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Some Notes on Cicero's Letters to Trebatius
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
Extract
Few scholars in our time have striven so unceasingly and so effectively as Hugh Last has done to emphasize the essential aspects of the res Romana and of its impact on the history of our civilization. So it was inevitable that he should have reminded us time and again of our debt to the man who, though not one of the greatest Romans, was to become, together with Virgil, the most influential of all, Cicero. It seems fitting therefore that when I join the scholars who wish in this volume to give a token of their gratitude to a magnificent historian, teacher, and friend, I should speak of Cicero. But I do not feel capable of making a contribution to the deeper understanding of this complex and exciting figure. So, indulging in the minute ἀκριβολογία which is inherent in φιλολογία, I shall confine myself to a few remarks on some minor points arising from Cicero's letters to Trebatius. These seventeen pieces (Fam. 7, 6–22), introduced by the delightful letter by which Cicero recommends the promising young lawyer to Caesar (Fam. 7, 5), are perhaps the happiest series in the large epistolary output of this unsurpassed letter-writer.
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- Copyright ©Eduard Fraenkel 1957. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
References
1 Cicéron, Correspondance, vol. III, 66.
1a Originally the imperative of emere, later on in meaning not very different from ecce.
2 See Thes. L.L., v 2, 437 f.
3 On the difference between em and en see, for instance, Wackernagel, J., Vorlesungen über Syntax II, 185Google Scholar.
4 The Descent of Manuscripts, Oxford, 1918, 168Google Scholar.
5 C. F. W. Müller in his Teubner text (published about 1880) accepted em; in his ‘Adnotatio critica’, p. xvi, he referred to Ribbeck, O., Beiträge zur Lehre von den lateinischen Partikeln, Leipzig, 1869, 31 ffGoogle Scholar., where on p. 33 f. Cic. Phil. 5, 15Google Scholar, is discussed and the reading of V, em causam, is vindicated.
6 Tyrrell, and Purser, , The Correspondence of Cicero, v, 319Google Scholar.
7 Before the excitement had died down. An immediate reaction is as natural after a dispute inter scyphos about civil law as after a verse competition per iocum atque vinum (Catullus 50).
8 It is therefore inaccurate to say, in summing up, the letter, that Cicero ‘turned up his lawbooks’ (F. Schulz, History of Roman Legal Science 44, n. 6).
9 Tyrrell and Purser's commentary, note on caput.
10 Huvelin, P., ‘Études sur le furtum,’ Annales de l'Université de Lyon II, fasc. 29, 1915, 320 ffGoogle Scholar.
11 Cic., Lael. I ‘quo (i.e. the augur Q. Mucius) mortuo me ad pontificem Scaevolam contuli, quem unum nostrae civitatis et ingenio et iustitia praestantissimum audeo dicere’.
12 Pomponius, , Dig.. I, 2, 2, 41Google Scholar, ‘post hos Quintus Mucius Publii filius pontifex maximus ius civile primus constituit generatim in libros decem et octo redigendo’.
13 From Gellius 6, 15, 2. cf. Lenel, O., Palingenesia iuris civilis I, 758Google Scholar.
14 Bremer, F. P., Iurisprudentiae antehadr. rell. I, 99Google Scholar, includes the Gellius passage in the fragments of Scaevola's Book xvi, De furtis or De furto.
15 For a thorough re-examination of the character of this epitome see A. Berger, P-W XVII, 1836 ff.
16 cf. Bremer, o.c. II, 2, 397.
17 For further examples see Vocabularium iuris prud. Rom. V, 358 f.
18 See, for instance, Madvig on Cic., Fin. 2, 6, 3rd ed., p. 146Google Scholar; Merguet, , Lexikon zu den philos. Schriften Cicero's III, 502Google Scholar.
19 This expression, too, is common also in the treatment of non-juristic controversies; cf., for instance, Cic., Fin. 3, 33Google Scholar, ‘ego adsentior Diogeni,’ and so quite often (see Merguet, o.c. I, 84).
20 Cicéron, Correspondance vol. III, 37.
21 Bornecque, H., La prose métrique dans la correspondance de Cicéron, Paris, 1898, 20Google Scholar.
22 How, Cicero, Select Letters, no. 6.
22a Cicero's own description of it, ‘epistula quam nolo aliis legi,’ will be quoted presently.
23 I use vertical strokes to mark the incisions between one colon and the next which are preceded by a clausula.
24 (num) mariis iudicibus is Zielinski's (Das Clausel gesetz in Ciceros Reden 1904, 161) ‘Form P 2’.
25 At this point the writer's pent-up emotion vents itself in a wide hyperbaton (omnem … παρρησίαν), which always indicates strong emphasis. The juxta position omnem omnibus and the like is much favoured by Cicero; cf. for instance, Verr. II, 2, 30, Caec. 34, Cael. 14, Sest. 25, Pis. 29. Lobeck on Soph. Aj. 866 adduces Plat. Menex. 249e πᾶσαν πάντων παρὰ πάντα τὸν χρόνον ἐπιμέλειαν ποιουμένη and several other Greek instances. The widespread tendency by which ‘die Wörter gleicher Kategorie zu einander streben’ is illustrated (from Plautus) by Leo, F., Nachr. Gött. Ges. d. Wiss., Phil.-hist. Klasse, 1895, 432 fGoogle Scholar.
26 Assuming the pronunciation of huius as ῡῡ (used for instance, to remain near to Cicero's time, by Accius), the clausula would be the double cretic; otherwise it would be of the type publice subscribitur (Zielinski p. 85).
27 Mendelssohn's punctuation (semicolon before tamquam enim syngrapham) brings the structure out better than the full stop which most editors place there. Sjögren puts a full stop even before non enim in 1. 2 of section 2; that is quite unsuitable.
28 cf., for instance, (middle of section 2) ‘cum viderem me a Caesare honorificentissime tractari et unice diligi hominisque liberalitatem incredibilem et singularem fidem nossem’, etc.
29 cf. my remarks on the end of Fam. 7, 22, p. above.
30 Commentationes Tullianae, Uppsala 1910, 137 f.Google Scholar