Donatus.

Donatus. ÆLIUS, a well-known grammarian and commentator, who taught grammar and rhetoric at Rome about the middle of the 4th century, and was the instructor of St Jerome. He wrote treatises, De Literis, Syllabis, Pedibus et Tonis, De Octo Partibus Orationis, and De Barbarismo, Solecismo, &c., which are collected by Keil in vols. iv. and v. of the Grammatici Latini (1864-65). These writings form together a pretty complete course of Latin grammar, and in the middle ages formed the only text-book used in the schools, so that Donat came, in the west of Europe, to be synonymous with grammar, or with the elements of any science. The Donat into Religion is the title of a book by an English bishop, and there was an old French proverb, Les diables estoient encore à leur Donat ('The devils were yet in their grammar'). The Latin grammar of Donatus has formed the groundwork of the elementary treatises on that subject to the present day. Donatus was one of the first books on which the art of printing by means of letters cut on wooden blocks was tried, and copies of these are reckoned among the greatest of bibliographical curiosities. The author also wrote a commentary on Terence, of which we possess only a part extending to five comedies, to be found in many editions of Terence.—From him must be carefully distinguished a later grammarian, TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS DONATUS (about 400), from whom we have a very worthless life of Virgil, prefixed to many editions of that poet, and fragments of a commentary on the Æneid.