“ The first of these works, and especially the section on the eight parts of speech, though possessing little claim to originality, and in fact evidently based on the same authorities which were used by the grammarians Charisius and Diomedes, attained such popularity as a school-book that in the middle ages the writer’s name, like the French Calepin, became a common metonymy (in the form donet) for a rudimentary treatise of any sort. ”

“ Aelius Donatus is to be distinguished from Tiberius Claudius Donatus, the author of a commentary (Interpretationes) on the Aeneid (of far less value than that of Servius) , who lived about fifty years later. ”