Reference edition:

Scholia Bernensia ad Vergili Bucolica atque Georgica, edidit emendauit praefatus est H. Hagen, Hildesheim 1967 (Leipzig 1867).

In 1867, H. Hagen published the collection of scholia attested by four codices of the 9^th-10^th c. under the name Scholia Bernensia ad Vergili Bucolica atque Georgica, adopting this name from the fact that three of the codices were housed in Bern’s Bürgerbibliothek (165, 167, 172; the fourth codex is Leidensis Voss. F 79).  Müller had in fact already published an edition of this text in 1847; his version was based solely on ms. Bernensis 172 and was attributed to three names reported by the inscriptio of the codex: Iunilius Flagrius, T. Gallus, and Gaudentius.  Some years earlier, Thilo and Mommsen had identified certain similarities between the anthologies published by Müller and the two Explanationes on Vergil’s Eclogues, which three codices of the 9^th-10^th c. attribute to “Iunius Philargirius” (the anthologies also display certain affinities with the Brevis Expositio to the Georgics); Hagen published these texts in 1902, attributing the Explanationes to “Philargyrius,” a form of the name that Poliziano had already employed.  Scholars now generally accept the hypothesis of Heraeus 1930 that the commentator’s original name was “Philagrius” and that he was active at Milan when – as we learn from inscriptiones in the manuscripts – he dedicated his commentary to Emperor Valentinian II (r. AD 425-55).  It is possible that he is to be identified with the homonymous individual whom Sidonius Apollinaris mentions in his Panegyricus to the Emperor Avitus, an encomium written in AD 456 (Geymonat 1984).  The form “Philagrius” has now been adopted by Morgan and Ziolkowski in their Virgil Encyclopedia (2014).  The Commentary of “Philagrius” would have been used by early medieval compilers of the anthologies that survive to the modern day (the two Explanationes, the Brevis Expositio, an the Scholia Bernensia; the role of the two other late antique names that appear in these anthologies together with that of “Philagrius” – viz. Gaudentius and T. Gallus – remains unclear).  This reconstruction is confirmed by analyses of the Scholia Bernensia, which appears to be based on exegetical material composed after Donatus, interspersed with comments from Servius and early medieval writers (Brewer 1973; Daintree and Geymonat 1988; Ziolkowski and Putnam 2008: 674-98, with their English translation of the commentary on Verg. E. 4).  Unlike the Explanationes and the Brevis Expositio, which consist of lists of scholia transcribed in continual form, the Scholia Bernensia appear as marginal scholia that were transcribed in the codices beside the text of Vergil.  Holz 1984:156-9 notes that this is one of the most ancient example of this format, the introduction of which he attributes to the Irish exegetical tradition.  Gino Funaioli (1930) planned an edition of the original commentary of Philargyrius (and that of T. Gallus), identifying numerous codices – beyond the four already cited – in which exegetical material deriving from the Scholia Bernensia can be found (Funaioli considered eleven codices fundamental for the edition; another 65 were useful as sources of subsidiary material); this project, however, proved unworkable (cf. Geymonat 1984; Daintree and Geymonat 1988).  In 2003 Cadili published the first part of the commentary on the Georgics in a synoptic edition that prints the various early medieval redactions side-by-side.  [F. Stok; tr. C. L. Caterine].