Nomina generis dubii in Servio

This article collects and analyzes some passages in which Servius, in his Commentaries on Vergil’s works, deals with questions of grammatical gender. The research aims to see how much interest Servius had in this topic, which doctrinal and didactic principles guided him, which sources he had available and made use of, and to which linguistic auctoritates he ascribed value on this subject. Servius (much more than the so-called Servius Danielis) deals frequently with gender topics, which in his own time were already a well-established field of Latin grammar, and quotes the works of Pliny the elder and Caper, the most famous authors De dubiis generibus; only a few of his observations seem independent of this large tradition. moreover, occasionally he adds examples from recent poets (Lucan, Persius, Statius, iuvenal), whom he greatly appreciated and often quoted on other topics.