Video, patres conscripti, in me omnium uestrum ora atque oculos esse conuersos; uideo uos non solum de uestro ac rei publicae uerum etiam, si id depulsum sit, de meo periculo esse sollicitos. est mihi iucunda in malis et grata in dolore uestra erga me uoluntas, sed eam, per deos immortales, deponite atque obliti salutis meae de uobis ac de uestris liberis cogitate. mihi si haec condicio consulatus data est ut omnes acerbitates, omnes dolores cruciatusque perferrem, feram non solum fortiter uerum etiam libenter, dummodo meis laboribus uobis populoque Romano dignitas salusque pariatur. ego sum ille consul, patres conscripti, cui non forum, in quo omnis aequitas continetur, non campus consularibus auspiciis consecratus, non curia, summum auxilium omnium gentium, non domus, commune perfugium, non lectus ad quietem datus, non denique haec sella curulis, sedes honoris, umquam uacua mortis periculo atque insidiis fuit. ego multa tacui, multa pertuli, multa concessi, multa meo quodam dolore in uestro timore sanaui. nunc si hunc exitum consulatus mei di immortales esse uoluerunt ut uos populumque Romanum ex caede miserrima, coniuges liberosque uestros uirginesque Vestales ex acerbissima uexatione, templa atque delubra, hanc pulcherrimam patriam omnium nostrum ex foedissima flamma, totam Italiam ex bello et uastitate eriperem, quaecumque mihi uni proponetur fortuna subeatur. etenim si P. Lentulus suum nomen inductus a uatibus fatale ad perniciem rei publicae fore putauit, cur ego non laeter meum consulatum ad salutem populi Romani prope fatalem exstitisse?

This is another very important section which introduces some more extremely valuable grammar: infinitives in 7A (GE pp. 134–135, #150–152), and then in 7D the aorist participle is introduced (GE pp. 142–145, #162–166).

You will find the style of these passages, which are only slightly adapted from the original, rather different from the style you have met before. In the first (7A–C), taken from Plato's version of Socrates’ defence at his trial (see Introduction), you will find some rhetorical features mixed with a discursive, almost colloquial style. In the second (7D–F) you will meet the typical style of the Platonic dialogue, reflecting a technical philosophical argument, and in the third (7G–H) you will meet the narrative style that Herodotus uses in his History.

You may find that it takes you a little while to get used to these changes of style and at first the Greek may seem more difficult. But once you adapt, you will enjoy the variation and will have acquired a new skill.

Make sure that you read the ‘Introduction’ to each passage so that you understand the context.

7A–C Plato: Apology 20c–23b

7A

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1 ἐρωτῶσιν οὖν τινες ‘some people ask, therefore …’: a typical rhetorical device which allows the speaker to pose the question which he wants to answer.

3 οὐ βουλόμεθα διαβάλλειν σε ‘we don't want to slander you’: βούλομαι + the infinitive – a very common pattern.

This section continues the story of Neaira. As in Section 12 there are long exercises which practise the grammar which has been introduced. Once again you may decide to do the exercises when they occur, or to continue reading to the end of Section 13 and then go back to revise the grammar and do the relevant exercises.

13A

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1–4 The main clause (δῆλά ρὰ τεκμήρια ‘There are clear proofs that …’) is delayed until the end of the sentence. The subordinate clauses (ὄτι μὲν … δούλη ἦν Νέαιρα … καὶ ἀπέδρα … καὶ ὁ Φρυνίων … κατηγγύησε …) come first. These clauses are all subordinate to the main clause.

8 πρὶν ʾθήναζε ἐλθεῖν πρίν + infinitive, GE pp. 272–273, #252: ‘Before she came to Athens’. You will meet lots of examples of this in 13A and B.

8–9 ὥσπερ αὑτοῦ θυγάτηρ οὗσα ‘as his own daughter’. Note the breathing: αủτοῦ could have meant someone else's daughter αὑτοῦ or έαυτοῦ ‘his own’ belongs to the subject of the main verb.

10–11 καὶ δὴ ἴστε τὴν Φανώ … μαθοῦσαν Accusative and participle: ‘You know that Phano had learned’.

14–16 Note the structure: ‘Phrastor seeing (ὁρῶν) that (acc. + participle twice) …, and having found out (ἄμα δὲ πνθόμενος) that (acc. + participle) … was very angry (ὠργίσθη μάλισια) … considering (ἠγούμενος) that he … (nominative + infinitives).’

