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L. Cornelius Sisenna and the Early First Century B.C.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Elizabeth Rawson
Affiliation:
New Hall, Cambridge

Extract

The most important historical work in Latin that was actually written in the first half of the first century B C. was L. Cornelius Sisenna's history of the War of the Allies and the Civil Wars which followed it, up to Sulla's dictatorship or conceivably death-the most important one that was not written being of course Cicero's. Sallust praised Sisenna's work highly in the Jugurtba, though complaining that it was not sufficiently frank about Sulla, and his own lost histories began, very probably, where Sisenna's left off. Varro's logistoricus on the writing of history, of which, alas, only a brief and unenlightening fragment remains, bore Sisenna's name.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1979

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References

1 Frag. 132P = 134B deals with Sulla's election to the dictatorship in 82. There are very few fragments from the later books, however, and the fact that Sallust begins with the year 78 (frag. 1.1M) makes it possible that Sisenna continued to Sulla's death early in that year. (Syme, R., Sallust (1964), p. 180 n. 10Google Scholar, thinks Sulla's funeral would have made a good end.) I quote Sisenna's fragments both with the numeration of Peter's HRR and that of Barabino, G., Studi Noniani 1 (1967), Part iiGoogle Scholar, which takes account of the so-called Lex Lindsay in Nonius, from whom so many of the fragments come; she also provides a useful commentary, aiming chiefly at setting the fragments in their narrative context, and at linguistic comparisons; there is no general discussion of the work.

2 Gellius, A., N.A. 16.9.5.Google Scholar

3 Cicero, , Brutus 228Google Scholar, De legibus 1.7.

4 Sallust, , Bell. Jug. 95.2.Google Scholar

5 Brutus 228; in a rhetorical context, strictly speaking.Google Scholar

6 Velleius 2.9.1.

7 Hist. 3.51 (frag. 129P = 130B).

8 So recently Badian, E. with a query in ‘Waiting for Sulla’, JRS 52(1962), 47Google Scholar = Studies, p. 206Google Scholar, and without one in Where was Sisenna?Athenaeum 42 (1964), 422Google Scholar; and in his chapter on ‘The Early Historians’ in Latin Historians (1966), ed. Dorey, T.A.. MRR registers him as a patrician, with a question mark.Google Scholar

9 Vita Persi 1; she may have been of quite local origin, as the Fulvii are an old family of Volaterrae.

10 CIE 5712 (‘il gentilizio… di sapore prettamente etrusco’). She is P. or possibly L.f. Cf. Torelli, M., St. etr. 33 (1965), 497 ffGoogle Scholar: the inscription perhaps second or first century B. C: he compares Sisinnius, , CIL vi. 4186Google Scholar, Sisennius, , CIL vi. 1058.111.9Google Scholar, 26005, and Sisenna as gentilicium vi. 19838, viii. 11201, etc.

11 Zur Gescbichte lateinischer Eigen-namen (1904), p. 94.Google Scholar

12 So Rix, H., Das etruskische Cognomen (1963), p. 382Google Scholar, tentatively, for Cornelius Sisenna and others. Less tentatively, Kaimio, J., in ‘Studies in the Romanization of Etruria’, Acta Ac. Fin. Rom. (1975), p. 181Google Scholar: ‘if the Etruscan name did not seem suitable to the Roman nomenclature it could be transferred into the cognomen’, various examples are given.

13 Kaimio, , op. cit., p. 213Google Scholar. The cities of Etruria devoted to Scipio Africanus, Plutarch, Fab. Max. 25.5.

14 Livy 39.45.

15 SIG3 704, 705; cf.MRR i. 528.

16 Crawford, RCC no. 310, dates him to 118–107 B. C. The types show Jupiter and an anguipedic giant or demon, each with a thunderbolt, and astral symbols (sun, moon, and stars). Goethert, F.W.,‘SummanusMDAI(R) 55 (1940), 233Google Scholar (with earlier bibliography) thinks the thunderbolt has hit the giant in the side; cf. the types of L. Valerius Acisculus and A. Manlius Q. f., RRC, nos.309, 474.4. This similarity makes it unlikely that the coin refers to Etruscan lore of fulguration.

