Vallat 2017 Varro

VARRO IN VIRGILIAN COMMENTARIES
Author(s): DANIEL VALLAT

Source: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies , 2017, Vol. 60, No. 2, VARRONIAN
MOMENTS (2017), pp. 92-107
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48554661
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VARRO IN VIRGILIAN COMMENTARIES:
TRANSMISSION IN FRAGMENTS
DANIEL VALLAT
Abstract: This paper analyses the transmission of Varro in late antique Virgil commentaries. Various problems are
identified and discussed: the reliability of authors’ names and titles of works in citations and testimonies; different
forms of quotation; complications entailed by manuscript transmission; the delimitation of the fragments; the
indirect transmission of Varro already in antiquity; the status and function of Varro in a Virgil commentary. Finally
I suggest that Varro had a special if implicit status in fourth-century ideological debates, in the tacit rivalry of
grammarians with Christian polemicists.
Keywords: Virgilian commentaries; grammarians; Servius; manuscripts; textual transmission; quotation;

fragments
Only a fraction of Varro’s voluminous oeuvre has survived. The only fully preserved work
is the Res rusticae; only six books out of twenty-five of De lingua Latina have survived.
For the rest, we have only fragments preserved through indirect transmission. Authors often
drew on Varro’s works without acknowledging their source: Dionysius of Halicarnassus
used the Res humanae for his history of the origins of Rome; Ovid brought the Res divinae
into his Fasti; and Plutarch built on Varro’s works in his Roman Questions. These are tacit
appropriations. Except for fragments transmitted by Pliny the Elder in the first century
ad and Gellius in the second, most of our fragments of Varro come from fourth-century
sources. Apart from fragments and testimonies preserved by Christian polemicists such
as Augustine,1 the vast majority of our fragments of Varro come from grammarians,
lexicographers, and commentators. I focus here on the Virgilian commentaries and review
the various problems posed by the presence and the exploitation of Varro in these works.
1. Virgil commentators
The commentaries on Virgil constitute the largest corpus of ancient exegesis on a non-
Christian Latin author, even though only part of it has come down to us, and what has
survived is heterogeneous in form and nature.2 Among Virgilian commentators we discern
only one strong personality, Servius, and date him to the late fourth/early fifth century.3
Undoubtedly the most important ancient exegete of Virgil’s works, Servius’s commentary
incorporates — but radically condenses — inherited critical material.4 Indeed, in line with
1
See Hadas in this volume.
2
For the lost material, see Ribbeck 1866: 114–200; Timpanaro 1986. I omit here the commentary of T. Claudius
Donatus (Interpretationes Vergilianae) and Macrobius’s Saturnalia, two works which, each in their own way,
depart from the grammarians’ world and provide, respectively, a rhetorical commentary and a typical scholarly
study about the veteres in general and Virgil in particular — but not a line-by-line commentary.
3
On the date of Servius, see Brugnoli 1988; Murgia 2003; Velaza 2008.
4
See Lloyd 1961; Cameron 2011: 408–09; Vallat 2016.
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© 2017 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

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DANIEL VALLAT: VARRO IN VIRGILIAN COMMENTARIES 93
ancient scholarly practice, Servius’s commentary is not original stricto sensu, but rather
a compilation, enriched by more personal remarks. It is clear, for example, that Servius
significantly abridged the (now lost) authoritative commentary of Aelius Donatus, rendering
it suitable for use in the classroom by removing the erudite digressions. Vast as it is, Servius’s
commentary still represents a digest of the first four centuries of Virgil criticism, but unlike,
say, Macrobius’s Saturnalia, it is tailored to an audience of pupils.
The Servius Danielis (SD) is an anonymous set of scholia: it consists of non-Servian
additions found in some manuscripts of Servius.5 They are named after the editor Pierre
Daniel, who first published most of the additions in 1600. Their origin is still debated, and
their possible provenance from Donatus’s lost commentary was a major focus of twentieth-
century Servian scholarship, even though this theory has more recently aroused scepticism.6
Whatever their origin, the additions are typical of a commentum variorum, a stratified mix
from different periods: some material appears to be later than, and drawing on, Servius,
while other notes may be earlier, as they transmit passages from pre-Servian exegesis that
Servius deliberately omitted.
The Veronese scholia are marginalia in a palimpsest of Virgil (Verona, Bibl. Cap. XL.38,
fifth–sixth century). Though they are very imperfect and full of lacunae, they nonetheless
provide valuable material that seems to be independent of Servius and Servius Danielis.7
The other corpora are also incomplete. A commentary on the Bucolics and Georgics
was falsely attributed to Valerius Probus of Berytus (first century ad). The attribution was
probably fixed in the Renaissance, since there is no medieval manuscript for this text,
but only manuscripts of the late-fifteenth century and the editio princeps of 1502.8 The
preserved parts of pseudo-Probus’s text are erudite and elaborate, preserving scholia which
are otherwise unattested, but apparently incomplete, since nearly all linguistic material has
been removed. It appears to contain much ancient material, and may have been reorganized
later.
The last three texts (Philargyrii Explanationes in Bucolica, Brevis expositio
Georgicorum, Scholia Bernensia) are interrelated and probably derive from a late antique
common source; early Irish glosses attest to the insular circulation of the source text during
the seventh and eighth centuries. These three texts point to a source containing a version of
the Servian commentary augmented with material from other scholia.9 Philargyrius’s text
on the Bucolics has survived in two versions (Explanationes I and II). The Brevis expositio
Georgicorum is extant until G. 2.542.10 Finally, the Berne scholia are named after the main
manuscript which transmits them (Bernensis 172).11
5
See Thomas 1880; Thilo 1881. SD additions to the text of Servius are sometimes ineptly stitched on (Goold 1970:
109–10). At times the text of Servius and SD are interwoven under one lemma; for example, both versions of the
note on the secret name of Rome (A. 1.277) cite Varro, but that of SD is more complete and gives details missing in
Servius: it might therefore seem older; but the extra details could have derived from other sources such as Solinus,
Festus, etc., and so the SD note is not necessarily to be dated closer in time to Varro. For other notes imbricating
Servius and SD which mention Varro, see A. 1.532; 2.166; G. 1.166; 1.270; 4.63.
6
See Lloyd 1961; Brugnoli 1988: 89; Cameron 2011: 573–74; Vallat 2012a.
7
See Daintree–Geymonat 1988; Baschera 1999.
8
See Gioseffi 1991.
9
See Daintree–Geymonat 1988.
10
For all these texts, I have used Hagen’s 1902 edition.
11
We still depend on Hagen’s 1867 edition.

