff., 283.1ff. Excusatio : Pomp. 155.1ff., 159.27ff., 229.4f.
[106] E.g., Pomp. 138.28., 177.31f., 180.13ff., 191.31ff., 202.1ff., 260.25ff., 263.11ff., 284.38ff., with Pomp. 136.18-35, translated at p. 155 above. For Pompeius's use of counterexamples, see, e.g., 115.15-21, 164.33ff.
[107] E.g., Pomp. 160.19ff., 166.6-7, 175.22ff., 230.11ff., 262.40f.
[108] E.g., Pomp. 138.15f., 227.36f.; cf. Pomp. 142.23ff., 228.36ff.
[109] Unde hoc probas : see n. 84.
[110] Pomp. 256.20ff.: plerumque proponitur nobis et dicitur, "'amans' quae pars est orationis?," el videmus quod et nomen est et participium. videamus ergo discretionem ipsam .
[111] See Pomp. 141.25, sed non te decipiat ista res nec fallat , with, e.g., Pomp. 153.15f., 163.7, 175.11, 179.15f., 270.15f. For Donatus so deceived, see Pomp. 243.19ff., 270.27ff.
quare hoc dico? solent aliqui homines plerumque esse callidi, et inter-rogat te aliquis et dicit tibi, "'Lucius' quale nomen est?" "proprium." "quae pars est proprii nominis?" dicis illi, "praenomen." dicit tibi, "falsum est: nam ecce servus meus ita appellatur et non habet praenomen."[112] (142.8-12)
This anxious hedging against a world of continuous challenges produces an interesting symptom in Pompeius's comments, a tendency toward plainly subjective interpretations through which he projects his own concerns and defenses onto Donatus. When, for example, Donatus takes up the subject of nouns that waver between the feminine and neuter genders—sunt incerti generis infer femininum et neutrum, ut "buxus," "pirus," "prunus," "malus," sed neutro fructum, feminino ipsas arbores saepe dicimus (621.1-2H.)—Pompeius's comment focuses on the phrase saepe dicimus , which Donatus used to qualify his distinction between the neuter (the fruit) and the feminine (the trees): et interposuit "saepe dicimus." scit enim esse arborem et masculini generis quae sit et neutri, ut 'siler" neutri est, "oleaster" masculini est (163.31-33). In other words, Pompeius takes saepe to be Donatus's means of protecting himself against counterexamples, which Donatus is also presumed to know: scit enim . There is, of course, no explicit sign of this in Donatus's text.[113]
The concern with counterexamples here is Pompeius's own, imposed on Donatus's words. Although it is surely possible that Donatus had some such point in mind in this case, the chance is slim he did in every other. Reviewing the use of the various cases with various verbs, Donatus says, alia [sc. verba ] accusativi [sc. casus formulam servant ], ut "accuso," "invoco" (638.14H.). Pompeius comments:
"accuso" accusativum regit tantum modo, "accuso illum": non possumus dicere "accuso illius." hoc satis latinum est; nemo potest dicere "accuso illius." quis hoc nesciat? sed timuit vim Graecam. Graeci enim "accuso illius" dicunt,
. ergo ut faceret differentiam propter Graecam elocutionem, ideo huius rei reddit rationem. ubi enim dubitatum est, utrum hoc sic possit dici? semper "accuso illum" dicimus. sed propter expressionem verbi Graeci ideo hoc fecit. (238.19-26)
[112] For the principle, viz., that a slave does not possess a praenomen , see Pomp. 141.24ff. For trick questions, see also the exchange just preceding, Pomp. 141.34ff., and, e.g., Pomp. 231.34f.
[113] Compare Pomp. 186.34ff., the interpretation of in usu non est (Don. 625.10H.), discussed on p. 161 above. With scit enim , cf. Pomp. 162.2ff., sciens . . . tractat in the interpretation of Don. 620.1-5H.
Pompeius is evidently surprised that Donatus has bothered to say what every schoolboy knows, and he hits upon an explanation: sed timuit vim Graecam . . . . ut faceret differentiam propter Graecam elocutionem . Once again, Donatus's text gives no hint he was motivated as Pompeius suggests; and in this case there is no probability at all that he had the Greek usage in mind, much less that he feared it. In his survey Donatus naturally chose accuso as an example of a verb taking the accusative case; the accusative derived its name from it.[114] Pompeius has simply (if unconsciously) used Donatus's text as a peg to hang his lesson on, concerning a topic—the possibly misleading example of Greek usage—that obviously worried him elsewhere.[115]
In this instance Pompeius projected his concerns onto Donatus where a specific point of doctrine was involved; but we can find him behaving much the same way in a passage that reveals the grammarian's anxious turn of mind more generally. When Donatus comes to the category of nouns occurring in the singular or plural only, he follows his usual practice of noting the various subcategories and offering a few examples for each: sunt semper singularia generis masculini, ut "pulvis," "sanguis," semper pluralia, ut "Manes," "Quirites," "cancelli," semper singularia generis feminini, ut "pax," "lux," and so on (623.1-9H.). At this point Pompeius tells his reader, vide quia, quodcumque tibi dat exemplum, dat secundum artem, ne recurras ad auctoritatem et rumpas hoc ipsum quod proponit. multa enim contraria sunt (176.6-8). Pompeius is not accusing Donatus of chicanery, as the statement might at first sight suggest, of suppressing information in the interest of preserving an invalid lesson.[116] Rather, Pompeius is again using Donatus as a model of effective teaching, to underscore the principle that one does not need to say everything:[117] Donatus presents his examples secundum artem , according to the handbook—that is, as straightforward rules, according to what one is supposed to say. He does not clutter his lesson with the exceptions in the literary texts (auctoritates ), so that one will not be tempted to point to those exceptions and fractiously challenge the generally valid rule by saying, ecce . . .
But as so often, the specter of counterexample preys on Pompeius's mind, and he soon returns to the matter as it concerns Donatus: ait sic
[114] As Pompeius himself later notes at 171.10f.: accusativus, quod per ipsum accusemus, "accuso illum."
[115] Cf. Pomp. 259.23f., Graeci habent [sc. praesens participium in passivo et praeteritum in activo ] et idcirco praemonui, ne quasi trahant te elocutiones Graecae el velis miller ponere , and Pomp. 260.31ff., ne dicas ergo, "licet mihi." Pompeius shows a similar concern at 232.16-17.
[116] As the larger context shows (e.g., Pomp. 176.11ff.), Pompeius approves of Donatus's lesson.
[117] See Pomp. 186.34ff., with p. 161 above.
etiam ipse timens (quoniam scit lecta esse multa contra regulas suas), "sed scire debes multa per usurpationem esse conexa." nam ecce "pulvis" dicimus secundum artem, d tamen invenimus 'pulveres," "bigae" debemus dicere, invenimus "biga " (177.21-24). As in the passage above, what Donatus is alleged to know, and especially what he says fearfully, owe far more to Pompeius's concerns than to his own text. Indeed, Pompeius's subjectivity is particularly evident here, since it has led him to tear from its context the qualification he attributes to Donatus in the paraphrase sed scire debes . . . and apply it misleadingly to the whole category of nouns under discussion.[118] Safeguarding one's rules and expertise exacts a price, as Pompeius's agitation eloquently testifies: ait . . . timens. With so many worries crowding about, it was not altogether easy being a grammarian.
If Pompeius's free-flowing talk tells us anything, it tells us of values and aspirations, and their cost: the importance placed on the rational mastery of language that is condensed in the grammatical tradition, the desire to set one's own stamp on the tradition even as one merges with it, and the edgy self-concern that those values and desires evoke. It would be possible to elaborate the portrait of Pompeius and trace the qualities we have already seen, as he treats the topic at the heart of the grammarian's authority, the definition of linguistic correctness. There is, however, another text that can teach us more about the criteria of correctness and their dynamics. We will turn, then, to Servius and his commentary on Vergil.
[118] Donatus's qualification concerns only singularia generis neutri ; cf. Don. 623.4-6H.
Chapter 5
Servius
We have already encountered Servius as the author of the commentary on Donatus's Ars that was Pompeius's main source. That is not, however, the work for which he is best known today. Born probably in the late 360s or early 370s, Servius was a teacher at Rome by the 390s. His only writing datable with any security—a brief treatise De centum metris —was probably composed between 400 and 410; its dedication to a clarissimus Albinus (a pupil at the time, as the context shows; probably Caecina Decius Aginatius Albinus, PVR 414) reveals that Servius had by then become connected with one of the most distinguished families of the old capital. His other surviving works include two other concise pamphlets (De finalibus, De metris Horatii ) and the abbreviated version of his commentary on Donatus. The great work that has come down to us is the commentary on Vergil.[1]
Here too Servius was following in the tracks of Donatus, using his variorum commentary as a major source. Beyond the dedicatory epistle, a vita of Vergil, and the introduction to the Bucolics , Donatus's commentary has not survived. We do, however, have significant extracts thanks to a reader of Vergil—perhaps of the seventh century, perhaps Irish—who incorporated other material into his copy of Servius, including notes from Donatus's commentary.[2] In the dedication of his work Donatus had said that his compilation was meant to serve as a resource for
[1] See Part II no. 136; for possible evidence of the relative chronology of the commentaries on Vergil and Donatus, see the appendix to Part II no. 125.