17 CIL iii. 408Google Scholar. Possibly M. f.? He set up the monument vivos sapiens, the equivalent of , which Guarducci, M., Epigrafia greca iii. 149Google Scholar, thinks not pre-imperial. For Romans in Philadelphia during the principate, Wilson, A.J.N., Emigration from Italy in the Republican Age of Rome (1966), p. 140Google Scholar. Etruria and Lydia had of t course mythological links, which negotiatores may have exploited. Taylor, L.R., VDRR, pp. 272, 283Google Scholar, thinks there may have been some patrician Cornelii in the Fabia (which included Alba Fucens, Luca, Rudiae, Asculum); she suggests the L. Corn. M. f. Rom. on the sc. de agro Per-gameno (Sherk 12) might be a Sisenna, p. 207.Google Scholar

18 For the Sisenna described as Gabinius' son see below. For later members of the family, Dio 54.217 says that in 13 B. C. a Cornelius Sisenna was censured for his wife's conduct and replied in the Senate that he had married her on Augustus' advice (the Emperor was furious). Groag, , RE 4.1511Google Scholar, thinks this might be the Cornelius Sisenna who was moneyer after 12 B. C, and/or the man who issued coins, probably as governor of Sicily, perhaps also the patron of L. Cornelius Sisennae libert. Hilarus, , CIL vi. 1900Google Scholar; he suggests that he was the historian's grandson and father of the Cornelia who brought the name Sisenna into the great family of the Statilii Tauri, marrying a Statilius probably the son of Augustus'; general. IG vii. 1854Google Scholar, from Thespiae, a statue perhaps to this lady, who was doubtless the mother of T. Statilius Sisenna Taurus cos. 16 A. D., who lived in Cicero's old house on the Palatine (Velleius 2.14.3); the Statilii were very rich. CIL vi 6322–71, slaves of a Cornelia connected with the Statilii, probably the same. The Sisenna of Hor. Sat. 1.7.8 is probably unconnected and less distinguished.Google Scholar

19 Peter, , HRR l.cccxxxixGoogle Scholar,Mazzarino, S., II pensiero storico classico (1966), ii.432Google Scholar. Florus 2.6 also implies that the Social War was a civil war, but Salmon, E.T., ‘Sulla Redux’, Athenaeum 42 (1964), 60Google Scholar, shows that most ancient sources ‘treat the Social War as a separate entity’.

20 CIL i2. 2.589Google Scholar (Sherk 22); Plutarch, Lucullus 1. Seneca Rhetor, Contr. Praef. 19, bears out the friendship with Hortensius-it was ‘a Sisenna provocatus’ (another bet?) that Hortensius attended an auction, to prove his amazing memory by reporting afterwards every piece of business. Pace Peter cccxlii, this does not prove that Sisenna also had an outstanding memory and tried to outdo his friend. Quintilian 11.2.2 implies that Hortensius‘ feat was due to training in the art of memory, by which objects (or symbols) are associated in the mind with a series of places, real or imaginary. Can we infer that Sisenna, not laboris multi, had not studied it (many decried it)?

21 Verrines 2.2.43; Münzer, , RE 3. 1353Google Scholar. Wiseman's stemma, connecting all the Calidii, (New Men in the Roman Senate (1971), p. 220Google Scholar, is tacitly rejected by Gruen, E., The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (1974), p. 202n.Google Scholar

23 Verrines 2.4.33–4.

24 Badian, E., ‘The Early Career of A. Gabinius’, Philol. 103 (1959), 97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, thinks he was adopted (if so there was at least one brother or cousin to carry the family on into the Augustan age);Münzer, , RE 4.1510Google Scholar, thinks he was a step-son.