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2. Varro’s name: presence and absence
The presence of Varro in Virgilian commentaries is much more extensive than mere mention
of his name might imply. Internal correspondences can help us identify a Varronian source
where none is acknowledged; for example, Servius twice (A. 1.54 and 5.145) derives the
word carcer (‘prison’) from the verb arceo, but only names Varro in the second instance.12
Without it, we would not know that Servius had borrowed and summarized (and perhaps
misunderstood) the etymology from Varro (L. 5.151).
Another example may illustrate the phenomenon of name-vanishing: in G. 1.99, Servius
Danielis preserves the names of authors (Varro and Nigidius), while the Brevis expositio
replaces them with indefinite pronouns (alii […] alii). Thus, names are easily dropped in the
manuscript transmission, especially for non-literary texts, which can be freely reworded.13
Since this kind of tacit transmission was extremely common, it is difficult to identify
unacknowledged sources and to quantify the phenomenon in general. We may surmise,
however, that Varro was most often left unacknowledged where commentators were drawing
on his primary fields of specialism: the Latin language, Roman history and traditions, and
Roman religion.
Source citations in ancient commentaries were not always transmitted with consistency.
Proper names tended to disappear during medieval transmission, especially in the case of
marginal scholia. There is evidence for this practice also in antiquity itself.14 Even though
scholarly commentaries would generally preserve authors’ names, school commentaries
often replaced them with pronouns, a phenomenon which is also found in the Greek
tradition.15 Servius, and probably Donatus before him, greatly reduced the number of
explicit references to his sources. Accordingly, the presence of Varro became progressively
more anonymous from late antiquity onwards, such that even in modern editions many
fragments which are not authenticated by Varro’s name are still attributed to him.
Moreover, the name ‘Varro’ is potentially ambiguous when given as the author of poetic
quotations, since it could refer either to the scholar, who also wrote poetry, or to his near
contemporary, the ‘neoteric’ poet P. Terentius Varro Atacinus. Varro Atacinus is quoted by
name six times in Servius and SD.16 The other 207 occurrences of Varro’s name refer to the
scholar, and are distributed as follows:
12
For another example see Servius, A. 4.427 and 5.81.
13
Vallat 2016.
14
Goold 1970: 104, 110; Vallat 2012b: 250–51.
15
Dickey 2007: 111–12 for the use of indefinite pronouns.
16
See Lloyd 1961: 302 quoting Mountford–Schultz 1930; there are in fact more allusions than this, but without
quotation.

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Servius 84
Servius Danielis 99
Scholia Veronensia 5 (6)17
pseudo-Probus 7
Philargyrius 1
Breuis expositio G. 4 (7)
Scholia Bernensia 7 (16)
207
A striking preponderance of the citations occur in Servius and Servius Danielis. Since
the text of Servius Danielis is only a fraction of the length of the Servian text (between
five per cent and thirty per cent of the Aeneid commentary, depending on the book), the
similar figures for the two texts may mislead: in fact, Varro is cited with much higher
density in Servius Danielis, which apparently preserved a large number of quotations that
Servius excluded. The same reasoning applies to the Scholia Veronensia, given their very
fragmentary state.17
This suggests that Servius may be partly responsible for the disappearance of Varro’s
name, as well as the names of other Republican authors, in the exegetical tradition. Lloyd
convincingly demonstrated that Servius deleted many references to Republican authors in
the final stage of a transformation that may have begun with Donatus and his efforts to
edit scholarly exegesis for the perceived needs of a younger audience.18 The practice of
anonymization contrasts sharply with Augustine’s ad hominem polemic in the City of God
on Varro’s authoritative account of Roman religion.19
Taken as a whole, Varro’s name in Virgil commentaries is generally a reliable indication
of authenticity: it does not seem that there is any pseudepigraphic attribution here, contrary
to Greek traditions.20 Where comparison between quotations and Varro’s preserved works
is possible, it emerges that the quotations are authentic, even if the detail of the text may
sometimes vary (see below).21
3. Varro’s titles
The titles of Varro’s works provide further evidence for the authenticity of the fragments,
although they present specific problems. A title is given for a little under a third of the Varro
quotations in Virgil commentaries (64/207), and only a small fraction of Varro’s works are
represented, as shown in the following table, with titles by decreasing number of citations:
17
The numbers in brackets give the total of occurrences in the work, but one should deduct quotations similar to
what is found in Servius: in this case, except for the Scholia Veronensia, quotations probably come from Servius
himself. Therefore, the first number indicates the number of original or independent occurrences.
18
See Thomas 1880: 182; Lloyd 1961: 296, 298, 323; Goold 1970: 135; Brugnoli 1988; Vallat 2016.
19
See Hadas in this volume.
20
Cf. Cameron 2004: 124–63.
21
There is one uncertain case: the Brevis expositio (2.168) attributes a note to Varro on the Ligures that Servius
Danielis (A. 11.715) attributes to Nigidius Figulus. The Scholia Bernensia (G. 2.168) in Hagen’s edition, also refer
to Nigidius. We may also have a rare case of contradiction, about the etymology of vates, between SD, A. 3.443
and Varro, Ling. 7.36. Either SD was wrong in attributing the fragment, or Varro allowed internal contradiction,
which is not unusual.