[2] The product of the compiler is conventionally termed Servius Auctus or Servius Danielis (after its discoverer, P. Daniel), to be distinguished from the vulgate commentary, which is here taken to be Servius's own. On the relations between the expanded commentary (cited here as DServ.) and the vulgate, see Thilo in Thilo and Hagen, eds., 1, v-lxix; and most recently Goold, "Servius" esp. 102-22; Murgia, Prolegomena 3-6; and Marshall, "Servius." A promising method for reclaiming more of Donatus's commentary has lately been elaborated by Schindel, Figurenlehren . All references to the commentary below are to the vulgate Servius and the Aeneid unless otherwise noted. As in Chap. 4, the extant version of Servius's commentary on Donatus's Ars is cited by page and line of Keil, GL 4.
other grammatici,[3] and Servius clearly used the work much as Donatus had intended; the learning his predecessor had gathered is excerpted, simplified, and criticized—Servius tends to mention Donatus only to convict him of error—now suppressed, now supplemented.[4]
It is also clear that Servius's commentary, although a less personal document than the work of Pompeius, is nonetheless the instrument of a teacher.[5] The commentary remains at the level suitable for pueri as Servius makes his way word by word and line by line through the text, remarking on punctuation, meter, uncertain readings, myth or other Realien , and especially on the language. The last category, in fact, dwarfs all the others, occasioning two notes out of every three. Only one note in seven, by contrast, is concerned with the broader mythical, historical, and literary background of the poetry, and of this small minority only another small proportion amounts to more than perfunctory references or glosses.[6] The disproportion is a sign of the emphasis that the late-antique grammatici placed on linguistic instruction, which continued well beyond the study of the ars . It reminds us of the distance that separates a modern commentary, given over to exegesis, from its ancient counterpart, in which exegesis coexists—often uncomfortably, as we shah see—with instruction in a living language.
In the central portion of this chapter, then, we shall try to listen to Servius as his students would have heard him, in order to define the impression of Servius's teaching and of Servius himself that would have been fixed in minds more prepared than the modern to appreciate the nuances of his comments and accept them as fresh. Above all, by placing ourselves in the pupils' position we should be able to experience directly one important element of Servius's personality: the grammarian's sense of his own authority. Servius's conceptions of his task and of his status as a cultural figure remain largely unexpressed. Yet in his commentary
[3] See Chap. 4 n. 85.
[4] Note esp. the suppression of many of the references to republican authors that Donatus had included and the inclusion of citations from the newly fashionable Silver Latin poets. See Lloyd, "Republican Authors," with Kaster, "Macrobius" 257.
[5] See Thomas, Essai 182; Lloyd, "Republican Authors" 326; Levy, "To hexês "; Goold, "Servius" 135.
[6] See Kaster, "Macrobius" 256 n. 109.
an individual and often decidedly quirky turn of mind is demonstrably at work, and Servius's implicit self-image at times so influences his comments that they cannot be understood unless it be taken into account.
To begin, however, we will turn briefly away from the commentary to establish a point of comparison with the voice we will later hear and to open a way into Servius's text. It happens that alone of the grammatici in the period Servius speaks both in his own works and as a character in imaginative literature, in the Saturnalia , Macrobius's recreation of the Roman aristocracy's intellectual life in the saeculum Praetextati . Composed just over a generation after the age it celebrates, the Saturnalia offers an idealized Servius standing head and shoulders above the plebeia grammaticorum cohors (Sat . 1.24.8), the good grammarian demonstrating the moral and intellectual qualities desirable in a man of his profession, a teacher "at once admirable in his learning and attractive in his modesty" (Sat . 1.2.15).[7] As such, Servius is called upon early in the first book (Sat . 1.4) to deal with the adulescens Avienus, who at this point in the dialogue wears the character of a young man essentially sound, if somewhat obstreperous and unformed.
On listening to a discourse by one of the aristocratic participants, Caecina Albinus, Avienus has been struck by the untoward quality (novitas ) of certain turns of phrase the older and more learned man uses. He is moved to question their legitimacy; in effect, he asks why Caecina has committed two solecisms and a barbarism (respectively, noctu futura for node futura, diecrastini for die crastino , and Saturnaliorum for Saturnalium ). The defense of Caecina is entrusted to the professional, Servius, who explains each of the usages in turn and shows that what Avienus in his ignorance took for novitas was in fact antiquitas , the usage of the ancients. The appeal to antiquity fails to impress the adulescens : Avienus savages the grammarian for using his professional status to encourage a way of speaking that time has rubbed out and cashiered. Avienus calls for current language, praesentia verba , until he is brought to heel by the grave rebuke of the group's most distinguished member, Praetextatus himself (Sat . 1.5).
In the conflict that arises from Servius's correction of Avienus, two details are especially important. One is general, Avienus's insistence upon praesentia verba , which is supposedly antithetical to the grammarian's defense of antiquity: in fact, as we will see shortly, Avienus's demand is rather what one might expect from a pupil of the real Servius. The other detail is specific, the method Servius uses to justify diecrastini (Sat .
[7] For general discussion of Servius's role in the Saturnalia and of the context of the incident described below, see Kaster, "Macrobius" 224ff., esp. 243ff.
1.4.20-27), the last of the controversial expressions treated before Avienus's outburst. As commonly elsewhere in the Saturnalia , the words of the speaker—here, Servius—are drawn from a chapter of Aulus Gellius (10.24); and, as is his practice, Macrobius substantially rearranges and modifies the chapter to suit his purpose. Servius's defense proceeds from the assertion that the doctissimus vir Caecina did not use the expression sine veterum auctoritate . The method of the defense, and so the use of auctoritas as a criterion of correctness, is essentially analogical; that is, Servius adduces no attested use of diecrastini to provide an authoritative precedent, nor does he even claim (as did Gellius) that the form was ever used by the ancients.[8] Rather, the expression is justified solely and explicitly by analogy with such attested archaic forms as diequinti and dienoni .[9] The fictional Servius's defense of analogical archaism and the respect for the veterum auctoritas that it implies conform thoroughly to Macrobius's idealized vision of the literary culture: they are in accord both with Servius's role as the good grammarian, the man who guarantees the continuity of the language, and with the more general notion that stamps each page of the dialogue, the belief that the cultural tradition continues as a living presence, influencing and validating every aspect of a mature and learned man's life. At the same time, the defense of antiquity that Macrobius's Servius offers and the regard for auctoritas that analogical archaism implies are directly opposed to the doctrines of the Servius we find in the commentary.
The real Servius's view can be seen in several notes on the Aeneid . Characteristically, the instruction appears early in the first book, so that the student may carry the lesson with him as he proceeds:
1.4 MEMOREM IVNONIS OB IRAM constat multa in auctoribus inveniri per contrarium significantia: pro activis passiva, ut [11.660] "pictis bellantur Amazones armis," pro passivis activa, ut [Georg . 1.185] "populatque ingentem farris acervum," et haec varietas vel potius contrarietas invenitur etiam in aliis partibus orationis . . . et in nomine, ut "memorem Iunonis ob iram"—non "quae meminerat" sed "quae in memoria erat." de his autem haec tantum quae lecta sunt ponimus nec ad eorum exemplum alia formamus.
[8] In a sentence omitted by Macrobius, Gellius does offer the assurance that item simili figura "diecrastini" dicebatur, id erat "crastino die" (NA 10.24.8); the only attested use of diecrastini before Gell. NA 2.29.7 is Plaut. Most . 881, a fact of which Macrobius would almost certainly have been unaware.
[9] Sat . 1.4.20, with 1.4.25-27. The analogical defense is found clearly at Sat . 1.4.25, verum ne de "diecrastini" nihil retulisse videamur, suppetit Caelianum illud ex libro Historiarum secundo , citing a passage that contains diequinti . Symmachus and Praetextatus then follow with quotations offering diequinti and dienoni .
The final sentence warns against imitative extension of the peculiar usages found in the text and conveys the main point of the note.[10] The principle found there can be compared with the burden of another note, which occurs not long after:
1.26 ALTA MENTE REPOSTVM. . . . "repostum" autem syncope est: unam enim de medio syllabam tulit. sed cum omnes sermones aut integri sint aut pathos babeant, hi qui pathos habent ita ut lecti sunt debent poni, quod etiam Maro fecit: namque et [6.655] "repostos" et [8.274] "porgite" de Ennio transtulit. integris autem et ipsis utimur et eorum exemplo aliis.
The main thrust of the note (hi . . . poni and integris . . . aliis ) moves in the same direction as the comment on Aeneid 1.4. Both notes concern the use and abuse of analogy and the proper relation between analogical formation and auctoritas :[11] the combined lesson is plainly opposed to the validation Servius gives diecrastini in the Saturnalia , where the one odd expression is justified merely by analogy with similar odd expressions in the texts of literary auctores . Such notes represent specific and limiting applications of the general statement concerning figurative usage found later in the commentary:
5.120 PVBES INPELLVNT figura est, ut [1.212] "pars in frusta secant." et sciendum inter barbarismum et lexin, hoc est, Latinam et perfectam elocutionem, metaplasmum esse, qui in uno sermone fit ratione vitiosus, item inter soloecismum et schema, id est, perfectam sermonum conexionem, figura est, quae fit contextu sermonum ratione vitiosa. ergo metaplasmus et figura media sunt, et discernuntur [sc. from barbarism and solecism, respectively] peritia et imperitia. fiunt autem ad ornatum.
Compared with the definitions found in the grammatical tradition, Servius's note here is distinctive in several details[12] and can be contrasted
[10] In the final sentence I have read ponimus and formamus with Thilo and the manuscripts of Servius, against posita sunt and formata , the readings of codex C of DServ., printed by the Harvard editors: for the reason, see p. 181 and n. 34.
[11] For a similar formulation, cf. Servius's comment at 1.587. See also Serv. 441.13-15, with Pomp. 263.11-28 (cf. Pomp. 232.2-8 and 12-14, and the still more stringent formulation at 187.15f.); and the elder Pliny ap . Charis. 151.18-25 Barwick, warning against the analogical extension of archaic nominal forms in -es (i.e.,copies , on the model of amicities ) and opposing the rationis via to the veterum licentia .