25 Münzer, , RE 13.1376, 1394Google Scholar; one would like to know how Sisenna treated Pompey and his father in the Histories, but the only fragment bearing on either is the tale of the soldier in Pompeius Strabo's army who kills his brother on the other side-a demonstration of the horrors of civil war that if pressed might imply blame to Strabo for such war (frag. 129P = 130B).

25 De leg. 1.7; Macer as a Marian moneyer in the 80s, Crawford, , RRC i. 78 ffGoogle Scholar. He probably entered the Senate via the tribunate in 73, and a quaestorship in the early 70s is not to be postulated, as it is by Badian, ‘The Early Historians’ (see above, n. 8). MRR does not mention one. True, Macer must have been cautious during the Sullan period. There is little to be gained from the story of how Sisenna, as praetor, wrongly refused to give the goods of one Cn. Cornelius (a client of his?) to ‘the noble and excellent young man’ P. Scipio, perhaps the P. Scipio who supported Roscius of Amelia and/or the man who as Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica was cos. 52. (Peter reads L. for P., without comment). The second non in Asconius, In Corn. i. 58 St. is assured by the rhythm.Google Scholar

26 Veil. Pat. 2.16.3. Would a history simply of the Social War be called Annales?

27 ‘Where was Sisenna?’ (see above, n. 8).

28 Veil. Pat. 2.9. Riese, A., Festschrift…zu Heidelberg (1865), p.55Google Scholar; still so taken by Frasinetti, P., ‘Sisenna e la Guerra Sociale’, Athenaeum 50 (1972), 78Google Scholar; Paratore, E., ‘La leggenda di Enea nei frammenti di Sisenna’, St. Urb. 49 (1975), 223Google Scholar, is tentative. Sisenna must have been born c. 119 (Brutus 228); but Veileius is not quite as chaotic as sometimes thought: Rutilius Rufus, described as a contemporary of Sisenna's, was perhaps nearly so as a historian, since he probably wrote in exile in extreme old age; and it should be accepted that Antias is Sullan, not a generation later.

29 Including A. J. Woodman, in a letter to me.

30 Op. cit. in n. 28.

31 Andre, J., ed. 1968, following Reitzen-stein, Das Marcben von Amor und Psyche bei Apuleius (1912), p. 64Google Scholar, cf. Rohde, E., Rh. Mus. (1893), 130Google Scholar. Improper stories as part of the history, e.g. G. Luck's trans., 1967–72. At first sight the argument that historia in connection with Sisenna must mean ‘history’ is plausible, but at 416 ‘Eubius, impurae con-ditor historiae’ is hardly a historian (the work dealt with abortion).Birt, Th., Kritik u. Hermeneutik (1913), p. 106Google Scholar, glosses ‘mit ernsthafter Geschichts-schreibung, historiae, stellt also der Historiker Sisenna die lasterhafte Aristidestibersetzung gleich.’ Surely as ‘desperat’ as he finds Reitzenstein's version.

32 There is no possibility of violent reordering of the passage; Ennius and Lucretius are tied inextricably to Catullus and Calvus. For the younger Hortensius, Cicero, ad An. 6.3.9; Val. Max. 5.9.2.

33 Ad fam. 4.3.4,4.5.4.

34 Horace, Sat. 1.10.86.

35 Cautiously, Münzer, RE 4a 862, and Syme, R., ‘Missing Senators’, Historia 4 (1955), 52.Google Scholar

36 Ovid's ‘nomina tanta’ probably applies to all the poets he has mentioned, and their greatness as poets, not to the social position and non-poetic fame of Hortensius and Servius.