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Servius SD Phil. BEG Bern. Probus Veron. Total

Ant. divinae 4 9 1 14
Logistorici 2 3 4 1 10
Ant. humanae 5 2 1 9
De lingua Latina 5 1 6
Gens P.R. 5 5
Saturae 3 1 1 5
Ora maritima 4 4
Res rusticae 1 1 2
Vita P.R. 2 2
Aetia 2 2
De gradibus 1 1
De familiis Troianis 1 1
Epistolicae quaestiones 1 1
De saeculis (?) 1 1
De ludis theatralibus (?) 1 1
De scaenicis originibus 1 1
(?)
Titles/quotations 17/84 34/99 1/1 2/4 0/7 7/7 3/5 64/207
It should be noted that titles are not necessarily representative of the content of each
quotation: for example, an extract from the De lingua Latina might refer not to a linguistic
matter, but to a theological one (SD, G. 1.11).
Titles pose various problems: they did not have fixed status in antiquity, and synonymy
was common.22 If the Antiquitates divinae are usually designated by the same word
divinarum, texts with multiple titles such as Logistorici were designated either by their
generic name, or by their subject matter, or by the name of their dedicatee.23
A few titles remain uncertain. Some scholars include the De ludis theatralibus (Servius,
A. 10.894) in the Antiquitates humanae;24 others (perhaps correctly) postulated that
it was one of Varro’s books on theatre.25 Similarly, the De scaenicis originibus (SD, G.
1.19) is problematic: it is either a Logistoricus or an independent treatise. The question is
complicated by the formulation de scaenicis originibus uel in Scauro, ‘in the Origins of the
Theatre or in the Scaurus’ where it is not clear whether uel suggests an alternative title for
the same work or the title of a different work.26
22
See, e.g. Schröder 1999.
23
For example: in logistoricis: Servius, A. 5.80; de pudicitia: SD, A. 4.45; in Logistorico, qui inscribitur Tubero
de origine humana: Probus, Ecl. 6.31 (341 Hagen). In general, Servius seems to have used the generic title, SD the
subject, and the other commentaries a more detailed convention of entitulature. According to Jerome, there were
seventy-six books of Logistorici, which are not all identified; see Hendrickson 1911.
24
See Teuffel 1873: 244.
25
Brunetti (1874: 1425) classified it among the fragments from unknown books.
Riese (1865: 37, 256) emended uel to et in the belief that there were two works. Those who consider it a single
26
work (a Logistoricus) include Chappuis (1868: 49), Brunetti (1874: 775, 902), and Lloyd (1961: 311).

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The referent of the expression de saeculis (SD, A. 8.526) is also uncertain. Is it a title (‘in
the book On Centuries’) or an indication of subject matter (‘when talking about centuries’)?
If the former, it is not clear whether the phrase refers to a separate treatise or to a book from
the Antiquitates humanae, and the question has not really progressed since the nineteenth
century.27
In A. 8.128, Servius attributes a passage to the Aetia of Varro (quod Varro in Aetiis
ponit, ‘as Varro reports in the Origins’), while a manuscript of Servius Danielis (one of the
three traditions of Servius’s text according to Murgia 1975) ascribes the same passage to
the Antiquitates (quod Varro in antiquitatis libris ponit, ‘as Varro reports in his books on
antiquity’). It is typical of the transmission of lesser-known texts that their titles are changed
to titles still familiar to scribes or readers.28
In some cases the commentary gives the correct title but not the correct book number.
For example, in his note on the balm melisphylla (G. 4.63), Servius refers to the first book
of the Res rusticae: in fact, the reference occurs in the third book (R. 3.10.16).
In A. 2.225, Thilo edited the text of Servius Danielis as it stands in the single manuscript:
Varro autem rerum divinarum libro †XIX. delubrum esse dicit aut ubi plura numina sub uno
tecto sunt, ut Capitolium, aut […], ‘Varro in book 19 of the Divine Antiquities says that the
delubrum is where different gods are all under the same roof, as in the case of the Capitol, or
[…]’. The crux indicates a textual corruption in the view of the editor. Daniel had first read
XXIX, and emended it to XIX, but the appendix of his edition of 1600 reads 27. Merkel
proposed correcting the book number to VI, even though Macrobius quotes the same extract
specifying that it comes from the eighth book, libro octauo.29 Thilo argued that what may
have originally been written was libro XXXI antiquitatum qui est VI rerum divinarum, ‘in
book 31 of the Antiquities, that is in book 6 of the Divine Antiquities’, but it is dubious
whether so complex a formulation ever existed. In any case, it is clear that abbreviated
numbers, like proper names, are sensitive to corruption in textual transmission.30
Attribution may be uncertain even in cases where all manuscripts are in agreement.
Servius on A. 1.382 cites the second book of the Antiquitates divinae. But the fragment
concerns Aeneas, and so to Krahner it seemed more likely that it belongs to the Antiquitates
humanae. On such grounds Krahner proposed emending divinarum to humanarum — an
emendation accepted by Mirsch,31 but not by Thilo or the Harvard editors, and rightly
so: even if the attribution is wrong, Servius may already have found divinarum in his
intermediate source — as illustrated below, he did not usually verify the original sources.
These examples demonstrate some of the difficulties of attributing fragments to specific
works of Varro. Even though Servius never quotes the Antiquitates by name, Mirsch credits
him with transmission of twenty-three fragments from that work; some of these attributions
are securely corroborated by correspondence with independent sources, but many are
27
Riese (1865: 258), Chappuis (1868: 51), and Lloyd (1961: 311) considered it a Logistoricus; Brunetti 1874 was
not consistent, attributing it to the Logistorici (col. 779) and to the eighteenth book of the Antiquitates humanae
(col. 1285); Mirsch (1882: 129) also thought it was separate from the Antiquitates humanae. By contrast, other
scholars writing at the same time tried to prove that de saeculis was the title of AH 15: Kettner 1868: 14–15;
Gruppe 1876: 51–60.
28
See Kirchner 1910: 11–13.
29
Merkel 1841: 27, 123; Brunetti 1874: 1327–28; Boissier 1861: 224.
30
For example, see the textual variants in Servius’s note on the relative foundation dates of Rome and Carthage
(A. 1.12).
31
Mirsch 1882: 89 (fr. 2.10).