[12] Esp. in its precise tripartite schematization (lexis, metaplasmus, barbarismus , and schema, figura, soloecismus ) and in the formal categories of lexis and schema . Schema itself is commonly used interchangeably with figura to denote what in ordinary discourse would be considered a solecism: e.g., Don. 658.3H.; Serv. 448.1-7; Pomp. 292.13ff. = Plin. frg. 125 della Casa (above, p. 151f.); cf. also Quintil. Inst . 9.3.2, with Don. 663.5-6H.
with the less precisely worded doctrine in the extant version of his commentary on Donatus's Ars :
quidquid scientes facimus novitatis cupidi, quod tamen idoneorum auctorum firmatur exemplis, figura dicitur. quidquid autem ignorantes ponimus, vitium putatur. (447.8-10)
This last, broad formulation, with its emphasis on novelty—novitas , toned down to the less daring ornatus in the Vergilian commentary, where little good is said about novitas —and with its vague proviso concerning auctoritas (idoneorum auctorum firmatur exemplis ), could perhaps be taken to countenance the kind of analogical argument offered in Macrobius. The comment on Donatus provides a general, liberal alternative to the specific and confining statements found, for example, in the notes on Aeneid 1.4 and 1.26. In the latter places, it seems, we hear the authentic and assertive voice of Servius the teacher,[13] a voice distinct from that of the good grammarian of the Saturnalia .
There is more at stake here than just another variation in detail between the creation of Macrobius and the author of the commentary.[14] The two figures understand and value in fundamentally different ways the processes of the language, the authority of the culture that stands behind it, and the status of the grammarian himself. The practice of analogy in the Saturnalia clearly accords with the ideal of cultural continuity developed in the dialogue. In using that approach, one assumes that the forms guaranteed by auctoritas are—to adapt the term Servius used in the note on Aeneid 1.26—as "sound" (integra ) as the forms used in regular speech and thus are as suited to the operations of analogy; through that linguistic exercise one achieves a more intimate and vivid participation with the ancients.
Precisely the opposite is true of the teaching of Servius, for whom auctoritas holds no such guarantees: figurae (or metaplasms, which operate under the same terms) are a large but finite and isolated repository of ancient expressions.[15] The repository is, above all, controllable; it is not
[13] On Servius's tendency to vary his teaching in the commentary on Vergil, "where he was not as bound to the [grammatical] tradition" as in his observations on Donatus, see the remarks of Wessner, "Lucan" 329.
[14] For such differences in general, see Kaster, "Macrobius" 255ff.
[15] Just how finite and isolated can be gauged from such collections as the Exempla elocutionum of the rhetorician Arusianus Messius (edited most recently by A. della Casa [Milan, 1977]), based on Terence, Vergil, Sallust, and Cicero. Cf. the singularia gleaned from the works of Cato and Cicero in the second century by Statilius Maximus, discussed by Zetzel, "Statilius."
to be extended. Figurae may be used under certain conditions virtually as literary allusions, but at the same time they exemplify what should be avoided as vicious in general practice. In Macrobius, figurae represent a free channel of communication between past and present that the grammarian has modestly and reverently opened; in Servius's commentary, figurae represent a nearly closed door over which he stands guard. The ends of immediacy and participation that the grammarian of the Saturnalia serves in instructing young Avienus are countered in Servius's own teaching by the preservation of distance and control.
The goals of distance and control are themselves partially the result of an institutional quirk of Roman education. Figurae occupied a no-man's-land between the schools of the grammaticus and of the rhetor , falling a bit short of the latter's main interest but a bit beyond the former's central concern, the correct understanding of the parts of speech and their attributes.[16] This institutional no-man's-land coincided with a no-man's-land of language and method. The ambiguous place of figurae in the structure of formal education conditions the ambiguous function of figurae in the commentary, where they commonly mark the boundary between two opposing ideas (e.g., exegesis vs. prescription, the ancients vs. "us," the language of Vergil vs. correct language) but at the same time leave it porous or vague. So, for example, in the economy of Servius's commentary, figurae mediate between the two main purposes, exegesis and prescription: figurae make intelligible what the author is saying (and often defend his way of saying it) while segregating the author's usage from the grammarian's central lesson of correct speech.[17] In any given note, one purpose may predominate, but the boundary between the two is never neat; one should perhaps speak not so much of boundaries as of buffer zones. The institutional niche of figurae corresponds to their use as a buffer (compare Servius on Aeneid 5.120, quoted above, where such usages are termed media ): the category figura protects
[16] See the remarks of Schindel, Figurenlehren 12ff. Servius most often uses figura in the sense of the schema grammaticum , a deviation from the loquendi ratio , as defined by Quintil. Inst . 9.3.2; cf. Serv. 448.1-7, opposing the schema in sermone factum (= the figura grammaticalis ) to the schema in sensu factum (= figure of thought, the sphere of the rhetor ). On the place of the parts of speech at the heart of the grammarian's expertise, cf. Chap. 4 pp. 140, 163.
[17] This is grammar's quod liter Iovi, non licet bovi ; cf. Aug. C. Faust . 22.25 (PL 42.417): puer in barbarismo reprehensus, si de Vergilii metaplasmo se vellet defendere, ferulis caederetur . The dispensation is usually but not always extended to Vergil: see Servius at, e.g., 4.355, 8.260, 10.572.
the regular operations of the language against the authority of the text just as it protects the text against the charge of solecism.[18]
As the goals of protection, distance, and control suggest, the commentary is often a scene of conflict, between the ancients and "ourselves," between different forms and sources of authority, between the deference owed to the author's prestige and the grammarian's domination of the text. Understanding the commentary means in large part understanding how the grammarian controls such conflicts, and understanding that control requires us to appreciate the sense of authority that the grammarian derives from his own institutional niche. As is often pointed out, Servius's approach to the text is one of regulations and categories; and this quasi-bureaucratic treatment of Vergil has done little to endear Servius to modern tastes. But bear in mind that controlling regulations and categories carries a power with it. Servius understands whatever comes before his eyes through the rules his institution provides, and he owes whatever authority he possesses to his command of those rules and to his status in that institution. As we shall see, Servius has so thoroughly internalized those rules and the authority of his position that they are at times combined and expressed unconsciously, in ways that offer unexpected glimpses of Servius's personality and self-image.
Before considering his self-image, however, we must try to understand the basis of Servius's rules and authority and how they are deployed in the commentary. Servius's status as a grammarian, his place in the specialized institution of his profession, involves a specific knowledge, recte loquendi scientia , which is presumed to rest on the natura of the language. Recte loqui means naturaliter loqui : strictly correct usage is natural usage.[19] Natura provides the raw material of the language, from, say, the quantity of the root vowel of unus or the correct spelling of scribo to the various functions and forms of the parts of speech.[20] This raw
[18] See n. 17; compare Servius at, e.g., 1.120, on the construction of Ilionei .
[19] Compare the phrase sermo natura . . . integer (implicitly the claim of the grammarians) in the polemics of Arnob. Adv. nat. 1.59: above Chap. 2 p. 85. On the grammarian's presumption of a natural order in language, see most recently Blank, Ancient Philosophy esp. 13, 51 n. 1.
[20] The most venerable text on this subject is preserved by Diom. 439.16-22 = Varro frg. 115 Goetz-Schoell: [Latinitas ] constat . . . . ut adserit Varro, his quattuor, natura analogia consuetudine auctoritate. natura verborum nominumque inmutabilis <<est> nec quicquam aut minus aut plus tradidit nobis quam quod accepit. nam si quis dicat "scrimbo" <<pro eo> quod est "scribo," non analogiae virtute sed naturae ipsius constitutione convincitur. analogia sermonis a natura proditi ordinatio est secundum technicos ; Charis. 62.14-63.9B. offers a parallel version. Ratio and analogia are used interchangeably in the passage; see esp. Diom. 439.16f., with 439.27f. On auctoritas and consuetudo (= usus ), see below. The relation between natura and ratio or analogia here was correctly seen by Barwick, Remmius 183f.: "analogia . . . ist die der natura gegebenen Sprache abgewonnene Gesetzmässigkeit. Daher sind natura und analogia bis zu einem gewissen Grade zwei verschiedene Seiten ein und derselben Sache."
material is subject for the most part to ratio (or analogia ), which systematically orders the data of nature to provide the regulae set down in the ars ; the ars in its turn is the product and property of the grammarian. The nature of the language is thus incorporated in the institution and identified with the grammarian's expertise. The linguistic forces that lie beyond his institutional niche and contradict his expertise are against nature.
Consider, for example, the comments on figurative usage noted above. By definition a deviation from correct usage, figurae are also necessarily a deviation from natural usage, the sermo naturalis.[21] Inevitably, therefore, the grammarian is as opposed to analogically extending figurative usage as he is to extending any other usage against nature: with Servius's note on Aeneid 1.4, we can compare the following, which warns against back-formation from a form whose natura has been corrupted:
2.195 PERIVRI in verbo "r" non habet; nam "peiuro" dicimus corrupta natura praepositionis. quae res facit errorem, ut aliqui male dicant "peiurus."[22]
Here, as in the case of figurae , an accommodation must be reached with the corruption already accomplished: Servius is saying, in effect, "This far, but no farther."
Hedged around by the wall of natura , Servius deals from a clearly defined position of strength with the other, unruly forces—auctoritas (literary authority) and usus or consuetudo (ordinary, current usage)—that have an impact on the language. These forces are variously treated in the commentary. For example, auctoritas serves largely as a court of last resort, defining the periphery of permissible usage rather than the core of what is correct;[23] but auctoritas can also appear, now and then, to govern the language when that serves the grammarian's didactic
[21] So 2.132, figura vs. sermo naturalis . See also 1.5, expanded at 5.467: usage adopted causa metri vs. what one does naturaliter ; 2.60, usurpatum vs. naturale (on this comment see below, p. 182); 7.161, secundum naturam vs. figuratum .
[22] See also the comments at 4.427, against the 1st sing. perf. indic. revulsi as derived from the "unnatural" form (re )vulsus ; and cf. 2.39 (sim. 1.149), on the declension of vulgus .