37 Fronto, Ep. 57 Van Den Hout = 62 Naber: Brutus 228.

38 Even if the Greek Sybaritica, and Eubius' work, were in prose.

39 The precise form of the Milesiaca, and its relation to Menippean satire, are uncertain.

40 The idea that it was Sisenna's translation of the Milesiaca that Surena found in the baggage of Crassus' officer Roscius is pleasant, but would the Parthians, and the people of Seleucia, have recognized it in Latin dress? Roscius was probably reading the original Greek (Plutarch, , Crassus 32.34).Google Scholar

41 Badian, E., ‘Waiting for Sulla’ (see above, n. 8)Google Scholar. Bardon, H., La Litterature latine inconnue i (1952), 255Google Scholar. Sisenna is among the viri fortissimi, perhaps all governors, including Marius, Pompey, and C. Marcellus, who stayed with Sthenius in Sicily, Verr. 2.2.110.

42 Appian, , Mitbr. 94.Google Scholar

43 Dio 36.1; Plutarch, Pomp. 26 describes the legates as (the latter word probably means ‘praetorian’).

44 Badian, E., ‘Where was Sisenna?’ (see above, n. 8)Google Scholar. For Hortensius, Brutus 304, Vell. Pat. 2.16.3; only his quaestor followed Sulla to Rome, Appian, B.C. 1.57-perhaps Lucullus, Badian, ‘Waiting for Sulla’ (above, n. 8)Google Scholar. The more junior Cicero also served Sulla, perhaps only for one year.

45 Verr. 2.2.110; the other Romans named are holders of imperium. 2.2A3 shows Sisenna had many contacts in Sicily, including the important eques Cn. Calidius, father of a senator. An ex-governor as an advocate would be a good card for Verres to play. MRR accepts the governorship, with a query.

46 Plutarch, Pomp. 26, Crassus 10; Cicero, Verr. 2.5 passim. Appian, , Mitbr. 93Google Scholar, defeat of a Sicilian praetor.

47 Plutarch, , Crassus 10.Google Scholar

48 Frags. 38–9P=41–2B (Book 3); 104–7P=75 and 63–5B (Book 4); perhaps also 9P=11B (Book 3); 139P=141B. Appian, , B. C. 1.212 on defence of the coast; Livy, Ep. 75, a fleet off Campania.Google Scholar

49 Frags. 40–1, 90–2P=20, 53, 120–1, 82B.

50 Ad Her. 3.2.3.

51 Jug. 85.12; Acad. 2.1.2.

52 Diod. Sic. 1.1.5.

53 Peter cccxxxix.

54 Asellio frags. 1–2P.

55 Recently, Scullard, H.H., From the Gracchi to Nero4 (1976), p.407. Frasinetti (op. cit. in n. 28) thinks Sisenna 143P=5B a flashback to Rutilius Rufus' trial, Barabino, p. 83, toC. Gracchus' law.Google Scholar

56 11P. For the structure of Asellio's work, see now Morelli, G., ‘Sempronio Asellione e Cesellio Vindice in Carisio’, St. Urb. (1975).Google Scholar

57 Frag. 127P=127B. Leeman, A.D., Orationis Ratio (1963), p. 84Google Scholar, treats him as one of the annalists.

58 Frags. 10, 110, 113P=14, 99, 105B (cf. 114P=102B).

59 Review in JRS 55 (1965), 231.Google Scholar

60 Other arguments in Badian's ‘Where was Sisenna?’ (above, n. 8) are not conclusive: Brutus, in Brutus, does not know of the case in which Sisenna appeared against Rusius, but Atticus does, which may suggest it occurred in the 90s or early 80s-but Sisenna could have left Rome thereafter.

61 Brutus 228; but Sisenna's character istics, he thinks, were clearly visible in his histories.

62 Peter cccxlii; Leeman, , op. cit. in n. 57, p. 82Google Scholar. Peter holds that Sisenna admired Sullac as his gentilis–but apart from the fact that it is doubtful whether they were, or were regarded as, members of the same gens, what of Cornelius Cinna (who may or may not have been a patrician)?

63 Tarn, holding that Cleitarchus was hostile to Alexander, has not persuaded; but Cleitarchus probably mentioned Alexander';s massacres and other crimes.

