DONA'TIIS, .2Emrs, a well-known grammarian and commentator, who taught gram mar and rhetoric at Rome about 355 A.D., and was the instructor of St. Jerome. He wrote treatises. De Literis; Syllabic; Pedibus et Tonis; De Octo Partibus Orationis; and De Barbarismo; Solecism°, etc., the best edition of which is in Lindemann's Coypus Gram maticorum Latinorurn (vol. i.). These writings form together a pretty complete course of Latin grammar, and in the middle ages were the only text-book used in the schools, so that Donat came, in the w. of Europe, to be synonymous with grammar, or with the elements of any science. The Donat into Religion is the title of a book by an English bishop, and there was an old French proverb, Les diables estoient encore d leur Donat (The devils were yet in their grammar). The Latin grammar of D. has formed the groundwork of the elementary treatises on that subject to the present day. D. was one of the first books on which the art of printing by means of letters cut on wooden blocks was tried, and copies of these Donatuses are reckoned among the greatest of biblio graphical curiosities. The author also wrote a commentary on Terence, of which we possess only a part extending to five comedies, to be found in the edition of Terence by Kloz (2 vols., Leip. 1838).
From this D. we must distinguish a later grammarian, TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS DONATUS, from whom we have a very worthless life of Virgil, prefixed to many editions of that poet, and fragments of a commentary on the ..rEneid.
DO'NAUWoRTII, a t. of Bavaria, situated at the confluence of the Wernitz and the Danube, about 25 m. n.n.w. of Augsburg. It is well built, in the form of an amphi theater, round the side of a hill, and is surrounded by walls. It was formerly a free imperial city of considerable importance, but it has now sunk into an insignificant place of 3,000 inhabitants. It is historically interesting, however, as the main cause of the thirty years' war; the severity of the punishment meted out to the inhabitants in 1607, in consequence of their adoption of the reformed doctrines, and their assault on a Roman Catholic procession of the " host," having led to the formation of the Protestant league, and Catholic union, the opponents in that long and severe struggle. It is likewise associated with the name of Marlborough, who stormed and carried the intrenched camp of the Bavarians here in 1704. Also, on the 6th Oct., 1805, the French, under Soult, obtained a victory here over the Austrians, under Mack.