[23] See above, on 1.4 and 1.26; similarly Pomp. 232.2-8 (with Serv. 437.20-23), 237.35ff., 263.11-28 (with Serv. 441.13-15), 273.3ff.; cf. also Diom. 370.19-23 for reliance on auctores in a case where non est inventa ratio .
purpose.[24] Much the same is true of usus : what usage has maintained can be a determining factor,[25] and can even be credited with altering the nature of the language.[26] But throughout, the grammarian, with his understanding—or rather, definitive control—of natura , stands watch over auctoritas and usus , guarding against the perceived abuse, confusion, and corruption that both produce.[27]
This intricate and often arbitrary interweaving of natura, usus , and auctoritas is tolerably familiar;[28] only two tendencies need emphasis here. First, one can reasonably suggest that the authority of the grammarian's own pronouncements would be perceived by his students and by the grammarian himself as dominant and decisive: the grammarian establishes the distinction between "what we read" and "what we say," grants his permission according to his notion of "what we are able to say," determines the propriety of particular usages, and above all issues warnings.[29] Second, when that authority is blended with the prescriptive
[24] See, e.g., 8.409, 12.587; cf. Servius's comment on Georg . 3.124, and, on Servius's often arbitrary invocation of idonei auctores , see Kaster, "Servius." For auctores or veteres used to confirm a rule reached by way of analogy, cf. Diom. 368.3-11, 375.16-25.
[25] Cf. 2.268, where Servius notes the divisions of night and day according to Varro and concludes, de crepusculo vero, quod est dubia lux, . . . quaeritur, et licet utrique tempori [i.e., twilight or daybreak] possit iungi, usus tamen ut matutino iungamus obtinuit . The meaning "daybreak" authorized by usus according to Servius in fact first appears outside Servius in Latin of the fourth and fifth centuries; see TLL s.v. crepusculum 1175.39ff.
[26] Cf. 5.603, HAC CELEBRATA TENVS tmesis est, "hactenus." et hic sermo, quantum ad artem [i.e., naturam ] special dubs continet partes orationis, ut "hac" pronomen sit, "tenus" praepositio. . . . sed iam usus obtinuit ut pro una parte babeatur. ergo adverbium est: omnis enim pars orationis, cum desierit esse quod est, in adverbium migrat ; for the principle, see above at Chap. 4 n. 16. Here again the connection between the ars and the essence of the language, quod est , is plain.
[27] To select from only the first book a few examples in which auctoritas and usus are found abuti or confundere or corrumpere . For auctoritas , see 1.118, 185 (on the distinction between totus and omnis , never firm, and weakened further in the common speech of late antiquity [see Löfstedt, Late Latin 22]: Servius here urges against the improper usage of the text as a way of undermining a bad habit of common speech; cf. pp. 187-89 below), 334, 590. For usus , see 1.319, 410, 480, 697 (sane sciendum malo errore "cum" et "dum" a Romanis esse confusa —again touching upon an authentic feature of late Latin; see Adams, Text 77). For regula or ratio corrupted by consuetudo or contradicted by the license of the veteres or of current usage, cf. Diom. 348.24f. (cf. 349.6f., 15f.), 365.25f., 398.9, 400.3, 406.11-12.
[28] On how the scholars of the first century B.C. and first century A.D. balanced the components of the language, the general discussion of Barwick, Remmius 203-15, remains fundamental; also valuable, esp. for the Greek background, is Siebenborn, Sprachrichtigkeit esp. 108-15 and, a bit less satisfactory, 151-54, on natura . For an accessible and useful introduction, see Bonner, Education 204-8.
[29] "What we read" vs. "what we say": e.g., 2.487, 3.278, 7.605. Possumus uti or licenter utimur or pro nostro arbitrio utimur : e.g., 1.47, 96, 159, 177, 194, 343, 430, 451, 484; 2.610. Sphere of usage: cf. 1.251, 2.18, 6.79, 10.481. Warnings: cf. 2.513, VETERRIMA usurpatum est. ergo, ut supra diximus, hoc tantum uti si necesse sit licet , with 1.253, HONOS cum secundum artem [i.e., naturam ] dicamus "honor," "arbor," "lepor," plerumque poetae "r" in "s" mutant causa metri. . . . hoc quidem habet ratio: sed ecce in hoc loco etiam sine metri necessitate "honos" dixit. item Sallustius paene ubique "labos" posuit, quem nulla necessitas coegit. melius tamen est servire regulae [i.e., naturae ]. Compare the still stricter position of Pomp. 283.37ff.
purposes of the commentary, Servius's manufacture of the language for his students' benefit can produce observations on Vergil's language that sound absurd to the modern ear, attuned as it is solely to the commentary's exegetic purpose. Neither tendency can be separated from the other, but the effects of the second are more easily seen in individual notes. We can therefore examine this second tendency and identify a few of the strategies Servius used in his instruction, before returning to consider the implications of the first.
We must accustom ourselves to hearing Servius with a student's ear when he says, for example:
10.526 PENITVS DEFOSSA TALENTA. . . . sane melius [i.e., rectius] "infossa" diceret quam "defossa," ad quod est metri necessitate conpulsus.
Or:
11.468 ILICET "confestim," "ilico": quod ne diceret, metri necessitas fecit. nam "ilico" dicimus.
These and other notes invoking the necessity or compulsion of meter (and anyone familiar with the commentary knows how common they are) were not intended, and would not have been understood, as purely or even primarily exegetic. They are not earnest but superficial attempts to judge or explain Vergil's own choices and technique; rather, the force of these observations is directed largely at the student, telling him what he should or should not do. That the words are Vergil's is virtually incidental. Freely paraphrased, these lessons would be understood to mean something like, "Don't get it into your head that you should do what Vergil has done here; your usage should be such only when all other options have been dosed."[30] The text serves as an instrument; the author, as dummy. Both are exploited to meet Servius's purpose.
[30] Cf. 2.513 and 1.253, cited in the preceding note; and esp. 1.3, p. 187 below. With the paraphrase offered in the text, compare what Pompeius says at, e.g., 269.22ff., ne dicas mihi ergo, "quoniam usus est Vergilius . . .,debeo et ego ita facere." nequaquam licet . Cf. n. 17 above.
The exploitation recurs over a wide range of Servian rhetorical ploys. A similar and, again, essentially negative tactic involves the use of the phrase debuit dicere . For example:
1.16 HIC ILLIVS ARMA figura creberrima adverbium pro adverbio posuit, praesentis loci pro absentis: debuit enim dicere "illic."
Or:
9.467 CINGITVR AMNI "amne" debuit dicere: numquam enim bene [i.e., recte] in "i" exeunt nisi quae communis sunt generis, ut "docilis," "agilis." sed ideo ausus est ita ponere ablativum, quia, ut supra diximus [9.122], apud maiores "hic" et "haec amnis" dicebatur.
Again, debuit dicere is directed more at the student than at the text. Servius is not literally contending at Aeneid 1.16 that Vergil should have said illic ; he is making plain to the students what they should use. At stake is not so much a fault worthy of criticism or demanding correction in Vergil—figura provides the necessary protection against that—but a deviant usage the student should avoid.[31] Similarly, ausus est in the note on Aeneid 9.467 is not meant to describe Vergil's behavior, for his daring is immediately denied by the explanation that his words simply reflect the usage current apud maiores , of whom he is one. Rather, ausus est is directed at the student, to impress upon him what should be avoided as bold.[32]Debuit dicere urges against the bad example of the text and has the effective meaning in the commentary of debemus dicere .[33] Such notes drive
[31] But dearly debuit dicere could be construed as an adverse criticism of the author; cf. especially Aug. C. Faust . 22.25, quoted below, n. 77, and note Servius and DServ. at 1.273: where Servius offers GENTE SVB HECTOREA id est "Troiana." sed debuit dicere "Aeneia." diximus superius [1.235] nomina poetas ex vicino usurpare , explaining and defending as a poetic usage the deviation from what should have been said, the same idea appears in DServ. as GENTE SVB HECTOREA id est "Troiana." sed quidam reprehendunt quod "Hectorea" et non "Aeneia." mos est poetis nomina ex vicinis usurpare ; here quidam reprehendunt is probably a generalizing inference drawn from Servius's debuit dicere by the compiler of DServ. (the last clause is certainly no more than a finicky rewriting of Servius typical of the compiler). Debuit dicere seems to be located, like figura , in a gray area: although the practical or monitory purpose of the phrase dominates in its many appearances in the commentary, it would be wrong to deny out of hand that debuit dicere could connote some criticism of Vergil.
[32] Cf. 2.610 (concerning a point of usage similar to that in 9.467), where each of the three parts of Servius's statement, "tridente" debuit dicere; sed novitatem adfectavit, nulla cogente necessitate , is intended more as a warning for his pupils than as an objective interpretation or evaluation of the verse.
[33] Cf. 1.319, facere non debemus , referring to a Graeca figura .
home their lessons through the use of the third person singular, segregating the author's usage from the Latin that Servius wants to teach.
In these examples, prescription proceeds obliquely, yet nonetheless dearly, as Servius plays his own views off against the text. But prescription is at work in another element of Servius's style, one that is not at all apparent on the surface of his language but is wholly implied in his role. It is a nuance that again requires us to hear Servius with the ear of his pupils and that, not incidentally, adds to the difficulty of teasing apart the strands of natura, usus , and auctoritas in Servius's weave.
We might look again at the notes on Aeneid 1.4 (for its last sentence) and 1.26:
de his autem haec tantum quae lecta sunt ponimus nec ad eorum exemplum alia formamus.
sermones . . . qui pathos habent ita ut lecti sunt debent poni. . . . integris autem et ipsis utimur et eorum exemplo aliis.
