Late Ciceronian scholarship and Virgilian exegesis. Servius and ps. Asconius

Ps.-Asconius’ linguistic commentary on Cicero’s divinatio in Caecilium and part of the Verrines (in Verrem 1, act. 2.1 and 2.2.1-35) has been included in the canon of ancient commentaries relying on Servius for much of their material. The issue relating to the origin and form of the commentary (whether a set of marginal or interlinear notes or a continuous work, later abridged and reshaped in the margins of a manuscript) has long puzzled modern scholars, but the consensus has it that Ps.-Asconius ‘owes much to Servius’ commentary, and also that the commentary on the Verrines, like the commentary on Vergil, was a variorum work, summarizing and evaluating the scholarship of previous centuries’. This article aims to re-examine the alleged relationship of Ps.-Asconius with Servius by focusing on both patent similarities between the two commentaries and those notes that appear to be at variance with one another. It also reconsiders those cases in which Ps.-Asconius matches with the so-called Servius Danielis or Servius Auctus (henceforth DServ), the work of a late unknown compiler who expanded and supplemented Servius with non-Servian material, probably derived in part from the lost commentary of Aelius Donatus. Additionally, it devotes attention to at least one case in which the two scholiasts seem to offer diverging interpretations in evaluating Virgil’s linguistic choices. The result will be a fundamental reassessment of the composite nature of Ps.-Asconius’ commentary on the Verrines as a ‘variorum work’, collecting and assembling material of disparate origin.