If any medieval author has a right to be called an enigma, it is Virgilius Maro Grammaticus. As baffling in his intentions as Marcabrun or Dante, as elusive a personality as King Arthur or Aethicus Ister, as fertile of imagination as any poet or novelist, he leaves his readers puzzled, uneasy, even angry. Paul Lehmann's taunt of arger Schalk, ’out-and-out charlatan‘, has been echoed by many a student, and yet Virgilius has attracted more scholarly attention than any other medieval grammarian. Despite a succession of dismissive judgements, his works exercise their hold on one generation after another, to the point where he even makes a brief appearance in a best-seller, Umberto Eco's Il nome della rosa. No works of superficial interest have ever held an audience in the way that these have. What is it that gives them their special quality?

At first glance Virgilius' Epitomae and Epistolae look improbable candidates for any best-seller list, medieval or modern. Ostensibly they are Latin grammars, written in Latin, and structured along traditional lines. Thus, the first of the pair, the Epitomae, is modelled on a famous grammar of Antiquity, the Ars maior by Donatus (c. 350 AD). Like the Ars maior, the Epitomae begins with several chapters on units smaller than the word — the letter, the syllable, metrical feet — and then progresses to the eight parts of speech. Both works conclude with a series of chapters on language in use: Donatus' on barbarisms, solecisms and figures of speech; Virgilius' on word-splitting, etymology and previous grammarians.