Reference Edition: 

C. Stock, Sergius (Ps.-Cassiodorus) Commentarium de oratione et de octo partibus orationis Artis Secundae Donati. Überlieferung, Text und Kommentar. Sammlung wissenschaftlicher Commentare,   München/Leipzig 2005.    

The manuscript tradition of the Commentarium is now represented by the famous ms. Parisinus 7530, a grammatical miscellany created between 779-796 by a single copyist in the Monte Cassino monastery (Holtz 1975). The commentary is preserved from ff. 183v-195v, limited to the chapters De oratione and De nomine. We owe this to J. Garet, a monk of the Benedictine abbey in Rouen, who in 1679 published an edition of Cassiodorus’ writings, and included the Commentarium in the second section of the edition, between the encyclopedic writings of the Roman scholar. Garet asserted that he had found it in a codex in the Mont-St-Michel library, and he attributed it to Cassiodorus by completing the lacunose incipit Incipit commentarium S…cii with the conjecture Incipit commentarium S Ci, convinced that he had before him the gemina commenta on Donatus, mentioned by Cassiodorus in the Institutiones (Inst. 2.1: cuius [scil. Donati] gemina commenta reliquimus; but on the different interpretations of Cassiodorus’ words — whether he could refer to commentaries that the important senator had written, or to grammatical texts which he had only discovered and transcribed — see Holtz 1981, 248-50; Stock, 418-19; Munzi 2005, 225-26). The manuscript that Garet used is now lost, but its form may perhaps be reconstructed in its facies from his edition. It can plausibly be dated rather early, before the 12th century (Garet describes it as vetustissimus), and it was probably Irish in origin. Garet’s edition thus established the Commentarium as one of Cassiodorus’ works, and it was again published among the Roman senator’s writings in the Patrologia Latina. Over the years, the Cassiodorean attribution was again supported by Cappuyns (p.1374), Fontaine (106 n.2), and Holtz 1981 (137 ss.), while already Keil (GL,VII, 140-141 n.), followed by Manitius (49 n.1), had rejected the hypothesis. Later, Löfstedt (311 ss.) and Law (18) hypothesised that the lacuna S…cii could be adapted into cii (on the Sercii spelling for Sergii in early medieval codices: Law; Munzi 2005, n.11). The most recent editor of the Commentarium, Christian Stock, engaged in a detailed and in-depth analysis of the text, especially its linguistic features, and attributed it definitively to ‘Sergius’. On the one hand, he adapted the textual suggestion cii/gii and made it his own, admitting the plausibility of the spelling variation Sergius for Servius (419-20). On the other, he reconsidered the work’s relationship with the rest of the tradition, arguing that the Commentarium constitutes a point of intersection between Servius and the 5th/6th-century commentaries (Pompeius, Cledonius), and with Cassiodorus himself (Stock, 415-421). Significant similarities with De littera (GL IV 475-485) caused Stock to hypothesise a common writer for the two texts.

         The little work is thus established among the post-Servian production of exegesis of Donatus, specifically as a commentary on Maior II: in fact, after the introduction De oratione, the text is divided into sections dedicated to each part of speech (De nomine, of which considers definitio, qualitas, comparatio, genera, numeri, figurae, casus; De pronomine; De verbo; De adverbio; De participio; De coniunctione; De praepositione; De interiectione). Thus it faithfully reproduces Donatus’ structure, into which it then inserts Servian material. Some insertions are new to Donatus’ model, such as the immediate definition of oratio: quasi oris ratio; some sections are broader, beginning with de nomine: given the disproportion between de nomine and the other sections, Munzi argues that the current text is an abridged version of the original (228). The criticism of several of the teacher’s points sometimes recalls Servius’ thoughts, which were then passed on to exegetes like Cledonius and Pompeius (consider, in this sense, the concord disagreement with Donatus’ assertion that the adverb indulgenter derives from the participle indulgens). In other cases, Sergius seems to proceed more autonomously (this is the case in the section de verbo, in which the grammarian challenges Donatus by previewing, in the structure, the moods compared to the forms, and disputes several points regarding frequentative and inchoative verbs.

         In comparison with Donatus’ examples, which are rather scarce and limited to Virgil, the author of the Commentarium uses a wider variety of exempla, as introduced by Servius. He provides about 60 quotations, usually literal, including — alongside Virgil’s preponderant presence — excerpta from Sallust, Horace, Terence, and Plautus. The text thus seems to be an educational grammar, which took the canonical auctores from the start of the imperial age as its models (Stock, 395). There are, however, two quotations from other writers: one aligns with the editor of Paulinus of Nola (carm. 26, 352: dulce sapit), the other with that of Statius (Theb. 8, 468). This Statius citation is probably an interpolation (the citation, concerning the -i ablative in third-declension nouns, is attributed to Lucan, and in any case pulls away from the direct tradition: igne viam scandens against igne viam rumpens in Statius: Stock 395). The Paulinus' citation serves to illustrate cognatio between the noun and adverb. If it were authentic, it would be significant, in a work that in other ways recalls the region of Campania (see again references to Baia and Pozzuoli, to Capua: Stock 421), because it would suggest a personal connection between the grammarian and Paulinus, or at least Campania; it would also strongly indicate a date in 402, the year in which Paulinus composed the Carmen, a possible terminus post quem for Sergius’ grammatical work (Stock 395-96). However, see, in particular, the reservations of Munzi 2005, 231-32, who limits the provenance to Italy in the first half of the 5th century, and who furthermore considers the Christian colouring and references to be only tenuously connected to the wider work. The Commentarium, first cited in Isidore’s Etymologiae, appears often in the grammatical texts of the 7th-9th centuries, with explicit revivals notably in the Ars Ambrosiana.  [A. Di Stefano, tr. C. Belanger]