Editing Virgil (section)

===Biographical sources===
Biographical information about Virgil is transmitted chiefly in {{lang|la|vitae}} ('lives') of the poet prefixed to commentaries on his work by [[Marcus Valerius Probus|Probus]], [[Aelius Donatus|Donatus]], and [[Servius the Grammarian|Servius]]. The life given by Donatus is generally considered to closely reproduce the life of Virgil from a lost work of [[Suetonius]] on the lives of famous authors, just as Donatus used this source for the poet's life in his commentary on [[Terence]], where Suetonius is explicitly credited.{{sfn|Nettleship|1879|pp=28–31}}<ref name="Stok_Lives"/> The far shorter life given by Servius likewise seems to be an abridgement of Suetonius except for one or two statements.{{sfn|Nettleship|1879|p=31}} [[Lucius Varius Rufus|Varius]] is said to have written a memoir of his friend Virgil, and Suetonius likely drew on this lost work and other sources contemporary with the poet.{{sfn|Nettleship|1879|p=32}} A life written in verse by the grammarian Phocas (probably active in the 4th through 5th century AD) differs in some details from Donatus and Servius.<ref name="Stok_Lives"/> [[Henry Nettleship]] believed that the life attributed to Probus may have drawn independently from the same sources as Suetonius,{{sfn|Nettleship|1879|p=31}} but it is attributed by other authorities to an anonymous author of the 5th or 6th century AD who drew on Donatus, Servius, and Phocas.<ref name="Stok_Lives"/> The Servian life was the principal source of Virgil's biography for medieval readers, while the Donatian life enjoyed a more limited circulation, and the lives of Phocas and Probus remained largely unknown.<ref name="Stok_Lives">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Stok |first=Fabio |title=Lives |encyclopedia=The Virgil Encyclopedia |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |year=2014 |pages=751–755 |doi=10.1002/9781118351352.wbve1235|isbn=978-1-4051-5498-7 }}</ref>

Although the commentaries record much factual information about Virgil, some of their evidence can be shown to rely on allegorizing and on inferences drawn from his poetry. For this reason, details regarding Virgil's life story are considered somewhat problematic.<ref name="Fowler, pg.1603">Fowler, Don. 1996. "Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)." In ''[[Oxford Classical Dictionary|The Oxford Classical Dictionary]]'' (3rd ed.). Oxford: [[Oxford University Press]].</ref>{{Rp|1602}}