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questionable. A deduction is not a certainty.32 The material discussed here also shows the
extent to which modern readers and editors of Varro remain dependent on nineteenth-
century scholarship.33
4. Forms of presence
Varro is present in many forms in Virgil commentaries. The variety is partly due to the fact
that in antiquity and the Middle Ages the commentary was not considered a literary work
with fixed-text status, but rather a didactic tool that could be freely reworded, reworked,
and abbreviated.34
Direct quotation of Varro in oratio recta would appear to be the most straightforward
form, and might seem to guarantee authenticity, or at least a higher degree of accuracy than
reported speech.35 Consider, for example, the following note on the spelling of (h)arena,
‘sand’: et Varro sic definit ‘si ab ariditate dicitur non habet, si ab haerendo […] habet’, ‘and
Varro gives this definition: “if the word comes from ariditas, it is not written with an h-; if
it comes from haereo, it gets one”’ (Servius, A. 1.172 = 280b Funaioli). Here, one would
probably be right in thinking that Servius is repeating Varro’s own words. This is usually,
but not always, the case. The appearance of authenticity may be deceptive, as the following
example illustrates:
Servius, A. 4.167: Varro dicit: ‘aqua et Varro, Ling. 5.61: igitur causa nascendi duplex: ignis
igni mariti uxores accipiebant’. et aqua. ideo ea nuptiis in limine adhibentur, quod
Varro says: ‘the husbands used to coniungitur hic, et mas ignis, quod ibi semen, aqua
receive their wives with water and femina, quod fetus ab eius humore.
fire’. Therefore the conditions of procreation are two:
fire and water. Thus they are used at the threshold
in weddings, because there is union here, and fire is
male, which the seed is in the other case, and the
water is the female, because the embryo develops
from her moisture. (tr. Kent)
One cannot establish with absolute certainty that the De lingua Latina was Servius’s source
here; it may have been the Aetia or another work which treated the same subject in different
words.36 Quotations introduced in oratio obliqua involve a higher degree of modification,
resulting from syntactic integration.37
32
See Canetta 2016. Moreover, Varro was sometimes repetitive in his works: this makes untitled fragments more
difficult to attribute.
33
See also de Melo in this volume.
34
See Murgia 1975: passim; Vallat 2016.
35
Lloyd 1961 organized his study of Varronian quotations on this basis. See also Uría Varela–Gutiérrez González
2011: 58–59.
36
See also Servius, A. 11.787; SD, A. 1.108; 1.112; 9.52 etc. Moreover, there are dubious cases of direct quotation:
in Servius, A. 1.52, about Aeolus, some manuscripts read: sed, ut Varro dicit, rex fuit insularum, ‘but, as Varro says,
he was king of the islands’ (paraphrase) and others read: sed Varro dicit ‘rex fuit insularum’, ‘but Varro says: “he
was king of the islands”’ (direct quotation).
37
See Servius, A. 12.7 and Varro, Ling. 7.52.

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At the other end of the spectrum lies the simple allusion: the reader is told that Varro
treated such-and-such a topic, but not given Varro’s ipsissima verba. 38
Between quotation and allusion, there are a variety of forms, including paraphrase and
summary. For example, Servius (G. 3.273) explains the episode of mares becoming pregnant
by the winds, and says that Varro also recorded this phenomenon; but the words he attributes
to Varro in oratio obliqua do not literally match the corresponding passage of Res rusticae
(2.1.19). Servius adds elements (nimio ardore; frigidiores ventos; ad sedandum calorem)
that are not in Varro, but that are in Virgil (G. 3.272–79). So Servius attributes to Varro
what in fact is a paraphrase from Varro and Virgil. In SD, A. 3.366, the notice gives Varro’s
etymologies on the Latin names of wonders. But the phrasing is less expansive than what is
typically found in De lingua Latina, and so here it seems likely that Servius Danielis may
have transmitted a summary, rather than the original text.39 And the secundum-formulation
(secundum Varronem, passim) may introduce both verbatim and paraphrased quotations.
In sum, no citation of Varro in Virgilian commentaries commands certainty about the exact
phrasing of a fragment, since all scholarly material is subject to rewriting during the process
of transmission.
The phenomenon emerges with greater clarity when the same fragment is reported
multiple times in Virgil commentaries. In general, the same formulation rarely appears
twice. The second occurrence may summarize the first one,40 or present a similar but not
exact repetition.41 So it would be wrong to think that we have Varro’s original words; rather
the Virgil commentaries preserve testimonies that exhibit different degrees of reliability.42
5. Problems of textual transmission
In addition to these problems of form, those who wish to establish the text of Varro must also
contend with problems of manuscript transmission. One must distinguish between cases in
which Varro’s text is extant and may be compared with that of the indirect transmission,
and (far more often) cases in which the original is lost, and we are confronted with textual
problems in trying to establish what Varro wrote and what the Virgilian commentator wrote.
The first case is illustrated in the following table:
38
Cf. Servius, A. 9.600; SD, A. 1.122 sic et Varro; 8.600; G. 2.533, etc.
The situation is in fact more complex if one takes into consideration cross-references in Isidore and Paulus; see
39
Vallat 2014: 156–57.

