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PRISCE, IVBES (PLINY, EP. 6.15)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2024
Abstract
In the famous exchange between Passennus Paulus and Javolenus Priscus at Plin. Ep. 6.15, it has not been previously recognized that Priscus’ reply is metrical and carries on the hexameter begun by Paulus. This opens up some interesting new possibilities for the interpretation of the letter.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
References
1 The text is cited from the edition of Mynors, R.A.B., C. Plini Caecili Secundi Epistularum libri decem (Oxford, 1963)Google Scholar.
2 The translation is from Radice, B., Pliny. Letters. Books 1–7 (Cambridge, MA, 1969), 425Google Scholar.
3 The humour of the exchange is ignored by Sherwin-White, A.N., The Letters of Pliny. A Historical and Social Commentary (Oxford, 1966), 370–1Google Scholar, but is discussed at length in some studies devoted to the precise words of the exchange: Laughton, E., ‘Prisce iubes’, CR 21 (1971), 171–2Google Scholar; Yardley, J.C., ‘Prisce iubes again’, CR 22 (1972), 314–19Google Scholar; Hiltbrunner, O., ‘Prisce, iubes’, ZRG 96 (1979), 31–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schröder, B.-J., ‘Literaturkritik oder Fauxpas? – Zu Plin. epist. 6,15’, Gymnasium 108 (2001), 241–7Google Scholar.
4 See Koster, S., Tessera. Sechs Beiträge zur Poesie und poetischen Theorie (Erlangen, 1983), 70Google Scholar; M. Rühl, Literatur gewordener Augenblick. Die Silven des Statius im Kontext literarischer und sozialer Bedingungen von Dichtung (Berlin, 2006), 52; M. Roller, ‘Amicable and hostile exchange in the culture of recitation’, in A. König and C. Whitton (edd.), Roman Literature under Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian: Literary Interactions, ad 96–138 (Cambridge, 2018), 183–207, at 202.
5 The metrical character of the words can hardly be coincidental; they appear to be carefully chosen so as to be metrical. Could Priscus not have said merely non iubeo or ego non iubeo or other variations?
6 See Mastronarde, D.J., Contact and Discontinuity: Some Conventions of Speech and Action on the Greek Tragic Stage (Berkeley, 1979), 63–6Google Scholar. On the division of a verse between two speakers, see Seidensticker, B., Die Gesprächsverdichtung in den Tragödien Senecas (Heidelberg, 1969), 87–92Google Scholar, and on stichomythia more generally, see Collard, C., ‘On stichomythia’, LCM 5 (1980), 77–85Google Scholar, repr. in Collard, C., Tragedy, Euripides and Euripideans (Exeter, 2007), 16–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.