This year at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo (3 May 2001), C. E. Murgia (Univ. of California, Berkeley) gave what I thought was a very persuasive talk on the date of Servius. No doubt this material will appear in print at some point, but as it has a direct bearing on the research of some list members, I offer a summary of his argument below:
- Aelius Donatus preserved the wording of his sources (judging from the extant fragments), so his tenses are not especially useful for attesting contemporary practice. Servius and Tiberius Claudius, by contrast, do seem to alter verb tenses (e.g., from present to past). - This is important, because Servius writes about pagan sacrificial practice in the past tense -- i.e., we can date his commentary to _after_ the suppression of pagan sacrifice. - Murgia suggests, therefore, that a good guess for the date of the Servius commentary would be the first decade of the fifth century: after the suppression of pagan sacrifice, but before the sack of Rome (in 410). This last bit follows because Servius _does_ refer to the Goths and their depradations, but does not mention the sack of Rome, and says things that would seem odd coming from someone who knew about it. Murgia settles, therefore, on a date somewhere between 400 and 410, probably closer to 410 than 400; so...around 410! Greg, I hope you'll correct me here if I got any of this wrong. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] Macalester College Virgil Tradition: discussion, bibliography, &c. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