40
See Servius A. 3.444 and 6.74 (about the Sibylla); A. 5.409 and 6.304 (on the meaning of senior).
41
See, e.g. Servius, A. 5.80 and 11.97.
42
See also Servius, A. 6.36 and 6.72; Servius, A. 5.4 and SD, A. 4.682; Servius, A. 1.382 and SD, A. 2.801; SD,
A. 1.378 and 3.148; SD, A. 4.59 and 4.166 (one or two fragments?); Servius, Ecl. 7.55 and Schol. Bern. G. 1.448.

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SD, G. 1.11 (Thilo): Varro ad Ciceronem Ling. 7,36 (Kent): Fauni dei Latinorum, ita
ita ait ‘<Fauni> dii Latinorum, ita ut <et> ut et Faunus et Fauna sit; hos versibus quos
Faunus et Fauna sit. †per ex versibus quos vocant Saturnios in silvestribus locis traditum
vocant Saturnios, in silvestribus locis solitos est solitos fari <futura a> quo fando faunos
fari futura atque inde faunos dictos’. dictos.
‘Varro says in his book dedicated to Cicero: ‘Fauni “Fauns” are divinities of the Latins,
“<Fauni> are divinities of the Latins, of of both sexes, so that there are both Faunus
both sexes, so that there are <both> Faunus and Fauna; the story has come down that
and Fauna; the story has come down from they, in the so-called Saturnian verses, were
the so-called Saturnian verses that they accustomed in well-wooded spots fari ‘to
were accustomed in well-wooded spots fari speak’ <those events that were to come>,
‘to speak’ those events that were to come, from which speaking they were called
whence they were called Fauni.” Fauni.’ (tr. Kent)
In the standard editions used here, there are slight textual differences between the two
versions (in bold): it is obvious that each of the two texts has been emended by comparison
with the other.43 A feature of indirect transmission is that it may preserve a more accurate
text than the direct tradition. In this case, there is every reason to believe that neither version
transmits the original text of Varro, but that each has retained a part of it; it would, however,
be methodologically unsound to emend either.
In the second case, the corresponding work of Varro is no longer available, and modern
editors depend entirely on the manuscript tradition of Virgil commentaries, a tradition
which is not always consistent.44 For example, in Servius G. 3.446 (musmonem dicit ducem
gregis, quem ita et Varro commemorat, ‘Virgil calls the leader of the herd musmo, and so
too does Varro’), Thilo’s apparatus (musmonem AV: simonem H ē nomen M) points out
that the original text (musmonem, corroborated by musmonum at Pliny HN 8.199) had been
misunderstood and caused incorrect variants based on medieval reinterpretation (simonem
may have been suggested by a Christianizing interpretation of ducem gregis). But even
when manuscripts agree, the text can still be difficult to understand.45
Finally, sometimes fragments of Varro are indirectly transmitted by a single manuscript,
and so there is no external control. This is generally true for Servius Danielis’s commentary
on the first two books of the Aeneid. For example, the word liberatae at SD A. 1.448 (Varro. fr.
577.2 Bücheler) was emended by Thilo to libratae, while Riese preferred to restore liberatae.46
Each fragment of Varro in Virgilian commentaries has its own story. Each source, and
sometimes each part of each source, has its own particular tradition, and so in this area
we cannot rely on the analogical method alone. The editor must examine the specifics of
each case and consider each source from the point of view of its intellectual context, its
palaeographical and editorial traditions, and its reception in modern times. In this paper the
main problems involved in extracting fragments from Virgil commentaries are addressed;
but different representatives of Varro’s secondary tradition would call for different editorial
criteria: for example, Nonius Marcellus’s aims were purely lexicographic; his manuscript
tradition is independent of the Servian tradition; and his quotation of verse fragments has
caused challenges for modern editors.
Compare also SD, A. 1.43 and Varro, Ling. 7.23, where the last sentence is an editorial addition from the text of
43
SD. Cf. also SD, A. 1.505 and Varro, Ling. 5.161.

44
See Murgia 1975.
45
See SD, A. 3.349; 8.330; G. 1.70; 4.265.
46
Riese 1865. See another similar problem, still unsolved in SD, A. 1.727.

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6. A matter of boundaries
Another important problem is the delimitation of fragments.47 While it is usually clear where
quoted fragments begin, it can be difficult to tell where they end and the commentator
resumes in his own voice.
At times fragments of Varro are embedded in Virgilian exegesis in ways that involve
excessive stratification. At Servius, A. 5.409, an Ovid quotation is inserted within Varro’s
text. At A. 1.449, on the different kinds of doors, it is not clear where the Varro quotation
ends:
valvae autem sunt, ut dicit Varro, quae revolvuntur et se velant; ianua autem est
primus domus ingressus, dicta quia Iano consecratum est omne principium. cetera
intra ianuam ostia vocantur generaliter, sive valvae sint sive fores, quamuis usus ista
corruperit.
As for the valvae, as Varro says, they are doors which go back (revolvuntur) and hide
themselves; as for ianua, it is the first entrance of a house, thus named from Janus, to
whom all beginnings are dedicated. The other ones, inside the ianua, get the generic
name ostia (‘opening’), whether they are valvae or fores — however, common usage
has confused those terms.
Thilo attributed to Varro only the first definition of valvae and ended the quotation after
se velant. But one might argue that the quotation continued until principium. The third
sentence does contain typically Servian wording (sive […] sive), but the opening words
(cetera […] generaliter) could also be a summary of Varronian material. The difficulty is
typical of fragmentary transmission, especially within texts which were not punctuated and
which incorporated other texts.48
This leads into the problem of a series of citations on one matter, which I shall now
discuss. When we encounter Varro’s name alongside other ancient authors in the Virgil
commentaries,49 or alongside indefinite pronouns such as alii,50 we cannot tell whether
the cluster of sources was assembled by the commentator, or whether Varro had already
gathered them. This problem is typical of the commentum variorum, which obscures the
chronology of scholarly stratification.51
7. What kind of knowledge?
Did Servius have direct knowledge of Varro? There are clues that suggest he did not. Some
of these have already been discussed above, such as uncertainty over titles. Then there is
also the paradox, well known from J. Fontaine’s studies of Isidore, that the more accurate
a reference is, the more likely it is to be a second- or third-hand reference.52 Other citation
patterns point to indirect knowledge and late-stage integration of Varro: the interrupted
quotation noted above (Servius, A. 5.409); in the Brevis expositio Georgicorum 1.1, two
47
For fragment delimitation in the grammarians, see Uría Varela–Gutiérrez González 2011.
48
See also Servius, A. 1.449; 2.81; 3.445; 4.167; Ecl. 7.21; G. 3.18; SD, A. 1.378; 2.512; 3.67; 8.363; Ecl. 8.12.
49
E.g. SD, A. 3.334.
50
E.g. SD, A. 3.12: id est Varro et alii complures, ‘that is Varro and many others’.
51
On horizontal and vertical stratification, see Béjuis-Vallat 2012: 308–10.
52
Fontaine 1959: 745.