64 Appian, , Mithr. 46Google Scholar. Sisenna's and Sulla's works were on much the same scale (over twenty books each, if we accept Nonius' reference to the former's Book 23 (132P=134B), so Sisenna's wider canvass must have meant compression of Sulla's account. Sulla's style was apparently simple (he did not attract the grammarians) though perhaps not inelegant; recently, Pascucci, G., ‘I commentaric di Silla’, St. Urb. (1975), p. 283Google Scholar, E. Valgiglio, ‘L'autobiografia di Silla nelle biografie di Plutarcho’, ibid, p. 245.

65 Sallust, Hist. 1.4M. Frag. 1.2M, recens scriptum, is referred to Sisenna by Mauren–brecher, obviously most insecurely (though Syme, , op. cit. in n. l, p. 182, accepts it)Google Scholar. 1.5M perhaps accused Cato of bias.

66 Sallust, Hist. 1.35M.

67 Id. ibid. 1.88M. Schulten, A., Sertorius (1926), p. 15Google Scholar, says that Sallust started the Histories by complaining that Sisenna was also unfair to Lepidus. I see no evidence. He argues that the hostile tradition on Sertorius in the Livian sources and Appian is perhaps ultimately due to Sisenna; but Sisenna was perhaps brief or silent on the man. Syme, , op. cit. in n. 1, p. 206Google Scholar, thinks Varro a better candidate. (I also cannot share Schulten's belief that Sisenna's style was ‘poseidonisch’.)

68 Barabino, p. 184, translates ‘la maggior parte del popolo e delle assemblee’. Leeman, , op. cit. in n. 57, p. 84Google Scholar, on the other hand, accepts Peter's tentative suggestion nationes for contionis. But a reference to both urban and rural support seems probable.

69 Frags. 99–100P=122–3B. P.Frasinetti (op. cit. in n. 28) suggests that, as in Strabo 5.14.12, it was used to explain the foundation of Bovianum in Samnium.

70 Frag. 102P=124B. Salmon, E.T., Samnium and the Samnites (1967), p. 35 n.7.Google Scholar

71 Scuderi, R., ‘II tradimento di Antenore’, Contrib. dell'lnst. di Star. Ant. 4 (1976), 28Google Scholar, thinks Sisenna simply wants to whitewash Aeneas by blaming Antenor alone, since the story of treachery by one or both existed and had perhaps been revived by Mithridates'; propaganda.

72 Frag. 115P=104B;50P=26B. But perhaps not the same Q. Caepio: Wiseman, T.P., Cinna the Poet (1974), p. 184Google Scholar. Badian, 's suggestion is in ‘Quaestiones Variae‘, Historia 18 (1969), 447Google Scholar; accepted by Calboli, G., ‘Su alcuni frammenti diCornelio Sisenna’, St. Urb. 49 (1975), 151.Google Scholar

73 Sallust, Hist. 1.47–51MonSulIan atrocities; 43–45M probably all on Marius Gratidianus, 44 explicitly so.

74 N. H. 10.136. Wardman, A., Rome's Debt to Greece (1976), p. 95.Google Scholar

75 Ad fam. 2.10.

76 So recently, Schachermeyr, F., Alexander der Grosse (1973), p. 658Google Scholar, Goukowsky, P., ed. Diodorus 17 (1976)Google Scholar, Hamilton, J.R., ‘Cleitarchus and Diodorus Book 17’ in Greece and the East in Ancient History and Prehistory (Studies presented to F.Schachermeyr) (1977), p. 126, against the more complex theories of Tarn and others.Google Scholar

77 Plutarch, , Themistocles 27.1.Google Scholar

78 Quintilian 10.1.75;Tacitus, Hist. 3.51; Livy.Ep. 79, and Val. Max. 5.5.4. If Tacitus does not specifically say that the suicide was on the brother's pyre he is perhaps compressing or tactfully toning down, rather than using an earlier and simpler source than the others.

