1 The first was an aged man by the name of Donatus, at Troy, who lived, they say, for a thousand years. When he came to Romulus, the founder of the city of Rome, he was received with the greatest rejoicing and stayed there for four years. During this time he built up a school and left innumerable works in which he posed various riddles, saying: ‘My son, who is the woman who offers her breasts to countless offspring, and however much they are sucked they flow just as richly?’ The answer is Wisdom. ‘What is the difference between word (verbum), speech (sermo), sentence (sententia), utterance (loqueld) and discourse (oratio)?’ Whatever the tongue and voice produce is word; speech, however, which gets its name from the combination of two words, SERendo ‘sowing’ and MOnendo ‘admonishing’, is more ornate and diligent; a sentence is what is conceived with one's sense; an utterance is when the sequence of speech (dictio) is woven with a certain degree of elegance; and discourse is when oratorical speech reaches the point of elaboration with the hands.

2 Likewise at Troy was Virgilius, a pupil of that Donatus. He was extremely energetic at copying out verses. It was he who wrote seventy books on metre and a letter on the verb sent to Virgilius of Asia. The third Virgilius is myself.

3 Virgilius of Asia was the student of the aforesaid. He was a man so solicitous to the needs of holy persons that a call never found him sitting idly.