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consecutive sentences from R. 1.29 are treated as if they were distinct fragments; and as
noted above, Servius’s report of Varro at G. 3.273 is simply inaccurate.
Beyond these points, serial citations on the same problem systematically obscure the
ultimate source of the data. The first kind of serial citation, ascribing a point to Varro and
indefinite others (alii), leaves it uncertain whether Varro was the first or last in a series to
maintain the point.53 The deletion of the other authors’ names suggests that Varro may have
been not only the most famous authority to have held the view, but the first. This may be
inferred from other serial formulations which have not been truncated, and which allow us
to trace the genealogy of the fragment, as in the following example:
quam rem a Varrone tractatam confirmat et Plinius
Pliny too confirms this meaning treated by Varro (Servius, A. 6.304)
quod Varro et Suetonius commemorant
as Varro and Suetonius record. (Servius, G. 3.24)
In these examples it seems likely that Pliny and Suetonius quoted Varro and were the first
steps in the transmission. This kind of series is usually in chronological order,54 and there is
every reason to believe that most of the quotations from Varro were transmitted on the same
principle, and that the name of the intermediate source was summarized by a pronoun such
as multi, ceteri, alii...55 Moreover, we have one example (SD, G. 3.313) which explicitly
reports indirect transmission through an intermediary: the reader is informed that Varro’s
opinion is cited by Celsus (probably the first-century encyclopedist rather than the third-
century grammarian Arruntius Celsus).56 It seems likely that grammarians transmitting the
Virgil commentaries did not verify their sources directly, and that they did not feel that
they were expected to. In addition, we do not know how widely Varro’s works circulated
in late antiquity, and even if some of them were extant, it is hard to imagine a grammaticus
trawling through Varro’s monumental oeuvre to verify a three-word quotation. Perhaps the
strongest argument in favour of the Virgil commentators’ indirect knowledge of Varro rests
on the well-known working methods of the grammarians who transmitted these mostly
variorum commentaries: they tended to copy (and sometimes modify) the most recent
sources at their disposal.57
53
Cf. Servius, A. 6.733; 8.51; SD, A. 1.277; 1.415; 3.12; 3.85; 3.113 = 11.306; Ecl. 8.99.
54
See also: Servius, A. 5.45; 6.638; 7.563; 8.233; 9.600; SD, A. 8.600; 11.143.
55
Thilo 1881: xiv–xv showed that we must be cautious in the case of such plural pronouns, which can refer to a
single scholar; see also Cameron 2004: 106.
56
See Zetzel 1981: 38.
57
Thomas 1880: 13, 204; Thilo 1881: xxi–xxii, lxxiv–lxxv; Halfpap-Klotz 1882: 44; Moeller 1892: 24; Kirchner
1910: 20; Lammert 1912: passim; Bährens 1917: 107; Lloyd 1961: 301, 315, 326; Goold 1970: 106; Brugnoli
1988: 809; Kaster 1988: 169; Maltby 2005, etc.

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8. Why quote Varro? The art of digression
The presence of Varro in Virgil commentaries is the result of compilation through the
centuries, the compound product of numerous scholars’ labours. The surviving texts present
merely the final edifice without telling the history of its development.
Quotation is a pervasive technique in the Virgilian commentaries, in line with
Alexandrian exegetical practice (for example of the Greek epics). Quotations support
and illustrate points, and furnish proof by example, as well as introducing students to the
authoritative discourse, which is one of the foundations of the ars grammatica. The length,
number, and shape of quotations all vary greatly. Sources may be either literary (auctores,
often cited by name, for illustrative purposes) or scholarly (used primarily as supplements,
and often difficult to identify).
The grammarians’ canon of classical authors was revised in the fourth century and
included, in particular, the poets and a few prose authors.58 The grammarians focused
primarily on linguistic matters, and less often on literary ones.59 Varro is not a major figure in
their canon. According to an ancient principle believed to have originated with Aristarchus,
the author should be explained by reference to his own works (Ὅμηρον ἐξ Ὁμήρου
σαφηνίζειν),60 and so Virgil is by far the most-cited author in Virgil commentaries. Explicit
use of ‘scholarly’ sources is uneven and restricted in works intended for school use, such as
Servius. By contrast, SD is more explicitly learned, while Macrobius remains the model for
late antiquity. Varro is the only true scholarly source cited explicitly, because his name was
prestigious and because he enjoyed a strong authority in conservative grammatical circles
in three key areas: grammar, history, and religion.61
What was the purpose of quoting Varro in a Virgil commentary? Was Varro really useful
for any interpretation of Virgil? To answer these questions, a glance at the distribution of
Varro citations in a sample of commentary, on Aeneid 1, may be helpful. There are twelve
occurrences in Servius62 and fifteen63 in Servius Danielis, distributed across the following
subjects:
Aeneid 1 Servius Servius Danielis