79 I am assuming nothing about Appian';s immediate source.

80 Appian, B. C. 1.48, 1.50.

81 Op. cit., pp.138 ffGoogle Scholar. (71–2P=68–9B; cf. 61P=70B, a carrus, Gallic cart).

82 Pace Peter, who registers this last episode as Quadrigarius frag. 12. For duels in Cleitarchus, note perhaps Diodorus 17.20, 83, and 100.

83 Appian, B.C. 1.44.

84 Val. Max. 5.4.7.

85 Candiloro, E., ‘Sulle Historiae di L. Cornelio Sisenna’, SCO 12 (1963), 212Google Scholar, connects frag. 4P=4B, on the rocks called arae propitiae, with this journey; it is more commonly associated with that of Aeneas, since Virgil mentions them in this context (so Peter and Barabino).

86 Passerini, A., Studi su Caio Mario (1971), p. 183Google Scholar; cf. Bang, M., ‘Marius in Minturnae’, Klio 10 (1910), 178CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who notes that while Cicero, , post red. ad Quir. 1920Google Scholar, heard from Marius' own mouth a rhetorical account of his rescue from the marsh by the people of Minturnae, he never mentions the attempted execution by the hand of the Gallic or German slave. If Sisenna is involved, it is not then primarily either the schools of rhetoric, or ‘popular legend’, that were responsible for working the story up (so Carney, T.F., ‘The Flight and Exile of Marius’;, Greece & Rome 8(1961), 98)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 Op. cit. in last note. Marius' attempt to take refuge with an African king vaguely recalls Themistocles' action in Persia.

88 Livy, Ep. 72.

89 Barabino, p. 100.

90 FGH iib, no. 137, frags.3, 11, 16, 30, 32.

91 See n. 31 above.

92 Diog. Laert. 2.113. But if Diodorus 17 is direct from Cleitarchus, note Alexander';s prophetic dream about the way to cure Ptolemy's wound, also the prophecy of the Chaldaeans etc.

93 Barabino, p. 99;Paratore, , op. cit. in n. 28, p. 223.Google Scholar

94 The First Latin Annalists’, Latomus 35 (1976), 689.Google Scholar

95 De div. 1.99; but it has been observed that Polybius and Panaetius, no Epicureans, also rejected these.

96 Brutus 131, De fin. 1.8, perhaps also Varro, Sat. Menipp. 128 Bücheler.

97 He is referred to in de or. 3.78 as a friend of L. Crassus, so was not very young in the 70s. MRR suggests he was enrolled in the Senate by Sulla, though Niccolini believed he was tribune before 90.

98 As Candiloro, op. cit. in n. 85, suggests.

99 Brutus 228, cf. Asconius, In Corn, i 58 St.

100 Penna, A.La, ‘Poleraiche sui sogninella storiografia arcaica’, St. Urb. 49 (1975), 49.Google Scholar

101 FabiusPictor, frag. 3P.

102 Sulla, frag. 8P; so E. Candiloro, op. cit. in n. 85, and Laffi, U., ‘II mito di Silla’, Athenaeum 45 (1967), 177Google Scholar; Barabino, p. 88.

103 Frags. 5P=6 and 10B. Cicero';s tenses De div. l.0 (*‘cum disputavisset… turn insolenter disputat’) possibly suggests that the account of Caecilia Metella's veridical dream was not immediately followed by an attack on the possibility of such things, but that this came later in the work–possibly apropos of a dream of Sulla's. Insolenter, ‘impertinently’ also suggests the contradiction of two separate passages.Frasinetti, , op. cit. in n. 28, p. 87Google Scholar, comparing 11P=12B with Obsequens 99, thinks that Sisenna also mentioned prodigia during the course of the war. Diodorus 17 reports omens in chs. 10, 17, 41, and 116.

