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LITERARY CRITICISM
Another was to decide whether a work, or a portion of a work, was genuine.
Both of these functions, of course, involved the making of value judgements;
and we know that Aristophanes judged Archilochus' iambi best (Cic. Att.
16.11.2), though three writers were 'received' in this genre (Quintilian 10.1.59).
But it was the stern textual procedures, as applied especially by Aristarchus to
individual lines or passages of poetry, that attracted most lay attention.
It is accordingly a sort, of athetesis (diagnosis of spuria) that is most often
mentioned in connexion with such Romans as were explicitly called critici —
which may mean no more than grammatici exercising their function of judgement.
In his commentary on Virgil, Servius eleven times 1 uses the term, always
in a context of blame. Typically, on Aen. 8.731 the critics are said to 'censure'
(notant) the whole verse 'as having been added superfluously'. It is true that
this sort of phrase does not seem to carry the implication that Virgil did not
actually write the line or word censured: merely that he would have done
better not to write it. Thus, very clearly, Eel. 2.65 is 'censured for giving this
sentiment to a rustic in contravention of the law of pastoral poetry' (supra
bucolici carminis legem). Servius' critici apply Zenodotus' obelus with realistic
regard to the difference between Homer and Virgil. But the grounds for their
censure are very similar to Zenodotus'.
Elsewhere we can find close Roman parallels to Greek concern for the
genuineness of whole works. 2 Accius' work on the chronology of Roman drama
was precursor to the properly 'critical' activity of Varro on Plautus. According
to Gellius (N.A. 3.3.3) Varro added to the twenty-one comedies commonly
attributed to Plautus others that he felt on stylistic grounds — 'swayed by the
texture and humour of their language' — to be genuine. And Gellius adds that
his own teacher Favorinus employed the same criterion: 'even this one verse
can be proof enough that this play is Plautine' (3.3-6).
Nor did Roman scholars shirk the task of establishing, in the wake of the
Greeks, an or Jo of the best Latin writers. The classic case of this, in Quintilian,
will have to be discussed further below; but the tendency goes back much
earlier. Volcacius Sedigitus' verses ranking the comic authors allude to the
many who 'dispute to whom they should award the palm' (Gellius, N.A.
15.24). Moreover, Quintilian's concern to match Latin authors with Greek —
Virgil with Homer, Livy with Herodotus, and the rest — finds, as we have seen,
an earlier counterpart in Horace. It may be Varro who lies behind the docketing
of Ennius as a second Homer; in that case, Varronian too will be the succeeding
parallels drawn between Afranius and Menander, Plautus and Epicharmus, and
the schoolmasterly distinction between the art of Terence and the gravity of
Caecilius. Varro certainly extended his interest in literature beyond Plautus,
1 l88
Eel. 2.65; Aen. 1.71, 2.668, 8.291 and 731, 9.81, 10.157 and 861, 11.24 and > 12.83.
2
A concern that still weighed with writers on rhetoric: see e.g. Dion. Hal. Isaeus 2 and Dem. 13.
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