Donatus

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Elius Donatus is a fourth-century grammarian, remembered as a commentator and biographer of Terence and Virgil, whose Ars Grammatica was used as a text in medieval schools, where grammar was the first of the disciplines of the Trivium and the Quadrivium. He is mentioned in Paradiso by Cacciaguida, who indicates his presence among the wise spirits of the second crown of the Heaven of the Sun. The critical note on the passage also recalls the parallel with Inf. I 79-80. The Life of Virgil written by Donatus is cited by an authorized commentary, which reports the epitaph «Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc / Parthenope» on the Neapolitan tomb of the poet.