Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T01:16:55.393Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cicero, Laertes and Manure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Stephanie West
Stephanie West
Affiliation:
Herford College, Oxford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Cicero's Cato, in a passage nicely illustrating that enthusiasm for Greek literature which is said to have come upon him in old age, offers some valuable observations about manure (Sen. 54): ‘quid de utilitate loquar stercorandi? dixi in eo libro quern de rebus rusticis scripsi; de qua doctus Hesiodus ne verbum quidem fecit, cum de cultura agri scriberet; at Homerus, qui multis ut mihi videtur ante saeclis fuit, Laertam lenientem desiderium quod capiebat e filio, colentem agrum et eum stercorantem facit.’

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , December 1989 , pp. 553 - 555
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 ‘si eruditius videtur disputare quam consuevit ipse in suis libris, attribuito litteris Graecis, quarum constat eum perstudiosum fuisse in senectute’ (Sen. 3).

2 Thus e.g. Lamer, , RE s.v. Laertes (434)Google Scholar: ‘dass λιςτρε⋯ειν Od. xxiv 227 mit stercorari wiedergegeben ist, ist lediglich Irrtum Ciceros’; Helm, ibid. s.v. M. Porcius Cato Censorius (145): ‘das Missverstandnis des homerischen λιςτρε⋯οντα.’

3 J. G. F. Powell ad loc.; see further Boscherini, S., ‘Su di un “errore” di Cicerone (De senectute, 54)’, QUCC 7 (1969), 36–41Google Scholar.

4 cf. 22.414, 24.640.

5 κοπρ⋯ζοντα for λιςτρε⋯οντα would also do the trick, exemplifying the common replacement of an out-of-the-way word with something easier. Admittedly, κοπρ⋯ζω is only doubtfully Homeric; at Od. 17.299 the MSS are divided between κοπρ⋯ς(ς)οντες and κοπρ⋯ςοντες But though the verb itself is rare, its meaning is obvious.

6 διαςκεν⋯ is the scholiasts' term for deliberate alteration of the text, normally with reference to lines judged to be interpolated; see further Lehrs, K., De Aristarchi studiis Homericis3 (Leipzig, 1882), p. 330Google Scholar.

7 Thus, e.g. Od. 4.57–8 (= 1.141–2), absent from many of the mediaeval MSS and suspected by Athenaeus, belong to a formal meal with freshly roasted meat and are incongruous after 56 which refers to the production of left-overs for unexpected arrivals. Similarly, the repetition of Menelaus' presentation speech (4.613–19) to follow 15.112 produces, among other difficulties, a very awkward juxtaposition at 119–20, but is fortunately betrayed as an interpolation by its absence from some of the mediaeval MSS and from p 28 (Pack2 1106); see further Apthorp, M. J., The Manuscript Evidence for Interpolation in Homer (Heidelberg, 1980), pp. 200–16Google Scholar.

8 Such too seems to have been the sense of the line added after Il. 23.136 in the third-century B.C. p 12 (Pack2 979). On these additional lines see further West, S., The Ptolemaic Papyri of Homer (Cologne-Opladen, 1967), pp. 87f, 96f, 176CrossRefGoogle Scholar.