Virgil's 'Mistakes' and the Ancient Interpreters of the Aeneid

This article investigates the early reception of Virgil’s Aeneid in light of its deep and deliberate intertextual relationship with Homer’s epics. Drawing on Francesca Schironi’s analysis of Alexandrian criticism in The Untouchable and the Violable, it explores how Roman commentators model their critical practices on Alexandrian philology, adopting techniques such as athetesis, attention to anachronism, and the explanation of inconsistencies through homonymy. Figures like Hyginus, Cornutus, Probus, Asper, and Servius – ranging from critical detractors to staunch defenders – reveal a Roman exegetical tradition that both challenges and affirms Virgil’s authority. The article argues that Virgil, far from merely imitating Homer’s style, consciously reproduces Homeric ‘mistakes’ to elicit from his readers the same interpretive strategies that Alexandrian scholars had applied to Homer. The Aeneid thus emerges not as a canonized epic immune to critique but as a text that anticipates and incorporates its own philological reception – an epic that invites, and indeed depends on, its commentators.