Now we return to Dikaiopolis and the rhapsode, and to an episode based on another play of Aristophanes, where he escapes into fantasy from the bitter realities of life in Athens during the Peloponnesian War. The social comment, however amusingly expressed, is deeply serious.

This section introduces the genitive case formally. You have already met it frequently, but now all forms of it are laid out (GE pp. 160–161, #178–179) and the main uses are listed (GE pp. 163–165, #180). You will also meet other forms of the comparative (GE pp. 165–167, #181–182) as well as the optative mood (GE pp. 167–169, #183–186).

8A

Page 90

1 Look for the subject and the two aorist participles before you go on to the main verb.

4 ἀπιόντα Remember the difference between ὤν (‘being’) and ἰών (‘going’). The ‘going’ verb has an iota, the ‘being’ verb does not.

3–4 καθορᾶ …, κατιδών If you remove the prefix, καθ-, κατ-, you should be able to recognise the verb. ἰδ is the stem of the second aorist εἶδον.

8 λαμβάνεται τοῦ ἱματίου He takes hold of his tunic. The genitive is used because he takes hold of part of his tunic (not the whole thing). This is called a partitive genitive.

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11 τίς ὤν σύ … Note the idiomatic use of the participle, ‘Who are you to take hold of …?’

Appian: a native of Alexandria writing in the first half of the second century ad, he composed in Greek an admiring history of Rome, partially preserved, organized chronologically by the wars of conquest.

Asconius Pedianus, Quintus: mid-first century ad author of a mainly historical commentary on C.'s speeches, of which fragmentary notes on five speeches are preserved.

Cassius Dio: member of a senatorial family of Nicaea in Bithynia, he held governorships and wrote (in Greek) a detailed Roman History in the early third century ad; the best preserved part covers 69 bc to ad 46.

Diodorus Siculus: Greek author of a universal history from earliest times to 60 bc; he completed the work in 30 bc; of the original 40 books only 15 have survived entire.

Dio: see Cassius Dio.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus: active in Rome as a teacher of rhetoric from 30 bc, he was the author of works on rhetoric but also of a history (in Greek) in 20 books dealing with Rome from its origin to the First Punic War; book 11 is incomplete, books 12–20 survive only in excerpts.

fasti: the Roman name for the calendar (listing of dies fasti et nefasti) but also for other lists, including the fasti consulares and triumphales, which survive inscribed on arches.

This passage is reproduced unadapted from Herodotus, Histories 1.34–45. Herodotus writes in the Ionic dialect (see Introduction). You will find that you get used to this quite quickly, and the vocabularies will help you as well. However, before you start, you may want to look at GE pp. 359–360, #333–334 ‘The Dialect of Herodotus’.

It is very important to read both the introduction on pp. 225–226 of RGT and the beginning of the story, pp. 227–229, which is translated for you.

19A

Page 230

1 νέμεσις ‘retribution’. This is not punishment for an evil act, but punishment for ‘thinking more than mortal thoughts’. Perpetual happiness is the prerogative of the gods and not of man. Croesus commits an act of ‘hubris’ by exhibiting pride in his continuing happiness, and thus attracts the vengeance of the gods.

2 ἑωντόν = ἑαντόν.

ὀλβιώτατον Note the emphatic position.

οἱ ‘to him’.

2–3 ἐπέστη ὄνειρος The dream is personified; it ‘stood over him’, or ‘stood beside him’.

4 διεφθαρτο Literally this means that ‘he had been destroyed’, a brutal word for ‘handicapped’ (cf. ‘written off’), but it shows Croesus' feeling that he had only one son, for all practical purposes.

5 ῷν = οὗν. Note this carefully. You will meet it frequently, and it is always easy to confuse it with ὣν ‘being’. Apart from the accent, its position near the beginning of a sentence should help to distinguish it.

This passage is reproduced unadapted from Plato, Protagoras 320c–323a. The style is not typical of Plato. It is likely that he is here imitating the style of the sophist Protagoras, into whose mouth he puts the speech, but the iambic rhythms also suggest that the myth may be based on a long established story which had been told often in verse, perhaps in tragedy. Whatever its origins, it is a fascinating passage which describes the creation of the world and the social necessity for man of possessing δίκη and αἰδώς (a sense of right and a moral awareness of others and their response to one's actions). The introduction to this section in Reading Greek is important.

18A

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1 The verb ‘to be’ is often used in the sense of ‘to exist’.

2 χρόνος εἰρμαρμένος ‘allotted’ in the sense of ‘allotted by destiny’, ‘fated’.

