Aelius Donatus

He was the author of a number of professional works, of which several are extant: Donatus was a proponent of an early system of punctuation, consisting of dots placed in three successively higher positions to indicate successively longer pauses, roughly equivalent to the modern comma, colon, and full stop.

[5] In "About Comedy and Tragedy" in his Commentary on Terence, Donatus was the first person known to document the system whereby a play is made up of three separate parts: protasis, epitasis, and catastrophe.

Donatus auctus was added some time around 1426–37, between the first and second redactions of the De scriptoribus illustribus latinae linguae ["On Famous Writers of the Latin Language"] of Sicco Polenton, and it became the standard account of Virgil's life up until the 18th century.

[8] The text and translation is found in Ziolkowski and Putnam (2008: II.A.37, 345–69), with italics for the Donatus auctus and non-italics for Vita Vergili.

[4] Donatus auctus contains one oft-quoted poem "sic vos non vobis", which was recorded in Codex Salmasianus.