Abstract

In the 1470s the Italian scholar and humanist Domizio Calderini compiled a hitherto seldom noticed commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid. In his comments on Misenus’ burial the author draws on the archaic Law of the Twelve Tables several times. Calderini attempts to establish a link between the guidelines on burial, as recorded in Tabula X, and the funerary ceremony as described in detail by Virgil, which also substantiates the Roman character of the passage. Although the parallels drawn up by Calderini are in general hardly convincing and his interpretative approach fails as a result, the explanations regarding the reading of the Twelve Tables given en passant by the philologist, who lectured at the Roman Studium Urbis, are of particular significance to both the history of classical philology and to the history of reception of this first Roman body of laws.