As noted earlier, we should accept the readings of Servius's manuscripts at 1.4, ponimus and formamus , against posita sunt and formata , the readings of Servius Danielis, which some editors have imposed on Servius.[34] The reason for following the manuscripts of Servius is simple. They bear witness to a constant feature of Servius's language, the use of the first-person-plural indicative in a prescriptive sense.[35] That is, ponimus , unless otherwise qualified, would tend to mean ponere debemus , or formamus to mean formare debemus , or utimur to mean uti debemus —compare the parallel uses of the verbs at 1.4 and 1.26, ponimus . . . formamus and debent poni . . . utimur. This thoroughly natural overtone is unmistakable as soon as one listens to Servius as a teacher of his native language and not simply as a descriptive, objective commentator in the modern vein. The nuance occurs throughout the commentary, as in some of the notes already cited.[36] It is found most easily, perhaps, in one of Servius's more striking
[34] See above at n. 10. The alteration of Servius's active forms to the passives in DServ. is comparable to the systematic alteration of Servius's formula of cross-reference, ut supra diximus , to the impersonal ut supra dictum est in DServ., revealing the hand of the compiler. Cf. Goold, "Servius" 107-8; Murgia, Prolegomena 100-101.
[35] This nuance was clearly understood by Thilo: see his remarks in Thilo and Hagen, eds., 1, lxxii.
[36] E.g., 11.468, nam "ilico" dicimus , where dicimus plainly serves the purpose for which debuit dicere is used elsewhere. The nuance is of course not peculiar to Servius. A striking example occurs at Pomp. 238.17-19, est verbum quod regit dativum, "maledico tibi." et hoc in usu pessime habemus: nemo dicit "maledixit me ille," sed dicimus "maledixit mihi" tantum modo. The sense of hoc in usu pessime habemus here becomes dear only once one realizes that Pompeius is saying, with notable compression, et hoc in usu pessime habemus: [multi enim "maledixit me ille" dicunt, sed vitiose. nam ] nemo dicit [= debet dicere ] "maledixit me ille ," sed dicimus [= debemus dicere ] "maledixit mihi. " The usage with the accusative does appear to have been vulgar; see TLL 8.164.13ff., and cf. CGL 3.112.19, 49.
pieces of instruction, where he urges the obsolete pronominal form ipsus against the common but irregular ipse :
2.60 HOC IPSVM "ipsum" autem per "m," quia usurpatum est "ipse," et est naturale "ipsus," ut [Ter. Andr. 576] "ipsus mihi Davus." dicimus ergo "ipsus, ipsa, ipsum," ut "doctus, docta, doctum."
Here, as Servius stresses what is regular and natural, the meaning of dicimus slides entirely into the realm of what should be, leaving simple description behind.[37]
Beyond demonstrating how readily description is subordinated to prescription, this last example deserves attention for a related feature, the nonchalance with which Servius identifies a palpable archaism (ipsus ) with what "we [ought to] say." Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that ipsus would seem to us moderns a palpable archaism; for in Servius's language, both dicimus and naturale effectively deny that ipsus is an archaism at all. Rhetorically, as a means of confirming the lesson, naturale plays the more important role: by associating ipsus with nature, the epithet distinguishes the form from ambivalent usages like figurae and guarantees its simple, regular validity. There is, plainly, a fair amount of room for eccentric judgment in such matters as this, in part because the concept of natura is itself a bit vague about the edges and has its own eccentricities.
So much becomes apparent as soon as one tries to pin the concept down. The natura of the language cannot be defined historically in any straightforward way, as something that once came into being with specific characteristics, some of which have endured through the passage of time while others have become obscured or distorted. As we shall see just below, Servius does not believe that the farther back in time one probes the closer one comes to natura , or that the usage of the ancient authors, the maiores , reveals the language in a pure or more natural state. Yet the natura of the language is not timeless, an abstraction somehow outside history, for it can be affected in and over time: not only can natura be corrupted, and not only can usus change the nature of parts of speech,
[37] An obvious variant of the prescriptive indicative—what might be called the permissive indicative—is found in notes where such phrases as dicimus et . . . (et ) and utrumque dicimus in effect mean licet or possumus dicere et . . . (et ), and licet or possumus utrumque dicere : e.g., 1.484; cf. Serv. 418.33f. and 442.1f., with Pomp. 269.32-34.
but Servius's treatment of archaism even implies at times that in its nature the ancients' language overlaps only partially with his own.[38] When the shift is imagined as having occurred, or whether it has ceased to occur, is not made dear, although, as we shall see, a primary agent of the change would appear to be the grammarian himself. At this moment, however, the points to be emphasized are these: to the extent that natura inheres in the grammarian's institution, in the form of rules (regulae , the guarantee of what is rectum ), it provides the grammarian with a stable place to stand; and like figurae , archaisms, where they are noted, implicitly involve usages that not only contradict the lesson Servius wishes to teach but also run against nature. In our attempt to gauge Servius's sense of his control of the language, therefore, it is important to understand what he has in mind when he deals with archaism in the opposition between antiqui and nos.
It is evident that when Servius identifies one of Vergil's usages as antiquum , an archaism, he does not mean that it was an archaism in Vergil's time (although it might have been that as well) but that he judges it to be obsolete when tested against his own complex sense of acceptable current usage. Vergil was himself one of the antiqui (maiores, veteres ) and was grouped as such, in a broad stroke characteristic of ancient scholarship, with the classical and preclassical authors; although Servius was generally aware of the chronological relationships among the various literary figures, the distinction drawn today between archaic and classical usage was not functional in his work.[39] Further, a necessary corollary derives from this repeated testing of Vergil's language for the obsolete: as in the identification of figurae , the identification of antique dicta has a prescriptive purpose. The basic relationship between the function of figurae and the function of archaism in the commentary can be stated fairly simply: as the demarcation of figurae is an attempt to deal with deviant usage synchronically, by applying the standards of correct usage to the author as though he were a contemporary, so the identification of archaism is an attempt to isolate such deviations diachronically, by constructing a temporal barrier between the author and the student.
Since the two approaches have such similar goals, we should expect them to be expressed in similar language. In fact, the associations that
[38] Corruption of natura : see the note at 2.195, p. 177. Change of the nature of parts of speech: cf. the comment at 5.603, n. 26 above. On the mutability of nature, see Barwick, Remmius 184 n. 1; Siebenborn, Sprachrichtigkeit 108-9; Blank, Ancient Philosophy 41ff.; and contrast Varro ap. Diom. 439.17f., above, n. 20.
[39] Lebek, Verba 18 n. 22, has well remarked the importance of understanding that "archaic" in a grammarian's comment means archaic relative to his own time and perception, and likewise the imprudence of accepting such distinctions at face value.
form in Servius's mind as the two approaches melt one into the other can be seen in the trend of his own rhetoric of instruction. In the examples listed below, we can watch Servius's thought pass from the synchronic to the diachronic, with an intermediary blending of the two, from figurative use versus what "he should have said," through figurative use versus what "we now [ought to] say," to archaism versus what "we now [ought to] say." The examples also further illustrate the interchangeability of debuit dicere and the prescriptive indicative dicimus :
figura. . . . nam debuit dicere. . . . (1.16)
figurate dixit. . . . nam dicimus. . . . (6.435)
figura. . . . nam modo dicimus. . . .[40] (11.73)
antique dictum. . . . nam nunc dicimus, nec iungimus. . . . (6.544)
debuit dicere. . . . ideo ausus est . . . quia . . . apud maiores . . . dicebatur. (9.467)
archaismos. . . . debuit enim dicere. . . . (10.807)
The instability of the distinction is demonstrated by the progression of the notes and is especially evident in the last two. On Aeneid 9.467, as we saw above, debuit dicere and ausus est look to the present and are intended to have their impact on the student; but the explanation, quia . . . dicebatur , looks to the past: it effectively isolates Vergil's usage and at the same time negates any suggestion that he was in reality bold; his usage, a function of his being one of the maiores , appears bold only when measured against the current state of the language. In the comment on Aeneid 10.807, dum pluit in terris, ut possint sole reducto / exercere diem , the operation is even more striking:
DVM PLVIT hic distinguendum: nam si iunxeris "dum pluit in terris," erit archaismos: debuit enim dicere "in terras." tamen sciendum est hemistichum hoc Lucretii [6.630] esse, quod ita ut invenit Vergilius transtulit.
Here the text is in effect moved into the present and punctuated as though it were a contemporary work in order to arrive at what should have been said and avoid an archaism.[41] The blending of the two ap-
[40] Cf. 1.75, notanda . . . figura: frequenter enim hac utitur. nam quod nos . . . dicimus, antiqui dicebant. . . , concerning the use of the ablative for the genitive; see further p. 186.
[41] On the series of notes to which 10.807 belongs and with which it must be read to be understood, see further pp. 188f. and n. 55.
proaches is inevitable and derives from the system Servius inherited, in which the categories of auctores (associated with figurative usage) and antiqui (the sources of archaic usage) had long since fallen together: auctoritas and vetustas are for Servius essentially one and the same[42] and are equally under constraint.
Like the subordination of description to prescription, this fusion of auctoritas and antiquitas , of figures and archaism, necessarily diminishes the precision of Servius's statements and the subtlety or consistency of his response to the text.[43] The fusion should not, however, obscure Servius's real sense that the antiqui used a language alien, in some fundamental ways, from his own. More than three centuries earlier, Quintilian had observed, "If we compare the language of the ancients with our own, almost everything we say nowadays is a figura " (Inst. 9.3.1). Servius would have agreed, although he would have altered quidquid loquimur to quidquid loquebantur in the second half of the statement.
The strain that shifts in usage produced is perhaps most evident when Servius is faced with a corruption in the received text. In such places we can see him struggling mightily but in vain to heave a line across the abyss: thus, commenting on Aeneid 9.486-87, nec te tua funere mater / produxi (as printed by Mynors, with Bembo's emendation), he attempts the following:
NEC TVA FVNERA MATER id est "funerea": nam apud maiores "funeras" dicebant eas ad quas funus pertinet, ut sororem, matrem. nam praeficae, ut et supra [6.216] diximus, sunt planctus principes, non doloris. "funeras" autem dicebant quasi "funereas," ad quas pertinet funus.
