Editing Terence (section)

==Ancient commentary==

[[Jerome]] mentions in ''Contra Rufinum'' I.16 that "my teacher [[Aelius Donatus|Donatus]]" had written a commentary on the comedies of Terence.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Lardet |editor-first=Pierre |title=Apologie contre Rufin |series = Sources chrétiennes no. 303 |location=Paris |publisher=Éditions du Cerf |year=1983 |page=46}}</ref> Donatus' commentary does not survive in the form in which he originally wrote it. It is commonly believed that an unknown medieval scribe, using two or more manuscripts of Terence containing marginal notes excerpted from Donatus, copied the notes in order to reconstitute the commentary as a separate book, incorporating extraneous material in the process, assigning notes to verses where they did not originally belong, or including material that had been otherwise changed in the course of transmission.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Zetzel |first=J. E. G. |title=On the History of Latin Scholia |journal=Harvard Studies in Classical Philology |volume=79 |year=1975 |pages=335–354 |doi=10.2307/311144 |jstor=311144}}</ref><ref name="Reeve_p156">{{harvnb|Reeve|1983a|p=156}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Grant|1986|p=61}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Kaster |first=R. A. |title=Donatus (1), Aelius |encyclopedia=Oxford Classical Dictionary |edition=4th |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2012 |page=476 |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.2286}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Cioffi|2017|pp=x–xi}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Goldberg|2022|p=58}}</ref> Citations from Donatus' commentary which are not found in the extant redaction occur in [[Priscian]] and in [[scholia]] to the Codex Bembinus and Codex Victorianus.<ref name="Reeve_p156"/> Another ancient commentary is attributed to one Eugraphius, of whom nothing is known but his authorship of this commentary.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Brown |first=Peter G. M. |title=Eugraphius |encyclopedia=Oxford Classical Dictionary |edition=4th |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2012 |page=547 |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.2537|isbn=978-0-19-938113-5 }}</ref> Donatus' commentary on the ''Heauton timorumenos'' is lacking, but his references to this play in his commentary on other parts of the corpus and Eugraphius' commentary help to make up the gap.

In its extant form, Donatus' commentary is prefaced by Suetonius' ''Vita Terenti,'' a short essay on the genre of comedy and its differences from tragedy now commonly called ''De fabula,'' and a separate, shorter work on the same subject which in some manuscripts begins with the heading ''De comoedia.'' {{ill|Friedrich Lindenbrog|de}} was able to identify the ''De fabula'' as the work of an earlier commentator on Terence named Evanthius (probably identical with the grammarian Evanthius said in Jerome's ''Chronicon'' to have died at Constantinople in AD 358) because the grammarian Rufinus of Antioch (5th cent. AD), in a work ''On the Metres of Terence,'' quotes the ''De fabula'' and ascribes it to Evanthius.<ref>{{cite book |last=Scheidemantel |first=Eduard |title=Quaestiones Euanthianae |location=Leipzig |publisher=Leopold & Baer |year=1883 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=K_qpeazFrSIC&pg=PA6 6]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Lindenbrog |editor-first=Friedrich |title=Publii Terentii ... Comoediæ n. VI et in eas Aelii Donati ... et Eugraphii ... commentaria |location=Paris |year=1602 |page=[https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb11060559?page=670 622]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Keil |editor-first=Heinrich |title=Grammatici Latini |volume=VI: Scriptores artis metricae |location=Leipzig |publisher=Teubner |year=1874 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=IX0KAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA554 554]}}</ref> Evanthius' work is otherwise lost.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Gatti |first=Paolo |title=Evanthius |encyclopedia=Brill's New Pauly Online |publisher=Brill |year=2006 |doi=10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e403730}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Brown |first=Peter G. M. |title=Euanthius |encyclopedia=Oxford Classical Dictionary |edition=4th |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2012 |page=543 |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.2515|isbn=978-0-19-938113-5 }}</ref> The ''De comoedia'' has continued to be considered the work of Donatus.