Donatus, ‘Philargyrius’, and the Archetypus of the Vita Vergili

The article deals with the relationship between the textual tradition of Donatus’s Vita Vergili, and that of the so-called Vita Vergili Philargyriana I, that is the life of Virgil attributed to Philargyrius, a text largerly based upon the same Donatian Life. The textual comparative analysis leads to the conclusion that the copy of the Donatian Life used by the compiler of the Philargyrian Life was very near to the archetypus of the manuscript tradition, before the division of this tradition into two branches. This conclusion permits some improvements to be made to the critical text of the Donatian Life. In the article two other conclusions are also proposed. The first is that the transmission of the Donatian Life is strictly connected with that of the so-called Philargyrian Commentary to Virgil’s Bucolics and Georgics. The second conclusion is that the Donatian Life was separated from the Commentary in the seventh century, when it was used by the Philargyrian compiler. This conclusion supports the debated hypothesis that Donatus’s, subsequently lost, Commentary was used in the same age by the compiler of the Servius Danielis.