Aelius Donatus

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Aelius Donatus

Aelius Donatus (fl. mid 4th century AD) was a Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
grammarian and teacher of rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of using language as a means to persuade. Along with logic and dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse....
. The only fact known regarding his life is that he was the tutor of St. Jerome

Jerome

Saint Jerome was a Christian priest and Christian apologetics best known for translating the Vulgate. He is recognized by the Catholic Church as a canonized saint and Doctor of the Church, and his version of the Bible is still an important text in Catholicism....
.

He was the author of a number of professional works, of which several are still extant:

A partly incomplete commentary on the playwright Terence

Terence

Publius Terentius Afer , better known as Terence, was a playwright of the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 BC, and he died young probably in Greece or on his way back to Rome....
compiled from other commentaries, but probably not in its original form;

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Aelius Donatus (fl. mid 4th century AD) was a Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
grammarian and teacher of rhetoric

Rhetoric

Jerome

A partly incomplete commentary on the playwright Terence

Terence

His Life of Virgil
Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works?the Bucolics , the Georgics and the Aeneid?although several Appendix Vergiliana are also attributed to him....
is thought to be based on a lost Vita by Suetonius, together with the preface and introduction of his commentary on Virgil's works. A greatly expanded version of Servius' commentary exists, however, which is supplemented with frequent and extensive extracts from what is thought to be Donatus' commentary on Virgil.

text (English translation by David Scott)

His Ars grammatica
Ars grammatica

An Ars grammatica is a generic or proper title for surveys of Latin Grammar.Extant works known as Ars grammatica have been written by...
and especially the section on the eight parts of speech, though possessing little claim to originality, and evidently based on the same authorities which were used by the grammarians Charisius

Charisius

Flavius Sosipater Charisius was a Latin grammarian.He was probably an African by birth, summoned to Constantinople to take the place of Euanthius, a learned commentator on Terence....
and Diomedes

Diomedes Grammaticus

Diomedes Grammaticus was a Latin grammarian who probably lived in the late 300s AD. He wrote a grammatical trea?tise, known either as De Oratione et Partibus Orationis et Vario Genere Metrorum libri III or Ars grammatica in three books, dedicated to a certain Athanasius....
, attained such popularity as a schoolbook that in the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
he became the eponym

Eponym

An eponym is a person, whether real or fictitious, after whom a particular toponym, ethnonym, regnal year, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named....
for a rudimentary treatise of any sort, called a donet. When books came to be printed in the 15th century, editions of the little book were multiplied to an enormous extent. It is also the only purely textual work to be printed in blockbook form (cut like a woodcut, not using movable type

Movable Type

Movable Type is a blog software developed by the company Six Apart. It was publicly announced on 3 September 2001, and version 1.0 was publicly released on 8 October 2001....
). It is in the form of an Ars Minor, which only treats of the parts of speech, and an Ars Major, which deals with grammar in general at greater length.

He invented the system whereby a play is made up of three separate parts; protasis

Protasis

In drama, a protasis is the introductory part of a play, usually its first act. It was coined by the fourth-century Ancient Rome grammarian Aelius Donatus....
, epitasis, and catastasis

Catastasis

In classical tragedies, a catastasis is the third part of an ancient drama, in which the intrigue or action that was initiated in the epitasis, is supported and heightened, until ready to be unravelled in the Catastrophe ....
.

Aelius Donatus should not be confused with Tiberius Claudius Donatus, also the author of a commentary (Interpretationes) on the Aeneid
Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin Epic poetry written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Rome....
who lived about fifty years later.

External links

, including the Ars Minor and all the parts of the Ars Major