What a Commentator Does

For instance, Chrysippus and Antipater busy themselves with thorny questions; Demosthenes and Aeschines thunder against each other; Lysias and Isocrates have an easy and pleasing style. There is a wonderful difference among these writers, though each of them is perfect in his own line. Or again: read Cicero’s book To Herennius; read his books on rhetoric; or, since he tells us that these fell from his hands in a merely rough and unfinished state, look through his three books On the Orator, in which he presents a discussion between Crassus and Antony, the most eloquent orators of that day, and a fourth book called The Orator, which he wrote to Brutus when he was already an old man. Then you will realize that history, oratory, dialogue, letters, and commentaries each have their own particular style. [a]

It is commentaries we are dealing with now. In those I wrote on Ephesians, I followed Origen, Didymus, and Apollinaris, whose doctrines differ widely from one another, only as far as was consistent with the purity of my faith. For what is the task of a commentary? It is to interpret another man’s words, to put into plain language what he has expressed obscurely. So it lists the opinions of many people and says: “Some interpret the passage in this sense, some in that; some try to support their opinion and understanding of it by such and such evidence or reasons.” In this way the wise reader, after reading these different explanations and having many set before his mind to accept or reject, may judge which is truest and, like a good money changer, reject the counterfeit coin. Is the commentator to be held responsible for all these different interpretations and all these opinions that contradict one another, just because he sets down, in the single work he is commenting on, the explanations given by many?

I suppose that when you were a boy you read the commentaries of Asper on Virgil and Sallust, those of Vulcatius on Cicero’s speeches, those of Victorinus on Cicero’s dialogues and on the comedies of Terence, and also those of my teacher Donatus on Virgil, and of others on other writers such as Plautus, Lucretius, Flaccus, Persius, and Lucan. Will you find fault with those who have commented on these writers because they did not hold to a single explanation, but list their own views and those of others on the same passage?