Linguistics 5 6
Religion 2 5
Historia64 3 1
Mos antiquus 2 2
Geography 2 0
64
58
See for example Kaster 1978; Holtz 1981: 83.
59
Lazzarini 2013.
60
Nünlist 2015.
61
Lloyd 1961: 311.
62
Servius, A. 1.22; 52; 172; 246; 277; 382; 408; 449; 532; 648; 697; 740.
63
SD, A. 1.42; 43; 108; 112; 122; 182; 378 (bis); 415; 448; 505 (bis); 595; 649; 727.
64
Defined here as the ancient and sometimes legendary history of Rome, see Lazzarini 1984 and Dietz 1995.

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104 BICS-60-2 2017
Some of the citations belong in two fields, such as Servius, A. 1.532 on the origin of
Oenotria, which concerns both etymology and historia. There is not necessarily any
correspondence between the work from which the fragment derives and the use to which it
is put it in the commentary: for example, of the two extracts from De ora maritima (SD, A.
1.108 and 112), the first one is an antiquarian note on geography, while the second concerns
semantics. We can extrapolate the same pattern for untitled fragments: a remark by Varro on
a deity does not necessarily come from the Antiquitates divinae; a linguistic note does not
necessarily come from De lingua Latina. The editor must be wary of overhasty attributions.
In general, one may distinguish two levels of commentary for scholarly and school use
respectively.65 Of course the boundary between the two is sometimes blurred, but longer
notes are usually more erudite, and while linguistic scholia aim at a school audience, those
on religion and ancient customs exhibit higher-level learning. One might divide them up as
follows:
Erudite scholia School scholia

Servius 5 7
Servius Danielis 13 2
The notes of SD appear to be on the whole more learned, as one might have expected: SD is
a commentum variorum, whereas Servius’s commentary is essentially a school text.
This being the case, how many of these twenty-seven references to Varro really help
us to understand Virgil better? In fact, very few: I found only four of them helpful to
interpretation:
-SD, A. 1.108: a scholarly note on geography to illustrate a learned allusion in Aen.
1.108–9;
-Servius, A. 1.246: to explain a difficult passage in Virgil about the River Timavo
and the word mare;
-Servius, A. 1.382: to explain how Venus led Aeneas to Italy;
-Servius, A. 1.532: on the origin of the word Oenotri.
The rest offer no direct help in understanding Virgil, and so we might suggest that the
majority of our Varro quotations in Aeneid 1 commentaries serve the art of digression.
This in turn illustrates the special status of Virgil commentaries as distinct from other
commentaries in ancient Latin pedagogy: they provided both an aid to understanding Virgil
and a general foundation of universal knowledge, sometimes with more learned scholia.
To be sure, the scholia always maintain a link with Virgil’s words, but it is sometimes
a loose one based on freewheeling associations. Moreover, after four centuries of Virgilian
exegesis, the scholia often reflect and respond to previous debates, as Georgii demonstrated.66
One dominant (and overused) interpretative expedient was to claim that Virgil always said
and meant more than was actually in the text.67 On this basis, Virgil’s habit of alluding to
arcane lore was used to justify grammarians’ digressions, even if the presumed allusion
65
Lloyd 1961: 311.
66
Georgii 1891; See also Vallat 2012b.
67
See Vallat 2013 on the per transitum technique. See e.g. Servius, A. 1.282.

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was sometimes fanciful. For example, at A. 1.172 (egressi optata potiuntur Troes harena),
Servius comments on the etymology of harena and quotes Varro, whose words are used to
illustrate previous discussions on orthography, but not to explain Virgil’s verse. The same
pattern appears in SD, A. 1.42, where the note explores the different kinds of fulmina and
their links with deities: Virgil’s line had not posed any problem, but scholars still succeeded
in creating one.68 In this particular case, the verb quaeritur indicates an earlier scholarly
quaestio (i.e. Greek ζήτησις), thus suggesting a stage of interpretation before the extant
redaction which involved quoting Varro.
In sum, then, Varro is not normally cited for direct explanation of Virgil, but rather
invoked to bolster the authority of the commentary, and to create a repository of information
for students which is generally relevant to Virgil and his culture, though often quite indirectly,
but sometimes in fact entirely marginal to Virgil. The use of Varro also exemplifies the
digressive tendency of Virgilian commentators, as well as pointing to the broad readership
at which these texts were aimed: since Virgil was a staple of education, Virgil commentaries
were teaching aids designed to supply a broad foundation of knowledge.
9. Varro, Virgil, and the grammatici: authority and ideology in the fourth century
In conclusion, I will focus on Servius’s commentary, the only one which we can date with
some precision. We have examined above some of the ways in which Varro was used in
Virgil commentaries. It now remains to investigate when Varro entered the tradition of
Virgilian exegesis, and what his particular status was in the scholarly culture of the late-
Antique grammaticus. There are three interwoven strands in my argument: one concerns the
vicissitudes of the reception of Varro, a second the evolution of attitudes to Virgil, and the
third is a tentative suggestion about ideological debates in the fourth century.69
From his own time, Varro was a widely exploited authority, and this is still the case in
Virgil commentaries (e.g., in Servius A. 8.233 he is an authority on Latin grammar). But
beyond this, what is his function in scholarly texts which do not, in fact, themselves call
for primary scholarly enquiry? Although Servius, in contrast to SD, reduced the Varronian
presence, he did not delete it entirely. The first reason for this is Varro’s intellectual prestige,
which rests partly on his own antiquity:70 it can be proven that Servius generally represses
the names of scholars later than Varro, such as Festus and Nonius; true enough, he cites
Donatus, but mainly in order to disagree with him. But, as we have discussed, there is no
reason to believe that Servius had access to full texts of Varro; rather his role was to select
and copy from the previous centuries’ scholarship. So why does he retain Varro to the extent
that he does?
Varro is first and foremost a figurehead for an intellectual legacy. Although his work
was integrated into the Virgilian exegetical tradition by many scholars at different times,
I believe that we can date this integration later than the intermediary sources discussed
above: Pliny the Elder and Suetonius, and even Gellius. This coincides with an upswing in
attitudes to Virgil. Early Virgil criticism had been marked by detractors (obtrectatores), still
in evidence at the time of Probus, who faulted various aspects of Virgil’s composition. By
Servius’s time this kind of criticism was no longer practised. The divinus poeta was always
68
See Thomas 1880: 247–49 on this convoluted exegetical practice.
69
This section should be read closely with Hadas in this volume.
70
Vallat 2015.

