La grammaire dans le commentaire de Servius à Virgile
5-7 Jun 2019 Paris (France)

Participants et résumés

  1. BERNADÓ FERRER, Gemma (Bogotá, Colombia), « Servius or Performing Ancient Grammatical Tradition on Vergil ». Higinius started commenting on Vergil’s works shortly after the poet’s death (GELL.1,21,2;16,6,14). In the times of Augustus, Cecilius Epirota was the first to introduce Vergil study in schools (SVET. gramm. 16, 2). From that moment until the Barbarian invasions Vergil became a canonical author in grammatical schools around the Empire. Although a consequent rich exegesis tradition -only indirectly transmitted- it was not until Servius that a full commentary was handed down to us. Servius’ authority was based on both the citation of writers’ as well as scholars’ exempla (Uhl 1999,218-30). His influence was so wide that he changed the fortune of the idonei auctores in the Vergilian exegesis (Pellizzari 2003:240-242). Regarding the grammarians, on the one hand, Servius used indeterminate expressions to insert commentaries, such as quidam, alii, non nulli, antiqui, veteres. On the other hand, he quoted specific sources: Donatus, Carminius, Urbanus, Asconius Pedianus, Calvus, Celsus, Asper. This paper aims to analyse which methods Servius employed to metabolize the commentaries of these grammarians, in order to better understand how he reshaped ancient Vergilian Scholarship in Late Antiquity.
  2. BIVILLE, Frédérique (Lyon 2), « Qu’y a-t-il de “grammatical” dans le commentaire de Servius à Virgile ? »
  3. DE PAOLIS, Paolo (Verona), « Servio e le Verrine ». Vorrei cercare di individuare da un lato le motivazioni linguistiche che portano Servio a usare con frequenza le Verrine (tra l’altro è curioso che Servio fosse molto preso dal problema dell’uso delle preposizioni, in particolare per le espressioni di luogo) e dall’altro di capire se esisteva una sorta di schedatura massiccia delle Verrine, cui potrebbero aver attinto anche Sacerdote e Prisciano, e in quale misura ci sono invece citazioni introdotte da Servio stesso, visto che in alcuni casi gli errori di citazione potrebbero far pensare a lapsus mnemonici.
  4. DELVIGO, Maria Luisa (Udine), « I difetti del poeta: vitium e soloecismus in Servio ».
  5. FOSTER, Frances (Cambridge), « Learning Latin Grammar with Servius ». Servius’s commentaries are littered with frequent remarks and observations on grammatical points.  These are always related to a linguistic point arising from an aspect of Virgil’s language use.  This is hardly surprising, since Virgil’s poetry is the focus of his commentaries, but also since Virgil’s language and idiom would have been quite challenging for his students, in particular those whose native language was not even Latin (Foster, 2017. ‘Teaching Language through Virgil in Late Antiquity’, CQ 67.1, 270-283).  To a modern reader, the links between Servius’s grammatical notes and the passages of Virgil the notes arise from may seem tenuous or idiosyncratic. However, if we read Servius’s commentaries as directly addressing late antique students from diverse linguistic backgrounds, these links can reveal the nature of many linguistic difficulties the teacher had to address.  The links also show the types of mistakes — both of understanding and of usage — that his students were prone to. In addition, they can reveal the ways in which Servius approached teaching the formal Latin of his own day, even though his material was both archaic and in a different, highly literary register.  I will analyse specific grammatical examples within Servius’s corpus and evaluate how Servius creates an ‘ars commentarii’.
