VII.-Non-Suetonian Passages in the Life of Vergil formerly Ascribed to Donatus

RUSSEL MORTIMER GEER

BROWN UNIVERSITY

1

It has been generally accepted that the Life of Vergil which has come down to us under the name of Donatus is in reality the work of Suetonius. Various investigators 1 have attributed the Life to the latter on the basis of the large number of Suetonian words and usages to be found in it. The appearance of Howard and Jackson's Index Verborum Suetoni tempted me to renew the investigation, and in an unpublished Harvard dissertation I have not only examined the Life word by word for similarities to Suetonius, but I have been able, as earlier investigators were not, to discover the non-Suetonian words and usages. While my investigations strongly supported the accepted view that the Life as a whole is Suetonian, they led me to consider certain passages, two or three of which had been previously suspected, as probably not from the hand of Suetonius, at least in their present form. In this paper I propose to discuss these passages.

In the opening sentence of the Life we read that, according to some, the father of Vergil was at first the mercennarius of a certain Magus, then became his son-in-law, egregiaeque (or egregieque) substantiae silvis coemendis et apibus curandis auxisse reculam. Neither egregius nor egregie is used in this way by Suetonius, and substantia and recula are not used at all. None of these words are required by the subject matter.

1 The most important works are: Henry Nettleship, Ancient Lives of Vergil (Oxford, 1879), and Gustavus Koertge, "In Suetonii de Viris Illustribus Libros Inquisitionum Capita Tria," Dissertationes Philologicae Halenses, XIV (18981901), 189-284.

2 "Quatenus vita Vergiliana Aelio Donato attributa re vera Suetonio Tranquillo debeatur quaeritur." A summary of this thesis may be found in Harv. Stud. XXXVII (1926), 99–100.

Furthermore this involved way of saying a man gained wealth is not at all Suetonian. I therefore agree with Reifferscheid 3 and Koertge in considering these words an addition.

4

5

A much more important passage in §6 arouses some question. Initia aetatis Cremonae egit usque ad virilem togam, quam XVII anno natali suo accepit isdem illis consulibus iterum duobus quibus erat natus, evenitque ut eo ipso die Lucretius poeta decederet. The taking of the toga virilis is frequently mentioned by Suetonius, but we find that, with one exception, when he refers to this act for the purpose of fixing a time, he always uses die, or else toga is modified by a participle of sumere. The exception is in Aug. 38, 2 where Ihm with hesitation reads <a> virili toga for the manuscript virili toga or togae, but suggests that sumpta may have fallen out. In the passage from the Life we find togam quam... accepit while Suetonius in this connection never uses accipere but always sumere. In the phrase XVII anno natali suo, if natali suo modifies die understood, we have a phrase which is Suetonian enough, but rather clumsy here where natali more naturally goes with anno. If we construe natali suo with anno, we have a phrase which can be paralleled elsewhere but which is not Suetonian. We thus have two or three non-Suetonian usages in this section. There is also an obvious discrepancy in fact which is concealed by all editors when they alter XVII, the reading of all manuscripts," to XV, making the year indicated by Vergil's age agree with that designated by the consuls. When we consult the parallel passages in Jerome, who elsewhere quotes very closely from this life, we find more confusion. Under the year 59 Jerome records Vergil's studies at Cremona. Six years later in 53 A. Reifferscheid, C. Suetoni Tranquilli praeter Caesarum libros Reliquiae (Lipsiae, 1860), p. 401.

4 Koertge, op. cit. p. 226.

E.g., Aug. 66, 4: die virilis togae (cf. Calig. 15, 2; Claud. 2, 2) and Tib. 7, 1: virili toga sumpta (cf. Galb. 4, 3; Vesp. 2, 2).

'Cf. Cinna, frag. 3 (Baehrens); Pliny, H. N. XIV, 55.

7 One MS., G, reads VII, an error for XVII rather than for XV.

Hieronymus, Chronicon, anno 1958-59: Vergilius Cremonae studiis eruditur.

Three MSS., A, P, and N, assign this note to 1959-58.

he tells us that Vergil, having assumed the toga of manhood, went to Milan and then shortly afterward to Rome. If in the Life we ignore the statement about the second consulship of Pompey and Crassus (in 55) and follow the manuscripts in reading XVII, Jerome and the Life agree in naming the year in which Vergil took the toga. If we change XVII to XV and take the date from what seems the more certain evidence of the consulship, we find the Life two years ahead of the Chronicon. In neither case does the statement that Lucretius died on the day Vergil assumed the toga agree with the wellknown note in Jerome which would put his death in 51.10 It is obvious that there is something wrong in this passage. Relying on the non-Suetonian phrases, we may conclude that someone, wishing to connect the lives of the two great poets, has substituted the passage we now have for what Suetonius wrote and Jerome had before him when he made his notes. Suetonius in that case probably made no mention of Lucretius. The XVII may have survived the change in some way. This removes at once the non-Suetonian passages and the contradictions, but it is perhaps a little bold. In any case the passage must be regarded with suspicion, and biographers of Lucretius should no longer rest upon this reference to his death, a reference which in itself has all the earmarks of myth," as the most definite date in the history of the philosopher poet.

