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The Figure of Catiline in the Historia Augusta

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Thomas Wiedemann
Thomas Wiedemann
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
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Extract

Any educated Roman in late antiquity would immediately have recognized the figure of Catiline, for the simple reason that Sallust, together with Vergil, Cicero, and Terence, formed the core of the school curriculum. When his grandson starts school, Ausonius rejoices in a second chance to read the Catiline and the Histories (Ep. 22.61 ff.):

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , December 1979 , pp. 479 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1979

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References

1 MartianusCapella iii. 300 (cf. 279 and 290).

2 Cf. Schanz-Hosius iv.l on (e.g.) Ammianus, Aurelius Victor, the Origo Gentis Romanae, Symmachus, Hilary of Poitiers (cf. PL 10.25 f.), and Jerome (cf. PL 23.29); Manitius' Gescbichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters on Isidore, Julian of Toledo, Benedict, and Gregory of Tours; forSallust in the High Middle Ages, cf. Smalley, B. ‘Sallust in the Middle Ages’ in Classical Influences on European Culture AD 500–1500, ed. Bolgar, R. R. (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 165 ff.Google Scholar

3 ‘Looks like a piece of the biographer's nonsense’, Baldwin, B. ‘The Vita Avidii’, Klio 58 (1976), 112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Cf. Hamilton, J. R., Plutarch: Alexander (Oxford, 1969), p. xxxviii;Google ScholarWardman, A., Plutarch's Lives (1974), pp. 132 ff.Google ScholarRudd, N., Lines of Enquiry (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 154 ff., 160 ff., considers attempts to explain apparent character-inconsistencies. In Latin biography this theme already appears in Nepos: Alcibiades 1.4 ‘ut omnes admirarentur in uno homine tantam esse dissimilitudinem tamque diversam naturam.’CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 21.70–23.82. Cf. 80 fin.: ‘Atque haec quidem virtutum. vitiorum autem sunt genera contraria.’

6 Inst. Or. 3.7. Cf. 19: ‘Qui omnis etiam in vituperatione ordo constabit, tantum in diversum.’

7 Cf. ILS 8888; Stockton, D. L., Cicero (Oxford, 1971), p. 7.Google Scholar

8 In Cat. 1, 6.13; in Cat. 2, 4.7–5.9 and 11.25.

9 On Sallust's use of short series of antitheses in his characterizations, cf. Latte, K., Sallust (Leipzig, 1935), pp. 26 f.Google Scholar

10 Cf. Streng, Margot, Agricola: Das Vorbild römischer Statthalterschaft nach dent Urteil des Tacitus (Bonn, 1970).Google Scholar

11 Mommsen, T., Gesammelte Schriften 7 (1909), 319.Google Scholar Fortunately an assessment of the degree to which the main source of information for the primary lives was the consularis Marius Maximus (Barbieri, G., Riv. Fil. 32 (1954), 36, 262) rather than the hypothetical ignotus postulated by Syme is not necessary here.Google Scholar

12 Schwartz, J. ‘Avidius Cassius et les Sources de I'Histoire Auguste’, BHAC 1963 (1964), 142;Google ScholarBaldwin, B. ‘The Vita Avidii’, Klio 58 (1976), 103;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBarnes, T. D., The Sources of the Historia Augusta (Brussels 1978), pp. 50 f.Google Scholar

13 Dio also describes Hadrian's military disciplina, 69.5.2 ff.

14 One word appears to have dropped out of the text: Hohl proposed dissimulator from Sallust Cat. 5.4 (and the Epitome, see next note); others have suggested simplex.

15 The parallels are exhaustively discussed by Schlumberger, Jörg, Die Epitome de Caesaribus (Vestigia 18, Munich, 1974), pp. 86 ff.;Google Scholar cf. ‘Die Epitome de Caesaribus und die Historia Augusta’, BHAC 1972/74, (1976), 201 ff.Google Scholar

16 De Feriis Alsiensibus 3.5 p. 214 Van denHout(= Loeb 2.9).

17 There is some further evidence that Fronto was read in the late fourth and early fifth centuries A. D., e.g. from Jerome, Ep. 125.12.1 can find no explicit borrowings from the Pro Caelio in the Historia Augusta, though this speech regained popularity in late antiquity (Quintilian refers to it twenty times, but Aulus Gellius only mentions that it was criticized: N. A. 17, 1.4 ff.). There are six references in Arusianus Messius, and other grammarians referring to the speech are Diomedes, Nonius Marcellus and M. Plotius Sacerdos (?4th cent.), Agroecius of Sens and the Ars Cledonii (5th cent.), and Priscian, thrice. Amongst rhetoricians, Julius Victor cites the speech six times. A fifthcentury papyrus from Egypt contains much of the Pro Caelio, suggesting that it was then a standard text for learning Latin (Pack, R. A., The Greek and Latin literary texts from Greco-Roman Egypt (Ann Arbor, 1952),Google Scholar no. 2283 = Pap. Oxy. 8.1097, 10.1251). It was popular with the Church Fathers: cf. Victricius of Rouen's De laude sanctorum 10 (PL 20.452B), Ambrose, Expositio Evangelii Lucae 7.157; Austin, in his edition of the Pro Caelio p. 73, suggests it was Augustine who popularized this speech of Cicero's. For Jerome's use of the Pro Caelio, see Gilliam, J. F., ‘The Pro Caelio in St. Jerome's Letters’, H. Th. Rev. 46 (1953), 103 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar There is a fine example of a monstrum in the same letter which refers to Fronto (Ep. 125.18): ‘procedebat in publicum intus Nero, foris Cato, totus ambiguus, ut et contrariis diversisque naturis unum monstrum novamque bestiam diceres esse compositum’.