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A CAESARIAN ANALOGY*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2016

A.J. Woodman
A.J. Woodman*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
[email protected]
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Extract

While Caesar as man of letters is most famous for his commentarii, it should not be forgotten that he also wrote two volumes on Analogy and was the author of various verses, one set of which, on the comic playwright Terence and his relationship to Menander, runs as follows (fr. 1 Courtney):

      tu quoque, tu in summis, o dimidiate Menander,
      poneris, et merito, puri sermonis amator.
      lenibus atque utinam scriptis adiuncta foret uis,
      comica ut aequato uirtus polleret honore
      cum Graecis neue hac despectus parte iaceres! 5
      unum hoc maceror ac doleo tibi deesse, Terenti.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , May 2016 , pp. 400 - 402
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Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2016 

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Footnotes

*

For their comments on earlier versions of this note I am most grateful to J.N. Adams, E. Courtney, C.S. Kraus, C.B. Krebs and especially I.M.Le M. Du Quesnay; their agreement should not be assumed. I am also glad to acknowledge suggestions from CQ's anonymous referee.

References

1 For Caesar's poetic fragments see E. Courtney, The Fragmentary Latin Poets (Oxford, 20032), 153–5, 187–8; for the De Analogia see A. Garcea, Caesar's De Analogia (Oxford, 2012). The literary side of Caesar's career is to be discussed in a forthcoming Cambridge Companion, edited by L. Grillo and C.B. Krebs.

2 Scholars have debated whether comica (4) is to be taken with uis or with uirtus. Bentley took it with uirtus and has been followed by almost every editor, according to Schmid, W., ‘Terenz als Menander Latinus’, RhM 95 (1952), 229–72Google Scholar, at 271, cf. 250–68; but the majority of more recent scholars have preferred to take it with uis, as does Courtney (n. 1), or with both. In 5 I follow most editors in printing the emendation despectus parte for the transmitted despecta ex parte, although Courtney prefers Baehrens’ despecte ex parte.

3 For the notion that Caesar 's lines are a response to Cicero's see Courtney (n. 1), 154–5; further, R. Scarcia, ‘La bilancia del critico (Cesare e Terenzio)’, in D. Prodi (ed.), La cultura in Cesare (Rome, 1993), 2.507–33. For tu quoque see Horsfall on Verg. Aen. 7.1.

4 See Courtney (n. 1), 93–4 for Volcacius.

5 See Tatum, W.J., ‘Choice word and measured phrase in Caesar, fragment 1 (Courtney)’, Philologus 155 (2011), 375–9Google Scholar; Cairns, F., ‘Caesar fr. 1 Courtney: the etymologies’, Paideia 67 (2012), 371–7Google Scholar. My interest in Caesar's fragment was aroused by Professor Tatum's paper, of which he very kindly showed me a draft before publication. Caesar's lines do not feature in Parker, H.N., ‘Plautus vs. Terence: audience and popularity re-examined’, AJPh 117 (1996), 585–617 Google Scholar, or Davis, J.E., ‘Terence interrupted: literary biography and the reception of the Terentian canon’, AJPh 135 (2014), 387–409 Google Scholar.

6 Caesar's familiarity with Menander's work may be presumed, although his famous words at the Rubicon are thought to be proverbial (see Pelling on Plut. Caes. 32.8).

7 poneris is being used with the technical meaning ‘place in a class or category’, ‘classify’ (OLD 22b); for summus used of persons distinguished in a particular field of performance see OLD 13a.

8 I have not been able to parallel an etymological play on Menander's name, but no one doubts that the ancients did play in this way with names, including that of Caesar himself: see e.g. S. Weinstock, Divus Julius (Oxford, 1971), 25.

9 Thus the very opposite of Caesar himself (Quint. Inst. 10.1.114 tanta in eo uis est, 12.10.11).

10 Cf. Porcius Licinus’ lines about Terence (fr. 3 Courtney): 1 lasciuiam nobilium … petit, 5 crebro in Albanum <altum> rapitur ob florem aetatis suae.

11 The plural Graecis is perhaps explained by the fact that Terence did not restrict himself to adapting only Menander.

12 For iacere see TLL 7.1.13.69–78; for pars used of the genital area see J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London, 19872), 45, 70.

13 For eunuchs and impotence see Courtney on Juv. 6.366.

14 J. Henderson, The Maculate Muse (New York, 19912) 22, 125 n. 94.

15 See R. Tosi, Dizionario delle sentenze latine e greche (Milan, 2007), 62–3 §139, cf. §140. There is also much on testicles in Adams (n. 12), 66–7.

16 See J.C. Bramble, Persius and the Programmatic Satire (Cambridge, 1974), 89–90 (and also 129 and n. 2); also M.W. Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton, 1995), 125.

17 For this sense of semiuir see OLD b; compare Hipponax 178 ἡμίανδρον.

18 purus, while commonly used of speech, etc. (OLD 10), is also commonly used in sexual contexts (OLD 4).

19 See C.S. Kraus, ‘Hair, hegemony, and historiography: Caesar's style and its earliest critics’, in T. Reinhardt, M. Lapidge and J.N. Adams (edd.), Aspects of the Language of Latin Prose (Oxford, 2005), 111–12.