  6. GIOSEFFI, Massimo (Milano Statale), « La grammatica di Servio. Prime esplorazioni ».
  7. HUDSON, Jared (Harvard), « Varronian etymologia in the Servian commentaries to Virgil ». M. Terentius Varro is cited some two hundred times in the Servian commentary to Virgil, a large number of those instances involving word derivation, whether explicitly marked or implied, and a total of roughly 1000 etymologies are reported throughout the scholia. Etymologia, which after analogia is declared by Quintilian (1.6.1) to be the second part of ratio, and thus a vital technique in establishing latinitas and a critical (if to us somewhat peculiar) component of the ars grammatica, constitutes for the Servian commentators a central tool for expounding the poems of Virgil, as well as a vital way of interacting with and invoking the auctoritas of previous ancient scholars on the Latin language. Building upon such valuable scholarship as that of Uhl (1997) and Brunet (2016), both of whom offer accounts of etymologia in Servius, and that of Vallat (2017), on Varro’s presence in the Virgilian commentaries, this paper analyses the Servian reception of Varronian etymology as articulated in the Virgil commentaries, specifically by reading them against a typology of the mass of other etymologies which are not marked as (or are unknown to be) derived from Varro’s oeuvre. Even despite the likelihood that the Servian commentators were not compiling etymologies from Varro’s work firsthand, the overarching aim is to investigate what distinctive features can be identified in Servius’ handling of Varro’s derivations that differentiate them from his treatment of the rest.
  8. LONGOBARDI, Concetta (Napoli - Federico II), « Declinatio / declinare in Servio e nella teorizzazione grammaticale antica ». Non è frequente, all’interno del commento serviano, la presenza di una precisa teorizzazione grammaticale relativa al nome e al verbo. Si riscontrano invece più spesso tracce di esempi pratici finalizzati a far comprendere agli allievi in che modo il verbo vada coniugato (sane densentur plures res in unum, ut “vos unanimes densete catervas”. et declinatur 'denseo denses denset', Aen. 11, 650) e il sostantivo declinato ('potis' autem nomen est et declinatur potis, potis, poti, potem, potis, a pote, Aen. 3, 671); il verbo tecnico impiegato da Servio è in entrambi i casi declinare. Il contributo intende innanzitutto valutare tali ricorrenze per classificare i verbi e i sostantivi individuati a partire dal testo virgiliano, quali sono le anomalie percepite da Servio, quali le particolarità che agli studenti devono essere note. Tra i pochi casi in cui è possibile individuare delle regole specifiche all’interno del commento a proposito della declinatio si può riscontrare come esse siano legate innanzitutto a problemi relativi all’accentuazione della parola, come ad Aen. 1, 232 dove è enunciata la regola sui nomi monosillabici, o ad Aen. 3, 122 in cui Servio tratta delle cinque declinazioni greche. Nel commento ad Aen. 1, 100 invece, a proposito della discussione relativa a come vada declinato Sarpedon, Servio parla di naturalis declinatio, inserendosi in tal modo in una discussione grammaticale introdotta dal De lingua latina di Varrone. La seconda parte del contributo mira pertanto a riconoscere, a partire dalla casistica individuata, quanto specifico sia il livello didattico di Servio, le eventuali differenze con le note danieline e le competenze del commentatore poste a confronto con le teorie dei grammatici antichi.
  9. MALTBY, Robert (Leeds), « Verbal Morphology and Syntax in Servius’ Virgil Commentaries and the Artes Grammaticae ». The paper will discuss various notes on verbal morphology and syntax spread throughout Servius’ Vergil commentary, dealing with questions concerning tense, mood, voice and conjugation and including gerund and participial usage. A comparison with discussions de verbo in various artes grammaticae, concentrating in particular on that of Donatus and its Servian commentary will aim to establish whether a consistent technical terminology and method of explanation is common to both contexts or whether the Virgilian commentary in some cases displays peculiarities which are not shared with the grammatical artes.
