Search

Pliny's celebration of Cicero's consular achievements contains a striking anomaly, namely the assertion that Cicero proscribed Marcus Antonius (HN 7.117). That statement turns Cicero, the victim of Antonius' murderous vendetta, into the one who wielded the executioner's axe, and it abruptly shifts the focus of the passage from 63 to 43 b.c. Two slight corrections to the Latin text can eliminate the intrusion of the proscriptions by substituting a reference to the control Cicero exercised in 63 over Gaius Antonius, his consular colleague and an old ally of Catiline. In his In Pisonem (§5), Cicero takes credit for combatting the threat posed by his colleague, and it is highly probable that HN 7.117 mentioned Gaius (not Marcus) Antonius as well, since Pliny's summary of Cicero's consular deeds and honours is nearly identical to the one found in Pis. 4–6. The beauty of the emended text is that it restores both historical fact and a logical progression to the overall structure of Pliny's encomium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note adduces three passages in Seneca the Elder to reinforce a demonstration in CQ 69 (2019), 793–800 that the text of Plin. HN 7.117 has suffered corruption in one of its clauses and requires emendation to restore Pliny's intent. This additional evidence concerns a trope employed by declaimers which could have predisposed a scribe to alter Pliny's text to state that Cicero proscribed Mark Antony. Such a statement has no place in a list of achievements that otherwise all belong to Cicero's consulship twenty years earlier in 63 b.c. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to propose a new and more satisfactory context for a fragment from one of Ennius’ tragedies preserved in Cicero and discussed by a late scholiast on the Ciceronian passage. It will be shown that the scholiast, or more likely the source upon which he drew, had in front of him a bit more of the Ennian passage than the partial line preserved in Cicero and that the scholiast drew a false conclusion concerning the identity of one of the interlocutors from the way in which one speaker addressed the other. Previous scholars have sought to remove the inconsistency in the scholiast's sketch of the scene either by changing the locale of the dialogue or by correcting the scholiast's identification of the out-of-place speaker. It will be shown that a more productive line of investigation is to seek to discover the underlying cause of the scholiast's apparent error. The identification of the cause not only sheds light on the fate of Ennius’ text in Late Antiquity but permits us to restore, by means of conjecture, an additional word to the corpus of Ennius’ tragedies, a word that is a favourite of his in the Annales, but until now has not been attested in a Roman tragedy before the age of Seneca. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Discusses the passage "Controversiae 2.1.1.," from the Elder Seneca cited by the author in a research on the role played by Mark Antony in liquidating the confiscated property of Pompey. Illustration of how Cicero's oft-repeated charge that Antony was the sector of Pompey's property left its mark in later literature; Identification of a historic allusion contained in a quotation from rhetorician M. Porcius Latro that can be used to understand a phrase from the passage.

Examines the explanations that have been offered to account for chief lieutenant Mark Antony's presumed banishment from Roman emperor Julius Caesar's inner circle in 46 and 45 B.C. Argument that the prevailing view of a serious strain in the relations between Caesar and Antony was untenable; Demonstration that Antony continued to enjoy Caesar's confidence throughout the period; Features of Antony's political career under Caesar.

Examines the context of the famous prophecy 'Beware the Ides of March' during the reign of Caesar in Rome. Prophecy of Spurina; Death of Ceasar; Use of astrology on the prophecy of Spurina.

Seeks to dispel the notion that Mark Antony and the Senate indulged in a dispute over the control of Caesar's archives. Misinterpretation of two key passages in the `Philippics'; Publication of Caesar's `Acta' in 44 B.C.; False conclusion on the intent of Sulpicius' motion.