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Bellum Alexandrinum Cynthia Damon, et al. Society for Classical Studies TEI XML encoding: Samuel J. Huskey Programming for automatic generation of TEI XML: Virgina K. Felkner Coauthor of content related to section 2.5: Dallas Simons Coauthor of content related to sections 12.1–2 and 13.5: Tom Vozar Coauthor of content related to section 26.1–2: Marcie Persyn Coauthor of content related to sections 35.3 and 36.4–5: Maria Kovalchuk Coauthor of content related to sections 47.2, 49.1, and 49.2–3: Tim Warnock Coauthor of content related to section 60.2: Isabella Reinhardt Coauthor of content related to sections 63.5 and 66.3–4: Brian Credo Coauthor of content related to sections 67.1 and 68.1: Amelia Bensch-Schaus Coauthor of content related to sections 72.2–3 and 74.4: Wes Hanson First Edition The Digital Latin Library 650 Parrington Oval Carnegie Building 101 Norman OK 73071 USA The University of Oklahoma Norman, OK 2022 Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-SA 4.0) Library of Digital Latin Texts Edited by Samuel J. Huskey 1 ​ Born digital. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 13.5 Tom Vozar and Cynthia Damon Caesar Rhodias naues VIIII habebat—nam X missis una in cursu litore Aegyptio defecerat—Ponticas VIII, Lycias V, ex Asia XII.“Caesar had nine Rhodian ships—for although ten had been sent one had foundered off the Egyptian coast en route—eight Pontic ships, five Lycian, twelve from Asia.” X (i.e., decem)] de X dubitanter Larsen (u. TLL 5.1.58.74–59.28 ) || cursu litore MUSTV (cf. BG 4.23.6) | cursu sub l- Larsen coll. BG 5.57.3 | c- [l-] Nipperdey || defecerat MUSTV (cf. Verg. Aen. 6.354 et BC 3.2.3) | decesserat Ciacconius coll. BC 3.112.3 (sed u. Davies) | desederat Siesbye teste Larsen (cf. Sen. Nat. 6.6.4) || Lycias MUSTV (u. Mitchell 234–37) | Syrias Cilicias Schneider coll. 1.1 The text enumerates the naval forces that Caesar had under his command at the beginning of the battle in the Eunostos harbor of Alexandria in 47 BCE. The paradosis has been questioned on both philological and historical grounds. The awkward language of the parenthesis introduced by nam has drawn the most critical attention. Larsen, feeling that the ablative absolute decem missis is intolerably harsh, supplies de, producing a well paralleled construction (u. TLL 5.1.58.74–59.28 ). But Incertus uses a similar expression at 15.5 progressis ultra uadum IIII, so emendation does not seem necessary.If that is how the opening of 15.5 should be construed. See the apparatus notes ad loc. The string in cursu litore Aegyptio has likewise been queried. Nipperdey asserted that in cursu and litore were contradictory — “cursus enim in littore Aegyptio erat confectus” (1847, 190) — and therefore excised litore as a scribal gloss on the unusual expression in cursu Aegyptio. It is indeed unusual: the common expression in cursu never takes an adjectival toponym. Such adjectives are, however, used with litus (cf., e.g., Cic. Sest. 140 in litore Dyrrachino). Larsen proposed adding sub before litore, comparing BG 5.57.3 sub castris eius uagabatur. That after cursu the preposition sub might be overlooked is obviously possible, but the absence of the expression sub litore elsewhere weighs against this emendation. Furthermore, the paradosis is paralleled at BG 4.23.6 aperto ac plano litore naues constituit, where the bare ablative has a locative function and, as it appears from the context, in which Caesar’s ships cannot land on the beaches, litore does not signify the shore itself but the waters just offshore (for this sense of the word see TLL s.u. litus 7.2.1537.52–1538.10 “respicitur litoris pars uda, tam area undis et aestu affecta quam mare terrae uicinum”).Are we perhaps to understand that the Rhodian ship ran aground upon the treacherous uada Aegyptia mentioned at Luc. 8.539–40 (perfida qua tellus Casiis excurrit harenis/ et uada testantur iunctas Aegyptia Syrtes)? The peculiarity of deficere for a ship “foundering” is highlighted by the fact that its nearest parallel is Verg. Aen. 6.354, where Palinurus tells Aeneas he fears less for himself than that tua … / deficeret tantis nauis surgentibus undis.R. G. Austin, 1986, P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Sextus, Oxford, ad loc. cites 13.5 as a parallel for the Vergil passage. An additional problem with defecerat is that in a civil war context it could easily be construed as a reference to defection (see TLL 5.1.327.79–328.7), something perhaps better passed over in silence in an account such as ours. So different verbs have been proposed for the spot. Ciacconius’ suggestion of decesserat, based on BC 3.112.3 naues … suo cursu decesserunt, is rebutted by Davies on the grounds that the senses required in the two passages are different (“deviate” in the latter, “perish” in the former); it is also harder to take litore as a locative ablative with this verb. Siesbye proposed desederat, from