104 Woodman, A.J., Velleius Paterculus: The Tiberian Narrative (1977), p. 32Google Scholar. Titinius, frag. 32P=76B: the passage is corrupt; read perhaps, with Barabino, ‘cui minus proprietas mentis ab natura tradita videretur’. Cf. frags. 46, 50P=49, 26B-the latter perhaps almost amounts to a character sketch.

105 De Sublim. 3.2:

106 Such as Maecenas and Arellius Fuscus, as Dr. J. Fairweather argues in an unpublished dissertation.

107 Too much use of artificial figures like paronomasia leads to a puerilis elocutio, ad Her. 4.23.32. Cf. Seneca Rhetor, on those who ‘insanierunt in hac suasoria’ (Othryades inscribing the trophy with his blood); he also speaks of cacozelos, those without taste. Dion. Hal. Isocr. 12:

108 Leeman, op. cit. in n. 57.

109 w Frag. 1P (cf. 24b, ‘has res ad te scriptas Luci misimus Aeli’).

110 ORF2 no. 66 frag. 24.

111 Ad Att. 12.6.1.

112 Philodemus, Rhet. 4.1 col. 7 p. 15, col. 21 p. 180 Sud.

113 Lacy, P.H.De, ‘The Epicurean Analysis of Language’, AJP 60 (1939), 88.Google Scholar

114 Theon, R. G. 1.168W=2.71Sp .

115 Marx, F., Proleg. in Auct. ad Herennium (1894), p. 140.Google Scholar

116 De Or. 3.161 quotes the passage (Lucilius 84–5 Marx): ‘quam lepide compostae ut tesserulae omnes/Arte pavimento atque emblemate vermiculato.’

117 Esp. ad Att. 2.1.2.

118 Dihle, A., ‘Analogie und Attizismus’, Hermes 85 (1957), 170Google Scholar; cf.Kennedy, G., Rhetoric in Rome (1972), p. 240Google Scholar. For the earlier view, Hendrickson, G.L., ‘The De Analogia of Julius Caesar’, CP 1 (1906), 118Google Scholar, referring to Norden's connection of Atticism and Analogy axAmike Kunstprosa 1.184, thinks that Sisenna, shown by Marx to be interested in analogy, cannot be an Asianist.

119 Brutus 259–60.

120 A. Gellius, N. A. 2.25.9; Quint. 1.5.13, ‘multique et hunc et analogiam secuti’.

121 Varro, L. L. 8.73.

122 Brutus 228.

123 Reitzenstein, R., Marcus Terentius Varro und Johannes von Mauropus (1901), p. 53 n. 1Google Scholar, thought Sisenna wrote on the subject in the eighties; but the grammarian Sisenna who commented on Plautus seems to quote Virgil and must therefore be a later and separate figure (besides, commentaries are not produced by senators, in spite of general interest in many aspects of grammatice). Varro, L. L. 8.73. ‘ut Sisenna scribit’ does not necessarily imply a discussion of the form he uses; and Charisius, , GRF 129 (Sisenna fr. 3) with its ‘Sisenna. ait’ and ‘inquit’, though it does refer to the analogistic historian, probably derives from Varro and so is not independent evidence that he actually discussed his preferred forms. (Certainly, one would not expect a grammatical excursus in a history, so if discussion were to be postulated, a separate grammatical work is likely.)Google Scholar

124 Suetonius, de gramm. 7; Quint. 1.6.23.

125 Suetonius, de gramm. 13; Quint. 1.6.3; Priscian 385.1.

126 Marx, op. cit. in n. 115; Reitzenstein, , op. cit. in n. 123, p. 63. Hendrickson, op. cit. in n. 118, thinks Cicero is actually using Caesar's work here (Brutus 259).Google Scholar

127 Varro, L. L. 9.18.

128 Ibid. 9.1.

129 Lucretius 5.1028 ff; Epicurus, ad Her. 75.6.

130 Brutus 259.

131 The imitation of Greek words was one of the categories of acceptable new formations distinguished by the rhetors, de Or. 1.155. It is not quite clear from the manuscripts whether Sisenna, like Accius a little earlier, stuck to Greek forms in Latin transliteration; but frag. 106P=64B, myoparonas is well attested. (Cf. C. Julius Caesar Strabo, ORF 126, first to insist on Greek forms of names.)