In § 16 we read: Nam et in sermone tardissimum ac paene indocto similem fuisse Melissus tradidit. In the extant works of Suetonius there are about one hundred and fifty passages 'Anno 1964-53: Vergilius sumpta toga Mediolanium transgreditur et post breve tempus Romam pergit. A, P, and N assign this to 1963-54.

...

10 Anno 1923-94: Titus Lucretius poeta nascitur, qui . . . propria se manu interfecit anno aetatis XLIIII.

11 It is similar to the statements found in other lives (cf. Iacobus Brummer, Vitae Vergilianae (Lipsiae, 1912), p. 54, ll. 4 and 10; p. 56, 1. 9; p. 60, l. 15) that Lucretius was Vergil's maternal uncle. In this connection attention might be called to the following from the Vita Noricensis (Brummer, p. 55, 11. 50 f.): (Vergilium) mater genuit ante triennium quam Lucretius poeta deciderat. This gives still another date for Lucretius' death.

where he cites his authority by name and a somewhat greater number where he refers in a general way to an indefinite source. He nearly always uses the present tense in thus citing authority, and the cases where a past tense is used fall readily into definite classes. The imperfect is used where repeated action is implied: for example, where he cites his own father in Otho, 10, 1: Is mox referre crebro solebat. There are some twenty-five instances of the perfect, usually of trado or prodo, with an indefinite subject, as multi prodiderunt, in Jul. 46. In eight passages the words of someone directly concerned with the action or related to the person under discussion are cited with the perfect, as Mark Antony in Jul. 52, 2 and in Aug. 69, 1. There are, finally, a few cases where the perfect of scribo or some similar word is used. With the exception of the last mentioned group, I have failed to find in Suetonius a single case where, as in the passage before us, a person not at all connected with 'the action is cited by name with the perfect tense. Moreover, it is rare for Suetonius to end a sentence with the verb directly preceded by its subject, although examples of this can be found. I feel certain, then, that Suetonius did not write Melissus tradidi. The whole passage may be an addition (it can be omitted easily), or tradidit may be a copyist's error for tradit.12

In §§ 17 and 18 we have mention of the minor works followed by a summary of the Culex. The account of the distich on Ballista contains nothing suspicious, but most of what follows this is not Suetonian.

Deinde Catalepton et Priapea et Epigrammata et Diras, item Cirim et Culicem, cum esset annorum XVI. Cuius materia talis est: pastor fatigatus aestu cum sub arbore condormisset et serpens ad eum proreperet, e palude culex provolavit atque inter duo tempora aculeum fixit pastori.

12 The passage would then be similar to Aug. 77 where a citation ends Cornelius Nepos tradit. This, however, is the only instance among the one hundred and fifty passages where an authority is cited by name, in which a verb preceded immediately by its subject stands at the end of a sentence.

At ille continuo culicem contrivit et serpentem interemit ac sepulcrum culici statuit et distichon fecit:

Parve culex pecudum custos tibi tale merenti
funeris officium vitae pro munere reddit.

Scripsit etiam de qua ambigitur Aetnam.

I grant that the many unusual words 13 are due to the subject matter, but I doubt whether Suetonius would have written cum esset annorum XVI.14 In the next sentence we have pastor, subject of the clause cum . . . dormisset, standing before the clause and with no other construction in the sentence. There are, I think, 367 cum clauses in Suetonius, but nothing like this. We do not have to seek farther, however, than the introduction to the Bucolics, which follows our Life in the manuscripts and must be due to Donatus, to find exactly the same thing.15 To these considerations certain others must be added. In a series such as Catalepton et Priapea Suetonius would normally omit the connectives.16 However fond he may have been of compound words, it would be difficult anywhere in his works to find such a group as condormisset, proreperet, provolavit, contrivit, interemit, within the space of four lines. With his love for participles he would probably have avoided such a predicate as culicem contrivit et serpentem interemit ac sepulcrum

17

13 Culex, provolo, aculeum, and contero are not found elsewhere in Suetonius: prorepo and palus each occur once, and figo and ambigo each twice.

common source.

14 In the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae the only examples parallel to this are Varro, Men. 496 (Buecheler); Carm. Epig. 1541, 3; Nepos, Ham. 3, 1; and Livy, XXI, 1, 4. These last two refer to the same event and must be due to a The construction is fairly common in sepulchral inscriptions. 15 § 63. Sed Vergilius merito carminum fretus et amicitia quorundam potentium centurioni Arrio cum obsistere ausus esset, ille statim, ut miles, ad gladium manum admovit, cumque se in fugam proripuisset poeta, non prius finis persequendi fuit, quam se in fluvium Vergilius coniecisset atque ita in alteram ripam enatavisset.

16 Cf. e.g. Aug. 21, 1: Cantabriam, Aquitaniam, Pannoniam, Delmatiam cum Illyrico omni, item Raetiam et Vindelicos ac Salassos, gentes Inalpinas. 17 But cf. the compounds in the passage quoted above from the introduction to the Bucolics.