  10. RAMIRES, Giuseppe (Messina), « Aspetti linguistici delle citazioni di Plauto nel Commento di Servio ».
  11. ROSELLINI, Michela (Roma 1 - La Sapienza), « Exempla elocutionum in Servio ». Lo studio che intendo presentare è dedicato alla presenza, all’interno del commento serviano a Virgilio, degli exempla elocutionum come strumento e categoria di analisi sintattica. Il termine elocutio (su cui solo una lunga nota in Uhl 1998, p. 255 n. 111; il termine è trattato, non esaustivamente, da Schad 2007, 148-149) acquista nella trattatistica grammaticale una valenza specifica per l’individuazione della correttezza espressiva dei nessi di parole: sulla base della progressiva segnalazione di elocutiones, standard o particolari, nei testi degli autori di riferimento, si arriva, con un processo analogo a quello della formazione dei glossari, a costituire ampie raccolte di soli exempla elocutionum, delle quali, come è ben noto, è trasmessa direttamente solo quella di Arusiano Messio. All’interno del commento serviano compaiono in buona evidenza note di questa specifica tipologia, che presentano talvolta struttura, terminologia e materiali di confronto vicini o sovrapponibili con quelli delle analoghe annotazioni di Arusiano, Nonio e Prisciano; tuttavia le osservazioni serviane rimandano a trattazioni anteriori e vanno spesso oltre l’applicazione del criterio della correttezza. Nella mia relazione tratterò di passi in cui, in forma talvolta schematica, a volte più discorsiva, Servio introduce commenti sulle possibili costruzioni alternative, sulla cronologia degli usi diversi, sul passaggio di qualche costruzione dallo status di elocutio a quello di vera e propria figura, osservazioni non (o non più) contemplate nelle raccolte di exempla elocutionum (tramandate autonomamente o all’interno di opere più generali).
  12. STOK, Fabio (Roma 2 - Tor Vergata), « Servius entre philologie et grammaire ». Nell’intervento esaminerei le motivazioni linguistiche e grammaticali in casi in cui Servio discute varianti e problemi del testo virgiliano.
  13. TISCHER, Ute (Leipzig), « Frequency as an indicator of regular language in Servius’ commentaries ». The topic of my paper are Servius’ remarks about the frequency of certain lexical or syntactical features. Comments concerning frequency, such as plerumque, interdum, or raro, are very common within the Servian commentaries. They rarely contain numeric information (e.g. semel tantum fecit) but are often combined with quotations from Virgil and other canonical authors that function as examples or evidence. In most cases, they are not simply descriptive. Instead, Servius uses them to mark a certain usage as regular or irregular regarding the normative grammar system (ars). On a scale that ranges from “always” (semper) to “never” (numquam), frequency information thus serves as argument to recommend words or phrases for imitation and warns against idiosyncratic and poetical forms. The use of this argument results from the general situation of the commentator when dealing with grammar and linguistic usage. Unlike an ars grammatica, which is systematically organized, he has to work inductively, using Virgil’s expressions as starting point and examples, from where to deduce the rules of correct language. In my paper, I shall describe the different forms and functions of frequency remarks, with the aim to analyze the relationship between grammar system and grammatical explanations.
  14. VALLAT, Daniel (Lyon 2), « Servius et l’antiptose ».
  15. WEKEL, Juliana (Reading), « Quod ad omnes pertinet: The Impersonal in Servius’ Commentaries ». The classification of verb forms that lack the crucial verbal property of persona is a complex topic in late antique grammar, both in the manuals and in the commentaries on poetry. In Donatus, a main influence on Servius, the term inpersonalis is used inconsistently: Donatus classifies impersonal passives such as legitur as a mood, alternatively a voice, or as a somewhat separate uerbum inpersonale (‘impersonal expression’) together with verbs that only exist in the impersonal such as pudet. Servius in his commentary on Donatus argues morphologically that legitur cannot be an impersonal ‘mood’ as the form can itself take on different moods (e.g. a subjunctive cum legatur); he thus favours uerbum inpersonale. The ability to classify impersonal forms separately is also important when reading poetry: in Servius’ commentary on Vergil, the focus is on the more universal semantic scope of verb forms that do not express a specific persona. Servius notes, for example, that sic placitvm in Aen. 1.283 could mean ‘it pleases the fates, or it pleases me’ (uel fatis uel mihi). The Romans’ infinite rule can please the fates, as well as Jupiter (who is speaking) and thus becomes a generally approved fact. The impersonal can therefore serve as an example of how the theoretical terminology of correct speech becomes a practical tool of interpreting the poets.
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