The first sentence here offers a wholly fictive explanation according to what "the ancients used to say"; the second introduces an irrelevancy recalled from an earlier comment; and the third simply restates the first by way of conclusion.
Most often, however, Servius's command of natura and his awareness of its changes provide a more useful (if still shaky) bridge. Consider, for example, his note on the difficult bit of phrasing at Aeneid 11.149-50, feretro Pallante reposto / procubuit super :
[42] The only important exceptions to this statement are the so-called neoterici , i.e., the post-Vergilian poets, especially Lucan, Juvenal, and Statius, who were auctores without being veteres. As exceptions, they caused Servius some difficulty; see Kaster, "Servius." The early collapse of auctoritas and vetustas into a single category was well noted by Barwick, Remmius 215.
[43] For treatment Of the same usage now synchronically, now diachronically, compare Servius's remarks at 3.359 with those at 12.519; similarly 8.168 (on the use of bina ) in conjunction with the notes at 1.93 and 313.
FERETRO PALLANTE REPOST.O posito Pallantis feretro: nam antiptosis est.
Servius explains the phrase by invoking antiptosis, the use of one case in place of another (here, ablative for genitive). The explanation is evidently wide of the mark, but the reason for Servius's error is sometimes misunderstood. Perhaps naturally, the modern reader assumes that the technical term is used "as a joker card" to avoid the problem, and that "the ablative for Servius has the meaning of the possessive genitive."[44] Servius's own thoughts, however, move in precisely the opposite direction: Servius is certain of the nature and function of the ablative and genitive in his own language, and is also certain that in the language of Vergil and the antiqui these amounted to something very different. It is Vergil for whom the ablative had the meaning of the genitive, as Servius had occasion to remark early on:
1.75 PVLCHRA PROLE. . . . notanda tamen figura: frequenter enim hac utitur. ham quod nos per genitivum singularem dicimus, antiqui per septimum dicebant, ut hoc loco "parentem pulchra prole," id est, "pulchrae pro]is."
The belief is hardly unique to Servius and could only be reinforced by Vergil's repeated practice.[45]
That the manipulations of Vergil could appear more odd at a distance of four hundred years than they do at a distance of two thousand—quite as odd as the archaic usage (in our sense) of Ennius—is a quirk of language and history not always fully appreciated. Thus Richard Bentley, observing Servius's note on Aeneid 10.710, PASTVS pro "pastum." nam supra ait "quem": ergo antiptosis est , reacted with characteristic vigor to what he took to be a grammarian's sleight of hand: "What the hell is that antiptosis?"[46] Both Servius and Bentley were attempting to treat a passage where, again, the received text was corrupt:
[44] Williams, "Servius" 52.
[45] With Servius's interpretation of 11.149, cf. the alternative explanation of 2.554-55, hic exitus illum / sorte tulit , noted by DServ., quidam "exitus sorte" pro "sortis" tradunt, ablativum pro genetivo. Such interpretations were no doubt encouraged by the grammarians' belief that the Romans invented the ablative so that it could share the burden of the original, i.e., Greek, genitive; cf. Pomp. 171.18-20. For the recognition of archaism implied in claims of antiptosis, see especially Nonius Marcellus, Book 9, "De numeris et casibus," which is wholly concerned with instances of antiptosis and presents vividly the distance between the language of the antiqui and the perceptions of late antiquity.
[46] Quae malum illa antiptosis! in his comment at Hot. Epod. 5.28.
aper, multos Vesulus quem pinifer annos defendit multosque palus Laurentia silva pastus harundinea.
(Aen. 10.708-10)
True to himself and to his sense of independence and authority, Bentley emended pastus to pascit or pavit (the former is printed by Mynors). Servius, also true to himself, interpreted the passage according to his own sense of the language and its changes, relying on an inference drawn from passages where Vergil does use the nominative in place of the accusative.[47] Bentley here was right, Servius wrong.[48] But we should understand that in such cases Servius is using the technical terms not to conceal his difficulties but to acknowledge the discontinuity between the Latin of the antiqui and his own. The technical term is simply an economical device provided the grammarian by his profession. Its meaning is condensed, its function in the commentary both expressive and effective: it simultaneously reveals to and impresses upon the student the distance that separates him from Vergil. Offering a guarantee that carries the weight of Servius's institutional authority, the technical term both conveys and enforces the lesson to be learned.
The examples in the last three paragraphs are extreme cases, finding Servius at or near the point of helplessness, and show his method at its worst, measured against modern expectations. But the extreme cases only highlight the normal practice. Servius's narrow historical perspective and his largely prescriptive concerns anchor him in the present moment, the nunc , of his teaching. His purpose is to anchor the student in the same rather strange slice of time. So one finds early in the commentary the following note, of a very common type transparent in its intentions:
1.3 MVLTVM ILLE. . . . "ille" hoc loco abundat. est enim interposita particula propter metri necessitatem, ut stet versus: ham si detrahas "ille," stat sensus. . . . est autem archaismos.
This comment, with, for example, that on Aeneid 5.540, PRIMVM ANTE OMNES unum vacat , or on 5.833, PRINCEPS ANTE OMNES unum vacat ,
[47] See DServ. on 2.377, delapsus ; cf. also the Grammatica Vergiliana attributed to Asper (Thilo and Hagen, eds., Servii . . . Commentarii 3.534) on 1.314, obvia. Cf. also Servius at 11.775, cassida , for the accusative used in place of the nominative; morphologically his description of Vergil's neologism is not far off.
[48] Note, however, that Servius was only more obviously wrong than the large majority of modern editors, who solve the problem by punctuating after Laurentia , thus producing for pastus a variety of colon whose disposition in the hexameter is thoroughly at odds with Vergil's practice, as Bentley himself was later to show in his comment on Lucan 1.231; see also Townend's valuable paper "Some Problems" esp. 339-43 for Vergil.
should be understood as aimed at the tendency of the common language to add unnecessary words or to use synonymous pairs for intensification.[49] The note, with its concluding sentence, is meant to suggest, "This sort of excess baggage [abundat ] is obsolete: that is not the way we [ought to] speak or write nowadays." And it is with the message of this note in mind that one must read, as Servius's students would have heard, the long series of notes of the abundat or vacat type that follows.[50]
The purpose and net effect of such notes is to place the unwanted usage of the auctores firmly in the past:
1.176 RAPVITQVE IN FOMITE FLAMMAM paene soloecophanes est. nam cum mutationem verbum significat, ablativo usus est. sed hoc solvit aut antiqua circa communes praepositiones licentia, ut est [Georg. 1.442] "conditus in nubem," contra [Aen. 2.401] "et nota conduntur in alvo" . . . ; aut "rapuit" "raptim fecit" flammam in fomite, id est, celeriter.
The note regards the coordination of prepositions with the case system and is cast in effect in the form of a quaestio —Why is this not a solecism?—to which two solutions are offered. The second is specific, explaining that the ablative is correct by current standards because no change of place occurs.[51] The first is general and more interesting, the invocation of the antiqua licentia : the standard that today would mark the usage as a solecism does not apply to the antiqui , whose language did not draw the same distinctions Servius's does in the use of communes praepositiones.[52] The note, which has as a variant the type found on Aeneid 9.467,[53] is meant to fix the distinction in the minds of Servius's students even as it exempts the antiqui by drawing a line between the past and the present.
[49] For the text used to exemplify and so to undermine bad habits of common speech, see n. 27 and below, p. 189. On pleonastic intensification, see Löfstedt, Late Latin 21-24.
[50] Compare 1.12, TYRII TENVERE COLONI deest "quam," with the generalization concerning what amant antiqui dicere vs. nos exprimimus : the generalization is clearly meant to enforce the proper use of the relative pronoun; cf. the large number of other notes of the deest type, the complement of the vacat type.
[51] Cf. Servius at 2.401 (cited in his comment), and at 5.332, 6.51, or 10.305.
[52] The lesson is expanded at 1.295 to include the assertion that the natura of certain communes praepositiones has changed over time. For the antiqua licentia , see also 1.253, on the phrase in sceptra reponis , 6.203, on super arbore ; and Serv. 419.27-36, 443.7-10, Pomp. 275.19ff., 276.28ff. Cf. Chap. 4 at n. 101, on Pomp. 237.10-22, contrasting the confusiones antiquitatis (the product of a time when adhuc indefinita erat ista ratio ) with the regula of Donatus.
[53] Debuit dicere. . . . ideo ausus est . . . quia . . . apud maiores . . . dicebatur ; see pp. 180, 184 above.
Yet the blurring of distinctions in this matter—and above all the haphazard use of in with the ablative and accusative—was much more characteristic of late Latin than of the ancients.[54] Once more the undesirable practice of common speech is put off on the antiqui. And to provide reinforcement, a series of scholia proceeds from this note, reminding the student that the lack of proper distinction belongs to the past, is obsolete, archaismos.[55] We have come a long way since then, the grammarian says: the movement of the language under the grammarian's guiding hand, toward greater refinement and regularity and away from ancient confusion or licence or harshness, is not doubted, and is a source of no little satisfaction.[56]
Servius's insistent and complacent didacticism makes his observations unreliable and sometimes bizarre, but not disingenuous. The distinction needs to be emphasized not only for a fair reading of Servius but, more important, for the reasons underlying it. When a usage is explained as arising metri necessitate , when Servius suggests what Vergil debuit dicere , when he comments on what "we say," when he distinguishes "what we say now" from archaism, the text of Vergil and the general state of the language are subordinated to Servius's sense of his own function and authority. Instead of being real objects that one tries to explain or describe historically, text and language become ciphers, assigned whatever validity or significance Servius chooses. The choice is complex and subjective, but it is not a matter of raw and conscious manipulation: it is expressed impersonally, through appeals to natura and the use of technical terms, the guarantees provided by his institutional niche; but Servius not only accepts those guarantees, and the authority they provide, as useful tools, he absorbs them into his personality. Servius believes what he says—about Vergil, the antiqui , the language, and nos —because he simply cannot believe otherwise. He has been fused with the institution he represents.
