The Annotations of M. Valerivs Probvs

Abstract

In the period between Constantine's reunification of the Empire in 324 and the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 M. Valerius Probus enjoyed a large reputation as master of all areas of the ars grammatica. The commentary on Terence attributed to Donatus and the commentary of Servius on Virgil cite him more often than they do any other ancient authority. His fame persisted through the Dark Ages. Eugenius of Toledo set him with Varius and Tucca against Aristarchus, the greatest of the Alexandrian students of Homer. Modern writers on the history of Roman scholarship have estimated in widely different ways his quality as a textual critic, the level of his reputation during the century after his death and the influence which his activities had on the transmission of the Latin classics. That he ‘annotated’ at least some of these in the manner of an Aristarchus is not in dispute, but everything about the nature of his ‘annotation’ is. This paper will treat afresh a famous statement about Probus in Suetonius' De grammaticis (24. 3), two lists of notae associated with Probus’ name in a late eighth-century manuscript from Monte Cassino, cod. Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 7530 (CLA v 569), two references to such notae which have been detected in Virgilian scholia (Serv. Aen. 10. 444 and Serv. Dan. Aen. 1. 21) and a number of statements in these scholia which appear to give Probus’ reasons for affixing notae. The results of my study are largely negative but may help to control general discussion of the history of a number of Latin texts.

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