γῆς ἔνδον ‘within the earth’.

3 τῶν = ἐκείνων. Here the article is used as a demonstrative pronoun. This is rare in Attic Greek, though normal in Homer.

ὄσα πυρὶ καὶ γῆ κεράννυται ‘as many as are mixed with fire and earth’. This refers to air and water, the other two elements. (Some Greek philosophers believed that all things were composed of four elements, earth, air, fire and water.)

5–6 νεῖμαι, νείμαντος, νέμει, νέμων Note the repetitions, and also that the aorist stem of νέμω is νειμ-.

Here you have the whole of Odyssey 6, partly in Greek and partly in translation. Make sure you read the excellent Introduction, RGT pp. 243–244, and notice GE p. 362, #337 on some vital features of Homeric dialect and syntax, and GE pp. 362–364, #338–339 on Homeric hexameters and Greek metre. There is also the Reference Grammar pp. 378–382, #349–352 ‘Homeric dialect’ – the main features’.

Remember that this is poetry in the oral tradition. Oral poets did not commit a poem to memory verbatim, but they had in their minds a huge collection of formulaic phrases which fitted neatly into a hexameter line and they could use these to tell the story. Do you remember the rhapsode in Section 1H, with the ‘winedark sea’ (ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον) and the ‘black, hollow or swift ship’? These were ‘formulas’. You will quickly come to recognise such phrases, and it is interesting to consider how Homer uses them.

20A

Page 246

1 ὥς with an accent = οὔτως ‘so’, ‘thus’.

ἔνθα Odysseus is sleeping under an olive bush, having covered himself with leaves.

καθεῦδε = καθηῦδε. The absence of the augment is very common in Homer.

See GE p. 362, #337(a).

πολύτλας δῖος 'Οδυσσεύς A formulaic phrase; Odysseus is often referred to by this description, and it is entirely apt. πολύτλας: πολύ = ‘much’, -τλας is from τλάω ‘I endure’, thus ‘much-enduring’.

14A

Page 176

1 ἐάσετε Future of ἐάω.

2 ἣν This is accusative s. fem. of the relative pronoun: ‘she whom …’

3 ἣ What is this?

4 ἣ This has a smooth breathing, so it cannot be a relative pronoun. Try ‘or’.

5 ἐλήλνθεν What tense? What verb? Learn it!

6 ψηφιεῖσθεν This comes from ψηφίζομαι, whose future is ψηφιοῦμαι. Cf. νομίζω νομιέω.

8–9 πρίν is followed by two accusative and infinitive clauses ‘before she did x and y, and before you did z’. Do not translate πρότερον, which prepares for πρίν.

10 ἐπειδὴ δὲ πέπνσθε καὶ ἴστε … Notice the present force of the perfect ‘since you have found out and you all know (now, at this moment)’.

Translation for 14A

Gentlemen of the jury, will you then allow this Neaira to insult the city so disgracefully and so contemptuously, [this woman] who was neither left a citizen by her parents nor was she made a citizen by the people? Will you allow her to act irreverently towards the gods with impunity, she who has openly prostituted herself throughout the whole of Greece? For where has she not worked with her body? Or where has she not gone for her day-to-day earnings? Now that Neaira is clearly known by all as the kind of woman she is, will you vote that she is a citizen? And if you vote in this way, what fine thing will you say that you have accomplished to those who ask you?

Rem publicam, Quirites, uitamque omnium uestrum, bona, fortunas, coniuges liberosque uestros atque hoc domicilium clarissimi imperi, fortunatissimam pulcherrimamque urbem, hodierno die deorum immortalium summo erga uos amore, laboribus, consiliis, periculis meis e flamma atque ferro ac paene ex faucibus fati ereptam et uobis conseruatam ac restitutam uidetis. et si non minus nobis iucundi atque illustres sunt ii dies quibus conseruamur quam illi quibus nascimur, quod salutis certa laetitia est, nascendi incerta condicio et quod sine sensu nascimur, cum uoluptate seruamur, profecto quoniam illum qui hanc urbem condidit ad deos immortales beneuolentia famaque sustulimus, esse apud uos posterosque uestros in honore debebit is qui eandem hanc urbem conditam amplificatamque seruauit. nam toti urbi, templis, delubris, tectis ac moenibus subiectos prope iam ignes circumdatosque restinximus, idemque gladios in rem publicam destrictos rettudimus mucronesque eorum a iugulis uestris deiecimus. quae quoniam in senatu illustrata, patefacta, comperta sunt per me, uobis iam exponam breuiter, Quirites, ut et quanta et quam manifesta et qua ratione inuestigata et comprehensa sint uos qui et ignoratis et exspectatis scire possitis.