That the impersonal guarantees, rules, and authority have all been internalized is evident when we find the workings of Servius's mind displayed unself-consciously in that habit of projection we have already seen at work in Pompeius.[57] Like Pompeius, Servius most reveals himself when he explains someone else's actions and motives. To bring the
[54] Cf. Adams, Text 54-55.
[55] See 2.541, aut archaismos aut. . . , the general and specific, similar to 1.176; 6.639, archaismos , contradicting Donatus; 9.442, with additional reference to 9.347; 10.387; 10.838; and 10.807 (archaismos vs. debuit dicere ), the matter of punctuation discussed above, p. 184.
[56] Beyond the references in nn. 50-53 and 55, see, e.g., Diom. GL 1.374.5ff., 400.1ff., 427.15, 435.22ff. (and cf. 371.16ff., 381.12ff.); Mar. Vict. Ars 4.84 Mariotti (p. 85).
[57] See Chap. 4 pp. 166ff.
chapter to a close, we can examine three passages that both betray this habit of mind and draw together several of the points remarked above—the use of the text as dummy, the nuance of the prescriptive indicative, and Servius's conception of his own status.
The first example is straightforward:
8.435 TVRBATAE pro "turbantis": nam timuit homoeoteleuton et fecit supinam significationem.
The note combines exegesis (it explains and justifies Vergil's use of the wrong participle) with prescription, and is thus a variation on the metri causa or debuit dicere type; whereas the latter sort is essentially negative, obliquely warning the student against a given usage, the comment on Aeneid 8.435 is largely positive. Servius projects his own values and concerns onto Vergil in order to inculcate the lesson in his students: as Servius is and as he would have his students be, so Vergil "was afraid of homoeoteleuton" (the collocation turbantisPalladis ), because homoeoteleuton represents a vitiosa etocutio , a flawed form of expression, to be avoided in polished speech or writing.[58]
This instance of projection does not require much comment, but it should be compared with our second example, where the same tendency is present in a more interesting if less obvious form. The scholium involves the normative force of dicimus. The person who serves this time as the medium of Servius's message is Valerius Probus:
10.444 AEQVORE IVSSO pro "ipsi iussi." et est usurpatum participium: nam "iubeor" non dicimus unde potest venire "iussus." sic ergo hic participium usurpavit, ut Horatius verbum, dicens [Epist. 1.5.21] "haec ego procurare et idoneus imperor et non invitus." ergo satis licenter dictum est, adeo ut huic loco Probus [hic corruptum] alogum adposuerit.[59]
[58] For criticism of homoeoteleuton as a vitiosa elocutio , see the notes at 4.504, 9.49 and 606; cf. Pomp. 304.10, antiquum est hoc totum, hodie nemo facit. siqui fecerit, ridetur. With the function of the phrase timuit homoeoteleuton at 8.435, cf. 3.663, 10.571, 11.464, 12.5 and 781, and Schindel, Figurenlehren 27. With timuit , cf. also Serv. 409.17f.; and Pompeius on the fear of Donatus, Chap. 4 pp. 167f.
[59] The text given is that of Thilo, who seems to have made the best of the general corruption in his manuscripts by treating the phrase hic corruptum (appearing only in M of the manuscripts he used) as an interpolated note originally intended to describe the state of Servius's text itself, where the nonsensical reading .a. longam in M (a longam or ad longam in the other manuscripts) occurs instead of alogum , an emendation of Burmann. Alternatively, hic corruptum could have found its way into the text at an earlier stage as a gloss on an original reading alogum.
The didactic intent of the note concerns the form iubeor and could be paraphrased, "We do not [ought not] use the passive iubeor or forms derived from it. Look: Vergil did, and his use is so odd that Probus even marked the passage as flawed."[60] But Probus likely did nothing of the sort. This is not to say that Servius invented Probus's annotation, but that the concerns of the two men were probably not so congruent as Servius in the urgency of making his point came to suggest. Where Servius reacts to the question of morphology, Probus was probably reacting to the sense, the figure of thought—the epithet transferred in using aequore iusso in place of socii . . . iussi.[61]
Several considerations suggest that Servius has gone astray in referring to Probus. First, the thought rather than the verbal form seems to have attracted earlier comment. That is the concern of the (no doubt traditional) gloss that begins Servius's own note; moreover, this particular figure of thought seems to have stood prominently in collections of such passages: when Macrobius's Servius enthusiastically recites expressions allegedly coined by Vergil, it occurs near the head of the list (Sat. 6.6.3), where again it is the transfer of the epithet that is noted. Second, in contrast to the foregoing, there is the singularity of Servius's own teaching. His condemnation of iubeor (and so iussus ) is unique among the grammarians, but his citation of Horace's imperor suggests his train of thought clearly enough.[62]Iubeor is proscribed according to the principle that a verb governing the dative in the active voice (e.g., impero tibi, invideo tibi, obicio tibi; cf. Diom. GL 1.399.13-32 for a full account)
[60] For the alogus , see Isid. Orig. 1.20.17: alogus nota quae ad mendas adhibetur ; the alogus is listed among the critical signs, but is not glossed, in the Anecdoton Parisinum (GL 7.533-36). On this and the other notae said to have been used by Probus, see now Jocelyn, "Annotations" (I-III). My thanks to Prof. Jocelyn for showing me the proofs of "Annotations III," with his discussion of Aen. 10.444 (p. 472), in advance of publication: though he doubts (per litt. ) that we can establish anything at all about Probus's reasoning here, there is no great difference between us in the interpretation of Servius's remarks.
[61] So already Ribbeck, Prolegomena 151; but his prior assumptions regarding Servius's learning, derived from the portrait in Macrobius, made him unwilling to believe that Servius himself could have been concerned with the mere grammatical point. He therefore regarded the note as an interpolation; a similar conclusion was reached, for slightly different reasons, by Georgii, Antike Äneiskritik 454-55. Cf. also Scivoletto, "Filologia" 117.
should be construed impersonally in the passive: imperatur mihi , not imperor. Since iubeo came to be used with the dative under the influence of impero , it should be governed, Servius reasons, by the same rule: iubetur mihi , not iubeor —a bit strict, but certainly unexceptionable Latin. Servius's prohibition of the passive participle iussus is a further, less-than-thoughtful regularization.
But that leads to the Final consideration. The attempt at regularity that inspired Servius's remarks on Aeneid 10.444 is unlikely to have appealed to Probus.[63] In line with his taste for older authors unfashionable in his day, Probus's views ran in the direction of anomaly. His opinion concerning "those rotten rules and cesspools of grammar" is on record and accords with Suetonius's portrait of the man as something of an anomaly in the world of the grammatici , with interests and practices that deviated from the norm.[64] It would seem certain that the licence that disturbed Probus concerned the idea, the nonsensical (
) collocation of aequor and iussum (the bidden plain).[65] But Servius seized upon the grammatical form; finding in one of his sources a reference (probably vague) to Probus's annotation, he instinctively assumed their concerns were identical and saw support for his own eccentric position on the question of what "we say." Servius's treatment of his scholarly predecessor is precisely the same as his treatment of Vergil.
Servius's capacity for misunderstanding or misrepresenting his sources has been remarked before,[66] although not for the reason involved here. The note on Aeneid 10.444 takes us beyond casual manifestations of carelessness or animus to a distortion that, like the nuance of dicimus , is built-in and automatic. Conditioned by Servius's devotion to his professional role, the distortion is virtually a reflex, and as such brings us close to the center of Servius's identity.
[63] Although Aistermann, De M. Valerio 11, connected the scholium at 10.444 (= frg. 36 = frg. 98) with the view attributed to a Probus in cod. Paris. lat. 7491 fol. 92 (= GL 4, xxiii-xxiv = frg. 97), the latter probably does not go back to Valerius Probus but represents an inference drawn from Probus Inst. art., GL 4.156.33-157.3, on verba neutralia.
[64] See Chap. 2 at nn. 84, 85.
[66] See Goold, "Servius" 134-40, concerned mostly with pure blunders; and cf. Zetzel, Latin Textual Criticism 105f., suggesting that Servius's notes at 3.535 and 636 are a malicious distortion of Donatus.
We can perhaps take the last step by looking at our third example, another instance of projection, which seems to define Servius's view of his own status:
4.9 INSOMNIA TERRENT et "terret" et "terrent" legitur. sed si "terret" legerimus, "insomnia" erit vigilia: hoc enim maiores inter vigilias et ea quae videmus in somnis interesse voluerunt, ut "insomnia" generis feminini numeri singularis vigiliam significaret, "insomnia" vero generis neutri numeri pluralis ea quae per somnum videmus. . . . sciendum igitur quia, si "terret" dixerimus, antiqua erit elocutio: "insomnia" enim, licet et Pacuvius et Ennius frequenter dixerit, Plinius tamen exclusit et de usu removit.
Servius's note on the variant readings is set squarely amid a minor bog of Latin lexicography, the distinction between the feminine singular insomnia , "sleeplessness," and the neuter plural insomnia , "(disturbing) dreams."[67] The lexical point, however, is not the central problem here, but the final clauses of Servius's note, sciendum . . . removit. These must ultimately derive from the elder Pliny's Dubii sermonis libri VIII and are included by Servius to inform his students that the feminine singular insomnia would involve an archaic form of expression.[68] The precise moment when the usage became obsolete is pinpointed, in Servius's understanding, by the magisterial act of Pliny—exclusit et de usu removit.