132 Brutus 228, de leg. 1.2.6.

133 Op. cit. inn. 19, p. 176.Google Scholar

134 Deorat. 2.54.

135 Brutus 262.

136 Fronto, Ep. 132 Van den Hout=114 Naber, says Sisenna wrote ‘longinque’, probably ‘longwindedly’, rather than (as Peter cccxlii, from Norden, , op. cit., pp. 117, 118Google Scholar) ‘archaically’, i.e. with words brought from far away. But Lebek, W.D., Verba Prisca (1970), p. 58, and esp. pp. 267 ff.Google Scholar, the fullest recent account of Sisenna's language, does not think that he archaizes (nor that his language is often poetic, or vulgar-nor that he is an absolutely consistent follower of analogy). Fronto groups most of the historians he mentions in pairs, and it has been suggested that a pair to Sisenna has fallen out (Rutilius? see Van den Hout ad loc.) and even that ‘longinque’ belongs to the lost name (Haynes, Loeb ed. 2.49).

137 Landgraf, G., ‘Die Vorlage der neuaufge fundenen Epitome rerum gestarum Alexandri Magni‘, Berl. Phil. Woch. 21 (1901), 410Google Scholar, goes too far when he says ‘durchblättert man die meist bei Nonius erhaltenen Fragmente diesers Historikers, so erhellt sofort die Ahnlichkeit seines [sc. Sisenna's] Stil charakters mit dem des Auctor Belli Africi’, but the latter work does seem to show a propensity for the ad verbs in -im for which Sisenna had a mania (observed by Gellius, N. A. 12.151 and studied by Barabino, G., ‘Sisenna e gli awerbi in -im’, Tetraonyma (1966), p. 33Google Scholar, noting that a number were common, or increasingly so in his day, others not attested before or apart from him. She accepts that in extending the list he was pursuing analogy). And Quintilian does attest that the phrase ‘albente caelo’ was thought to have been first used by Sisenna, 8.3.35; it appears twice in the Bellum Africum (11 and 80), though also once in Caesar, B. C. 1.68, and then only in late Latin. The Bell. Afr. also likes alliteration, Greek words, not only technical terms hard to J avoid, and melodramatic episodes: the duel to death of Scipio and Juba, burnings alive on the pyre, even huge Gauls (strewn on the field of battle). There are set speeches and other crude rhetorical effects. The author may possibly have looked back to the great historian of the last civil war, finding Caesar's style too subtle to attract him (for his own, Bouvet, A., ed. Budé (1949), pp. xxvi ff.)Google Scholar. Bardon, , op. cit. in n. 41, p. 255Google Scholar, accepts Landgraf's view.

138 Richter, W., ‘DerManierismus des Saliust und die Sprache der romischen Historiographie’, ANRW 1.3.774Google Scholar. This, like Landgraf, exaggerates, and underestimates the number of times the idea has been (very briefly) canvassed before. I am also far from clear that there is a real connection between Sisenna's possible proemium ab urbe condita (or rather from the fall of Troy, given the fragments) and the proem of Sallust's histories,.let alone of his extant works, as is so so often claimed (among others by Momigliano, A., ‘Some Observations on the Origo Gentis RomanaeJRS 4 (1958), 56Google Scholar=Secondo contribute), p. 145). Even the Catilina is very brief indeed on Rome's pre history. The idea of a connection is finally rejected by Paratore, op. cit. in n. 28. Barabino, p. 77, suggests that Sisenna had a Thucydidean archaeologia as an excursus, but it seems unlikely that Sisenna, unlike Sallust, cared for Thucydides, or that a passage retailing the adventures of Aeneas ought to be called Thucydidean.

139 Verrines 2.4.33.