Principio ut Catilina paucis ante diebus erupit ex urbe, cum sceleris sui socios, huiusce nefarii belli acerrimos duces, Romae reliquisset, semper uigilaui et prouidi, Quirites, quem ad modum in tantis et tam absconditis insidiis salui esse possemus. nam tum cum ex urbe Catilinam eiciebam (non enim iam uereor huius uerbi inuidiam, cum illa magis sit timenda, quod uiuus exierit), sed tum cum illum exterminari uolebam, aut reliquam coniuratorum manum simul exituram aut eos qui restitis-sent infirmos sine illo ac debiles fore putabam.

In this section you are introduced to the verse of Greek Tragedy in a touching scene from Euripides' Alkestis (produced in 438 BC). Consult GE p. 310, #286 for a list of tragic usages. Note (e) here contains the warning: ‘Word order in verse can be far more flexible than in prose; again, utterances can be far more oblique and tightly packed with meaning.’ While it is probably true that you will find an increase of difficulty in this section, the Greek should prove manageable. We have tried to keep the translation as literal as possible throughout.

15A

Page 184

1 ἴστω The third person singular imperative of οἶδα (GE #207). οἶδα is followed by a participle (‘know that …’, see GE #247). The vocabulary tells you that κατθανουμένη is the future participle of καταθθνῄσκω.

εὐκλεές = ‘a glorious [woman]’. It is easiest to translate it as an adverb, ‘gloriously’.

3 πῶς δ' οὐκ …; πῶς γὰρ οὔ (literally ‘for how not?’ = ‘of course’) has appeared from Section 1 onwards.

4–5 Difficult. Consult the translation.

11 ἐκ … ἑλοῦσα This splitting of a verb from its prepositional prefix is called ‘tmesis’ (‘cutting’). It is quite common in verse authors, but it is not always easy to recognise whether the preposition is there in its own right or if it is a case of ‘tmesis’.

13 ‘Εστία Hestia is the goddess of the hearth, crucial for the continued existence of the home.

To produce a new commented edition of Cicero's Catilinarians may seem like a woefully unoriginal, if not altogether superfluous undertaking. There are, of course, various commentaries, mostly of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century vintage, intended to introduce this corpus to school children. But in the latter half of the twentieth century interest in producing such works tapered off as the traditional classical curriculum came under fire and lists of set books were altered in the hope of reinvigorating the subject. In addition, the palpable decline of oratory in the political life of the Western democracies made C.'s products seem less relevant to contemporary concerns. Last, but not least, the negative assessment of C. by W. Drumann and T. Mommsen has often colored the judgment of subsequent historians of antiquity and thus fed a neglect of, if not outright hostility to, C. and his work.

The fact that his place in the curriculum can no longer be taken for granted may prompt some salutary reflection on C. and his educational uses. Blind hero-worship is clearly inappropriate, as Petrarch already realized upon discovery of C.'s letters. But the fact that C., too, was human makes him more, not less interesting. His creation of a distinctive and powerful prose style exploiting to the full the resources and registers of the Latin of his day commands, or should command, admiration in an age when language and style tend to be handled carelessly.

CATILINE'S CAREER DOWN TO 63

For most of his life, Lucius Sergius Catilina, or Catiline, as he has come to be known in English, looked like anything but a revolutionary. He was the scion of an old patrician family, the gens Sergia, which gave its name to one of the Roman tribes; and Virgil glorified, if he did not invent altogether, an eponymous ancestor, Sergestus, as one of the Trojan heroes who migrated to Italy with Aeneas (Aen. 5.121). Even his adversary C. was able, in the very different context of a lawcourt speech, to express a certain appreciation for the attractive features of Catiline's many-faceted personality (Cael. 12–14).

Catiline's great-grandfather, M. Sergius Silus, had distinguished himself in the Hannibalic War (without, however, rising above praetorian rank). As praetor of the year 68, Catiline must have been born by 108 (or 106 on the assumption that patricians had the option of presenting themselves two years early). He substituted an individual cognomen for the inherited Silus but followed the family tradition of military service. The beginnings of his military career are lost unless he is to be identified with the L. Sergius L.f. attested as a member of the consilium of the consul Cn. Pompeius Strabo in 89 during the Social War.