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106 BICS-60-2 2017
right and his words true, and it was the grammarian’s duty to explain why.71 This reversal
in Virgil’s fortunes began in the second century and finally coincided with the acme of
grammarians in the fourth century. Through their teaching, Virgil in turn became a figure
of authority, not only in poetry, but in scholarship and in all fields of knowledge. Virgil
competed with Varro’s authority, and exceeded it where there were points of conflict, even
where language was concerned (cf. Servius, A. 8.233). Paradoxically, then, the competitive
dynamic between Virgil and Varro itself bolsters Varro’s status, just as Virgil was becoming
the foundation of Roman pedagogy and considered infallible. This may be illustrated by
the example of Anchises’s death: Servius (A. 4.427) relates the different versions of Varro
and Cato, both of which involve Anchises reaching Italy, which Virgil’s learned reader
probably knew. But once the Virgilian vulgate, which has Anchises die in Sicily, prevailed
in schools, it was worth quoting Varro or Cato as a reminder of the traditions that had been
overshadowed by Virgil’s authority. Thus the rise of Varro’s presence in Virgil commentaries
probably parallels Virgil’s reception as a scholar-poet in the middle of the second century
ad.
But, at the end of the fourth century, Varro’s legacy acquires a new and unexpected
relevance in the ideological debates through the use made of him by Christian polemicists.72
Arnobius and Augustine, among others, used Varro as a target for their attacks on pagan
religion, and the cults of the veteres. Servius had to reckon with this new situation, and he did
so with the usual silence which he maintained on the religious question. Silence, however,
does not mean indifference. Servius was contemporary with the various prohibitions of the
pagan cults by Theodosius, with the Battle of the Frigidus, the controversies over the Altar
of Victory, the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410, the polemics that followed, and even
with Augustine’s anti-pagan use of Varro. And yet he made no reference to any of this,
continuing to present Roman cults and gods as if nothing had happened, sometimes even
defending the ancient gods against Virgil.73
This is not, I think, a mark of indifference or a refusal to take sides: pace Cameron,74
Servius does adopt a position, howbeit implicitly, in favour of the traditional religion, and
his use of Varro is part of this attitude. Tacitly but firmly, Servius implies the authority of
Varro, which puts the manipulations of a polemicist like Augustine into stark relief. The
explicit presence of Varro allows Servius to remind his pupils that Varro’s works on religion
were neither polemical nor descriptive of the religious landscape of the fourth century.
Finally, Servius emphasizes that Varro was a valuable scholarly source in all areas of
knowledge, not only in religion. In sum, through the commentaries, the pagan grammatici
also validated the legacy of Varro — just as they did for the ancient disciplina Etrusca —75
and intended to rescue him from the appropriation of the Christian polemicists. Varro thus
becomes a symbol of traditional Roman knowledge and also a cipher for cultural assertion
and resistance.
71
Georgii 1891 for the fading of the anti-Virgil critics; Vallat 2015 for the critical reversal; cf. Augustine’s
humorous remark at De utilitate credendi 6.13.
72
Cameron 2011: 614–21.
73
A. 1.4 is fundamental here: at the very beginning of his commentary, Servius, by a semantic change, exonerates
Juno from the savagery (saeva) which Virgil attributed to her.
74
Cameron 2011: 207, 609, 621. The different papers in Garcea–Lhommé–Vallat 2016 also challenge this point of
view. See also Pellizzari 2003: 73.
75
See Briquel 1997; Santini 2008.

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One could not have guessed from Servius how Varro had been exploited in fourth-
century ideological polemics, but I think this is deliberate. Just as it could be proved that
Servius was a pagan, while never in fact contributing to the religious debate, likewise his
limited but varied use of Varro can be regarded as a silent but efficient transmission of
ancient pagan knowledge. He seems to confer a timelessness on Varro’s knowledge, above
and beyond trends or fashions. For grammarians, Varro is business as usual, but their use of
him masks some deeper issues. To conclude: Varro’s presence in Virgil commentaries tells
us much more about the commentators than about Virgil.
Université Lumière, Lyon 2

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VARRO IN VIRGILIAN COMMENTARIES

Author(s): DANIEL VALLAT

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48554661

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Keywords: Virgilian commentaries; grammarians; Servius; manuscripts; textual transmission; quotation;

© 2017 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

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2. Varro’s name: presence and absence

© 2017 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

© 2017 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

Servius SD Phil. BEG Bern. Probus Veron. Total

© 2017 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

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5. Problems of textual transmission

Vallat 2014: 156–57.

© 2017 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

SD. Cf. also SD, A. 1.505 and Varro, Ling. 5.161.

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7. What kind of knowledge?

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© 2017 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

8. Why quote Varro? The art of digression

Aeneid 1 Servius Servius Danielis

© 2017 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

Erudite scholia School scholia

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© 2017 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

© 2017 Institute of Classical Studies University of London

Université Lumière, Lyon 2

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