IL COMMENTO DI DONATO AL PHORMIO DI TERENZIO: NOVITÀ SULLA TRADIZIONE MANOSCRITTA

Abstract. The manuscript tradition of the scholia attributed to Donatus for the beginning of Terence’s Phormio is examined, with special attention to the end of the praefationes, the prologue and the first scene. Starting from M. Reeve’s works and from a systematic comparison with the scholia Bembina, which in this short initial section very often overlap with what the medieval archetype of the entire commentary has transmitted to us, clues were sought for the reconstruction of a stemma codicum, by extending the collations to manuscripts which were ignored or neglected by Wessner and compiling a substantial specimen of provisional text for almost all the scholia up to v. 59. In particular, while important phenomena of contamination are highlighted through a choice of sometimes very problematic examples, we will discuss the placement of the  group, identified by Reeve, and of an epitomized and extensively reworked redaction, showing nevertheless some features of great value and known so far only from Reeve’s remarks on the London codex I, to which another, newly rediscovered manuscript belongs. With all the necessary methodological cautions, the results that have emerged in recent times for Andria and Eunuchus will be compared and new research will be carried out in view of an updated edition.