The statement and the idea behind it are intriguing: why—and more to the point, how—did Pliny treat the word so that it was excluded and removed from use? How did he express himself? We cannot know for certain, and there is room for various conjectures concerning the distinction Pliny made.[69] It does seem most likely, however, that Pliny's differentiation of the two ambiguous forms, one feminine singular only, the other neuter plural only, was intended primarily to emphasize the
[67] See Getty, "Insomnia" (similarly DeRuyt, "Note"); and the lengthy rejoinder in Ussani, Insomnia esp. 77-113. The disposition in TLL s.vv. insomnia (-ae , 1935.75-1936.61) and insomnium (-i , 1937.70-1938.76) is the most sensible both in classifying the forms and in noting uncertainties.
[68] Della Casa printed insomniam , the reading of cod. F. of DServ., in her edition of the Dub. serm. (frg. 15, "insomniam" enim . . . removit ) and may have been correct: Servius normally accommodates the case of the word he quotes to the syntax of his sentence. Regardless of whether one reads insomnia or insomniam in Servius, however, the context makes it plain that he means the feminine singular.
[69] For example, Barwick, Remmius 206, suggested that the statement represented a preference for ratio , analogy, over vetustas. Yet the principle of analogy scarcely seems relevant to this problem: more significant are the examples Barwick adduced (p. 207) to show Pliny's special interest in consuetudo.
distinction in meaning, which is the center of attention in Servius and other grammarians as well. In that case, the distinction was probably grounded in Pliny's sense of consuetudo —the usage current in his own day—set against vetustas.
Pliny, in other words, was probably attempting to do no more than clarify an existing situation. In the literary language, the feminine singular was an archaism well before Pliny's day; it is attested only in the older republican poets, of the second and early first century B.C. , and thereafter in the archaizing authors of the second century A.D.[70] The neuter plural though, appears to have been used regularly in the literary language of the first century A.D. , including that of Pliny himself, and to have enjoyed even greater currency in ordinary speech.[71] If it is reasonable, then, to believe that Pliny's remarks simply recognized and defined the status quo , we might even suggest how Servius found those remarks transmitted in one of his sources—probably something along the lines of the following: Plinius [or sic Plinius or Plinius ait ]:[72] "insomnia," licet et Pacuvius et Ennius dixerit, penitus tamen de usu recessit [or exclusa est or remota est ].[73]
The precise form of the notice is not crucial; in distinguishing the usage of the antiqui , Pliny no doubt used some such phrase as hodie non utimur or abolevit or in usu non est , the kind of phrase that abounds in Servius. The point is this: the magisterial act—exclusit et de usu removit —was probably not Pliny's at all, but the product of Servius's interpretation, the act of a Pliny created by Servius in his own image, with his own prescriptive use of such phrases as hodie non utimur in mind. The chain of events suggested above, it is fair to say, accurately reflects both Servius's method and his self-image. There is no question who, in Servius's mind, has the final say in the life of the language: the simple observation of another man concerned with the language is translated by Servius, removed in time and imbued with the sense of his own authority, into an act of verbal extinction. Ipse dixit.
The grammarian's control of the language was something very personal. He was, to be sure, following a professional tradition of long standing when he offered his students a version of "Received Standard
[70] For insomnia (-ae ), see TLL 1935.75-1936.61.
[71] See Getty, "Insomnia" 21-22; TLL s.v. insomnium , 1939.9-10.
[72] The formula "Plinius: . . ." is of the kind commonly used to introduce the views of an individual in, e.g., the Scholia Veronensia.
[73] Cf. Servius at, e.g., 7.626; 9.4; or 12.298, TORREM erit nominativus "hic torris," et ita nunc dicimus: nam illud Ennii et Pacuvii penitus de usu recessit ; and Pomp. 187.10-12, legimus in Capro. . . . etiam Naevius, Attius, Pacuvius, omnes isti utuntur hoc exemplo. tamen ista de usu remota sunt. The citation of Caper is particularly suggestive, since Caper in his turn used Pliny as a major source.
Imperial" Latin,[74] expressed in the impersonal terms of his craft—natura, regula , and the like. But as he filtered that version through his own idiosyncratic preferences, choices, and distinctions, the grammarian presented and thought of himself as the maker of the lingua aetatis suae , superior to the claims of auctoritas or antiquitas. Those dissatisfied with the grammarian's personal control could circumvent it only by insisting upon a higher authority: that of God, for example,[75] or the more diffuse authority of the maiores. Macrobius's Servius took the latter course in the incident from the Saturnalia with which we began this chapter; and for his efforts, the grammarian there was roundly abused by the youth Avienus for purveying the obsolete.
I have already emphasized the radical difference in this regard between the figure Macrobius created and the man who speaks in the commentary. It remains to underline one additional point. When Avienus demands that the participants in the symposium use praesentia verba , the aetatis suae verba (Sat. 1.5.1-2), he is demanding in effect that they speak natural, regular Latin, the Latin covered by the nunc dicimus of the commentary.[76] In other words, despite the conflict between youth and teacher that Macrobius imagined, Avienus speaks much more in the manner we should expect of a student of the real Servius than of an opponent; were Avienus not meant to prove himself a basically decent sort, it would be easy to imagine him behaving like grammarians' pupils who delight in pointing out what Vergil debuit dicere.[77] Avienus's rudeness in his dash with Servius is part of his characterization, a prelude to the broader education he receives in the symposium.[78] But that Avienus should speak as he does at the outset is appropriate in another respect: his initial
[74] The phrase is Löfstedt's, Late Latin 48.
[75] See Gregory the Great's challenge in Ep. 5.53a: situs motusque et praepositionum casus servare contemno, quia indignum vehementer existimo, ut verba caelestis oraculi restringam sub regulis Donati. Cf. Smaragdus of St. Michel (s.IX): "I disagree with Donatus, because I hold the authority of Scripture to be greater," cited by Robins, Ancient and Medieval Grammatical Theory 71 (his translation).
[76] In addition to the remarks above, see Pomp. 186.34-187.16 for usus falling together with ars ; cf. the revealing comment of Porphyrio on Hor. AP 70-71: "cadentque / quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus": hoc est, ratio loquendi. [usus ] nihil enim aliud est quam regula sermonis Latini. Petschenig correctly secluded usus in the note; the whole scholium is clearly a comment on usus in Horace's verse. See also ps.-Acro ad loc. , and Brink's valuable note, Horace 2.158-59.
[77] Thus the pueri scorned by St. Augustine, C. Faust. 22.25 (PL 42.417), in a comparison with those who find fault with the prophets: similes sunt, qui in magnis ista reprehendunt, pueris inperitis in schola, qui cure pro magno didicerint nomini numeri singularis verbum numeri singularis esse reddendum, reprehendunt Latinae linguae doctissimum auctorem, qui dixit [1.212] "pars in frusta secant." debuit enim, inquiunt, dicere "secat." On debuit dicere as a criticism, see n. 31.
[78] See Kaster, "Macrobius" 242ff.
deficiencies are precisely comparable to those of the plebeia grammaticorum cohors , whose inadequate knowledge and narrowly defined expertise Macrobius repeatedly criticized. In the Saturnalia , the members of that cohors are despised for shutting themselves off, as though in a box sealed by their ignorance of the culture's roots, whereas the idealized grammarian uses the language to bring past and present together. But the Servius of the commentary limits the language's scope and personally guards all approaches to it. He is in fact just another member of the troop, using the box—his institutional niche—as his position of strength.
In these last two chapters we have reviewed some of the elements that contributed to this position of strength: the accumulation of learning preserved in the tradition on which the grammarian could rely; the confidence in the rational ordering of the language's nature and in the greater sophistication, relative to the ancients, that it brought; the ability to apply one's own learning and ratio to decide between competing views, or even to add a new or more solid piece to the great edifice here or there; and the anxious need to protect the nature of the language—and, closely linked to it, one's own expertise—from assault. There was in all this a nice cooperation between the grammarian and his tradition. The tradition fortified the grammarian in the authority and security of his niche; the grammarian preserved the tradition and paid it the compliment of his improvements.
Such cooperation made for an enduring equilibrium. The grammarian was not about to criticize the tradition in any basic and general way or to be encouraged by his fellows to do so. The obvious urge to be right was independent of any drive to say what was both true and fundamentally new in the conception of the language or in the methods of discussing it. In its broad outlines and in much of its detail, the truth had already been found, in Diomedes' phrase, through "the brilliance of human talent" (GL 1.299.3). Such confidence perhaps led to what modern scholars often see as stagnation and a failure to evolve. But in the eyes of the grammarian, that stagnation was nothing other than the stability of lasting achievement; the failure to evolve, a satisfaction with what was already effective. It is worth remembering that even the most significant innovation in the late-antique ars —Priscian's treatment of syntax—is self-consciously presented as an infusion of earlier learning from a branch of the tradition that his Latin colleagues had previously neglected:[79] what had worked before would continue to work, but would work even better for the adjustment.
[79] Prisc. GL 2.2.2ff., on the incorporation of the work done by Apollonius Dyscolus and Herodian.
From this point of view, grammar's failure to evolve is not attributable to some failure of nerve or intelligence but is a measure of its success. It remained as it was not because it was exhausted but because it worked so well and so smoothly. Perhaps the grammarians' satisfaction with the forms of analysis and the conceptual categories they had inherited over the centuries, and likewise their confidence in the familiar ordering of the language's nature, would have been shaken if they had had to confront more unruly data, derived, say, from the vulgar language of the market or of the suburban countryside. At very least, their thinking might have been modified and might have been forced to move in new directions. But of course those strata of the language not only received no sustained and systematic attention; they were effectively beneath interest. Indeed, they were not just beneath interest; they were what the inherited forms of analysis and conceptual categories, with their heavily normative emphasis, were meant to rise above. And that normative emphasis derived in turn from the embedding of the grammarians' position of strength in a larger structure of status and honor. So, after examining the grammarians' understanding of their skill and of their authority within the confines of their niche, we are reminded that this niche did not exist in a vacuum. In the next chapter we will ask how the grammarians' authority served them when they moved beyond the classroom to make their way in the world at large.