Author, auctor, auctoritas - Aspects of authorship in commentaries on Virgil

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The main topic of this project will be the interaction between authorship and exegetical function in ancient commentaries on poetry. It aims at a comparative examination, using as an example the commentaries on the works of Virgil. Due to its diverse subsets, the corpus of the Virgilian commentaries is particularly well suited for this analysis. It includes two autonomous commentaries ascribed to single authors (Servius, Tiberius Claudius Donatus), and several anonymous as well as pseudepigraphic collections of annotations. The comparison will take as its starting point the exegetical work of Servius, which represents a frequently investigated, but also a most controversially discussed part of the corpus. The analysis is based on the assumption that commentaries, as works with a didactic-exegetical function, use certain strategies of authorization to achieve their objectives. Studies on Servius suggest that a prominent role in this process plays the authorial "persona", i.e. the impression of an "authorial voice", that readers experience while using the commentary. This impression is caused by certain features of Servius' text, which will equally be found in other parts of the corpus, even if these are fragmentary, anonymous or collective. The aim of the project is to analyse such manifestations of "authorial voice" for the first time for collections, which cannot be ascribed to single authors. Comparing them with Servius will bring new insights into individual characteristics of the different collections as well as into general methods of annotating and commenting in antiquity. The result will be a better understanding of ancient exegetical and didactic practices.