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THE 'ACADEMICS'
for we find him assigning Pacuvius, Lucilius and Terence to the three types of
style, and incidentally cutting across genres as he did so.'
We have seen that in the terminology of the Servian scholia critici is used of
those who found fault with certain aspects of Virgil's poetry. It has been
argued 2 that the phrase refers especially to the early obtrectatores or ' disparagers'
of the poet, one of whom wrote a distich to make fun of the rusticity of cuium
pecus in Eel. 3.1 3 Whatever the truth, the Servian critici behave little differently
from other carpers, who were certainly full-blown grammatici. Thus Probus
remarked on Aen. 4.418 that 'if Virgil had omitted this verse, he would have
done better'. 4 And we see the same distinguished grammarian at work in more
detail in Gellius (9.9.12—17), who reports his robust discussion of the comparison
of Dido with Diana in Aen. 1.498—502. The simile, for Probus, is by no
means appropriate (nequaquam conueniens), Diana's quiver far from functional
and her joy far from unconfined. "We may well quarrel with the judgement;
but the importance of the passage is that it juxtaposes Virgil "with his Homeric
model (Od. 6.102—8) and attempts an aesthetic valuation. This scrap of Probus'
scholarship, and others like it, should prevent us from assuming too readily
that the Servian commentary, with its reluctance to comment helpfully on, or
often even to mention, Virgil's models, is typical of Roman dealings with this
most traditional of poets. On the contrary, we can see from the enormous discussion
in Macrobius (Saturnalia 5—6), where not only tracts of Homer but also
many passages of earlier Roman poets are cited in extenso, that the ancients took
this task as seriously as modern commentators. It did not, fortunately, take long
to outgrow the attitude that 'imitation' was no more than 'borrowing' or
'theft'. Where Perellius Faustus 'collected thefts' (Vita Donati 44) and drew
the pained comment of the poet that it was easier to steal his club from Hercules
than a line from Homer, Macrobius regards such transference as a subject for
muted congratulation (Sat. 5.3.16). Many a Victorian commentator was less
sophisticated than that.
But the general run of the scholia on Virgil is less impressive. These commentaries
are designed largely to instruct - and to instruct the young; and
though their sources are often very learned, they themselves rarely sound very
adult. They will (to take examples from a familiar book of the AeneiJ) identify
the Hesperides (4.484), give us a snippet of information on the habits of the
planet Mercury (239), put Aulis on the map (426); this is •what Quintilian's
enthusiasm for knowledge of mythology and astronomy at the grammar school
1
Gell. 6.14.6. Cf. Charisius p. 315, 3 Barwick (= Varro fr. 40 Funaioli), where Caecilius and
Terence are contrasted in the matter of the rousing of emotion.
a
Ftibbeck (1866) 102, 107; Georgii (1891) 2.
* For him and others see Vita Donati 43—5.
4
Georgii (1891) 560-7 has a helpful table showing the various grounds on which Virgil was
criticized in the Servian commentary.
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