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Minor Emendations in Pliny and Tacitus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Ronald Syme
Ronald Syme
Affiliation:
Wolfson College, Oxford
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Extract

Under cover of gentle rebuke Pliny lent encouragement to an author still reluctant to publish, although hendecasyllable verses from the versatile consular had announced the book. Ever considerate and helpful, he confesses to Suetonius Tranquillus that he is himself prone to be dilatory:

Sum et ipse in edendo haesitator, tu tamen meam quoque cunctationem tarditatemque vicisti. proinde aut rumpe iam moras aut cave ne eosdem istos libellos, quos tibi hendecasyllabi nostri blanditiis elicere non possunt, convicio scazontes extorqueant (5.10.20).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , December 1980 , pp. 426 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1980

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References

1 M. Schuster (Teubner, 1933); Sir Roger Mynors (OCT, 1965).

2 According to Sherwin-White in his commentary (1966) ad loc., ‘the implication favours a volume of verses, rather than the lost prose work De Vim Illustribus.’

3 The reason alleged for his dismissal in the Historia Augusta (Hadr. 11.3) is highly dubious-and probably comes from Marius Maximus.

4 See further Hermes 92 (1964), 423 f. = Ten Studies in Tacitus (1970), pp. 107; Fuchs, H., Mus. Hely. 22 (1965), 115 f.; E. Koestermann in his commentary (1968) ad loc.Google Scholar

I had registered with some approbation the neglected emendation of Beatus Rhemanus (‘quae’ for ‘quam’) but concluded thus: ‘the parenthetic explanation is feeble. A concise writer would do without it. Perhaps Acidalius was right.’ Neither Fuchs nor Koestermann seem to have paid sufficient attention to the direction of my arguments. The former scholar even stated ‘Syme allerdings hick es für möglich dass Tacitus selbst die Worte quae clariorem effecit hinzugeffügt habe.’ Not at all: I had raised objection against ‘effecit’.

5 Columella 1.7.5. The villa and estate of the Volusii (with barracks for manyslaves) has been discovered near Lucus Feroniae. For the inscriptions, cf. J. M. Reynolds, JRS 61 (1971), 142 ff.

6 Cf. remarks in AJP 79 (1958), 23 f.= Ten Studies in Tacitus (1970), pp. 83 f. One example is the failure to state that Volusius was Prefect of the City until the day of his death (Pliny, N.H. 7.72).