James Brusuelas
In Linderski’s Latomus review of G. Ramires’ Servio. Commento el libro VII dell’ Eneido di Virgilio (2008) the Harvard Servius project, as it was known for so long, was described as not just being moored, but ultimately a sunken ship. To a certain extent, Linderski was right to apply the nautical metaphor. Although the Harvard project was a grand attempt to surpass the previous edition of Thilo-Hagen (1881-7; repr. 1961), only two volumes were ever published: vol. 2 in 1946 (Aeneid 1-2) and vol. 3 in 1965 (Aeneid 3-5). Be that as it may, the ship was not sunk. Rather, it has just been in dry dock. Charles Murgia at Berkeley and Peter K. Marshall at Amherst continued work until the unfortunate passing of Marshall in 2001 and Murgia in 2013. Now, a rebuild is never simple, and this is definitely not a reboot. Nevertheless, the ship has now been outfitted with a new crew and even some technological upgrades. So, immittamus habenas. In 2015, Prof. Robert Kaster collected the remaining work of Charles Murgia and finished the long awaited vol. 5 (Aeneid 9-12). Around the same time, we began consolidating and digitising the remaining work of Peter K. Marshall on the comments to Aeneid 6. The plan was both to prototype a model for a digital edition of Servius and to begin work on completing Marshall’s edition. Based on my work on Marshall’s edition of the comments to Aeneid 6, the purpose of this paper is to revisit the essential problems in editing Servius and to provide a progress report on vol. 4 (Aeneid 6-8).