All Scholars

Irish-born, John Savage brought with him to the United States the traditions of early-medieval Irish classical scholarship that provided the focus for a large part of his own later scholarly activity. At Harvard University he studied under the brilliant medievalist and humanist Edward Kennard Rand, who at that time (ca. 1916-34) was developing the theory that most, if not all, of the material superimposed on Servius' commentary on Virgil in what is now called Servius Danielis (or Servius Auctus) derives from the lost commentary of Aelius Donatus. With the help of two year-long traveling fellowships from Harvard, Savage personally handled and studied manuscripts of Virgil and of Servius in libraries all over Europe, and not only identified and classified many manuscripts that had hitherto never been used for the establishment of Servian texts, but also marshaled an immense amount of data supporting Rand's thesis. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Savage became the senior member of a group of graduate students whom Rand associated with himself as editors of a new edition of Servius, the so-called Harvard Servius, which was designed, if not to promote Rand's theory of the relationship between Servius and Servius Auctus, at least by its format to make clear to the reader exactly where the line between the two of them fell, and so enable him to form a more intelligent judgment. Previous editors had not felt called upon to do this because the additamenta had been regarded as miscellaneous, drawn by some compiler from a variety of sources, and so without unity or integrity of their own.After the appearance (in 1946) of the Harvard Servius on Aeneid I—II, Savage, then at Fordham University, devoted himself principally to the study and explication of Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics, often illumined by his special talents as a palaeographer and not infrequently spreading out to include other aspects of the Augustan Age. It was eminently appropriate that he should serve for three years as president of the Vergilian Society of America.A man of relatively slight build, he was on the taciturn side, but he was always approachable, kindly, and helpful to those working in any field where he might have special expertise. The personal acquaintance of this writer with Savage came largely during the period (1937-46) when the two of them were both members of Rand's group of editors of the Harvard Servius, most of the work on which was done at Cambridge. The focus by then was on erecting the structure of texts (Servius and Servius auctus) for which Savage had laid the foundations, and so he was by that time less in evidence than some of the others whom Professor Rand had recruited later for the project. But he did come to Cambridge occasionally for meetings of the editorial group, and it was apparent that he enjoyed the respect and admiration of Rand, as well as the admiration, and indeed affection, of the younger associates who were following a trail that in large measure he had blazed.