a verb used of sinking ships at Sen. Nat. 6.6.4 nauigia desidunt. However, in defense of the paradosis one can cite BC 3.2.3 multi galli tot bellis defecerant, “many men had succumbed (or defected) in the numerous wars,” which shares with our passage both the ablative and the possibility of misconstrual. There is also a problem of some historical consequence here. Scholars were content with the transmitted reading l(i/y)(c/t)ias = Lycias until Schneider proposed the emendation Cilicias, with the addition of some unknown number after Syrias, citing 1.1 as evidence: Caesar Rhodo atque ex Syria Ciliciaque omnem classem arcessit. Schneider’s conjecture has since been adopted by Kübler, Klotz, and Andrieu, among others. What is immediately clear, and should make us wary of accepting Schneider’s conjecture too readily, is that, with or without the conjecture, the list at 1.1 does not correspond to that at 13.5: in the former, the sources for Caesar’s fleet are given as Rhodes, Syria, and Cilicia; in the latter, the ships are from Rhodes, Pontus, and Asia, along with whatever the lemma in question represents. Also relevant is Caesar’s report at BC 3.106.1: cum … nauibus longis Rhodiis X et Asiaticis paucis Alexandriam peruenit (sc. Caesar). If Caesar arrived in Alexandria with these ten Rhodian ships, then summoned more from Rhodes (1.1), at the time of the harbor battle he would have had more than the nine Rhodian ships reported in 13.5. Barwick adduced this discrepancy as evidence against the analytical interpretation of the Bellum Alexandrinum.K. Barwick, 1938, Caesars Commentarii und das Corpus Caesarianum, Leipzig: 180 n. 1. Rice Holmes suspected that Hirtius’ (sic) text at 1.1 was simply “a mistake.”T. Rice Holmes, 1923, The Roman Republic and the Founder of the Empire Vol. 3, Oxford: 484 n. 7. But the parenthesis of the present sentence, an awkward addition, as we have seen, is perhaps to be understood as Incertus’ clarification of Caesar’s shorthand at BC 3.106.1. Gaertner/Hausburg have recently defended the paradosis with the argument that 1.1 refers to reinforcements that had been ordered but had not yet arrived at the time of the battle; decem missis at 13.5 thus refers to the ten Rhodian ships said to have come with Caesar at BC 3.106.1.J. F. Gaertner and B. Hausburg, 2013, Caesar and the Bellum Alexandrinum, Göttingen, 51–52, citing also P. Graindor, 1931, La guerre d’Alexandrie, Cairo: 29–30: 101, and Andrieu (1954, lviii–lix). Andrieu dismantles the argument in favor of the paradosis based on 14.1–2, where Caesar is said to have positioned the Rhodian ships on his right flank and the Pontic ships on his left, while the rest were set behind them as reserves. The logic is that, reading the paradosis, each of the ships on Caesar’s flanks would have exactly one assigned to it as a reserve, with nine Rhodian and eight Pontic ships (=17) supported by five Lycian and twelve Asian ships (=17). “Trop séduisante,” notes Andrieu, suggesting that one can only infer a minimum of 34 ships, as the text does not require a one-to-one correspondence between lines. This would explain why the forces of 13.5 differ from those of 1.1 and provide grounds for rejecting Schneider’s attempt to smooth over these differences. There remains one important question to answer: is there anything inherently implausible in Caesar having a handful of ships from Lycia? Lycia, granted, is mentioned nowhere else in the Caesarean corpus, and Townend, for one, finds the paradosis objectionable “since Lycia was not a Roman province at this time.”Townend, 1988, Caesar’s War in Alexandria, Bristol: 44 That, however, does not preclude the possibility of raising ships from Lycia if, as Cicero tells us (Att. 9.9.2), Lycia was one of the sources for Pompey’s fleet just a few years earlier. Moreover, a recently published Greek inscription on bronze shows that Caesar presided over the negotiation of a generous treaty with the Lycians in 46 BCE, which several historians have interpreted as a reward for the contingent of ships that (according to the pre-Schneider text of the Bellum Alexandrinum) Lycia sent to Egypt.Editio princeps and discussion in S. Mitchell, 2005, “The Treaty between Rome and Lycia of 46 BC (MS2070),” Papyri Graecae Schøyen (P. Schøyen I), ed. R. Pintaudi, Florence: 161–259, with reference to the position of Lycia and the ships sent to Egypt at 234–37. Both P. Sánchez, 2007 “La convention judiciaire dans le traité conclu entre Rome et les Lyciens (P.Schøyen I 25),” Chiron 37 363–381 at 364 and Isaías Arrayás Morales, 2010, “Diplomacy in the Greek Poleis of Asia Minor: Mytilene’s Embassy to Tarraco,” C&M 61: 127–149, at 133 n. 19 also point to the Lycian ships in connection with the treaty. In sum, it appears that the basis of Schneider’s conjecture is unreliable at best, and that the paradosis, far from being historically objectionable, may actually illuminate the condition of Romano-Lycian relations in the time of Caesar.