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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. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 27.5 Cynthia Damon Quorum impetum Mithridates magna cum prudentia constantiaque uirtutum et Alexandrinorum imprudentia consuetudine nostra castris uallatis sustinuit. Cum uero incaute atque insolenter succedere eos munitionibus uideret eruptione undique facta magnum numerum eorum interfecit.“Mithridates withstood their attack with great prudence and steadfastness of his virtues and the imprudence of the Alexandrians, his camp having been fortified according to our custom. But when he saw them approaching the fortifications recklessly and immoderately, he made sallies from every side and killed a great number of their men.” Mithridates magna cum prudentia MUSc et T supra lineam | mithridates magna cum potentia SacT | magna cum prudentia mithridates V feliciter | Mithridates [magna cum prudentia] D. Simons, qui et constantiaque uirtutum et Alexandrinorum imprudentia secluserit ut glossema || constantiaque [uirtutum et Alexandrinorum imprudentia] consuetudine Dübner dubitanter | constantiaque uirtutum et Alexandrinorum imprudentia consuetudine MUTV | consuetudine S, qui uerba 5 omisit | [constantiaque uirtutum et Alexandrinorum imprudentia] consuetudine ed.pr. | constantiaque militum et Alexandrinorum imprudentia consuetudine ϛ teste Ciacconio | constantiaque uirtutis tum Alexandrinorum imprudentia Madvig, qui magna supra secluserit | constantiaque uirtutum et Alexandrinorum imprudentia post facta transposuerit Klotz The ungainly sentence presented by the paradosis here accumulated substantive innovations in the process of transmission and has accordingly been the object of a variety of interventions. As a first step towards establishing a text it will be important to state the textual evidence clearly, since, as will soon become clear, most editors have resorted to excision and consequently shown little interest in the problems raised by the excised text. As transmitted in MUTV the sentence contains a string of five ablative constructions, whereas in S there are only three since the phrase constantiaque uirtutum et Alexandrinorum imprudentia has been omitted. Another singular variant occurs in V, where the first ablative expression is bracketed between the connecting relative and the subject: Quorum impetum magna cum prudentia Mithridates constantiaque etc. Finally, the noun in this first ablative expression, prudentia, is transmitted in ST alongside a variant, potentia, that must go back at least to their common source, nu, or perhaps all the way to the archetype.On variants in the archetype see Damon 2015b, 58–59. They are usually visible in the mu family, not, as here, in descendants of nu. The version of the sentence found in S appears in editions from the editio princeps onwards (the only early exception is the edition of Beroaldus, who prints the paradosis). That is, it made its way into the vulgate long before S itself was used in the constitution of the text, via N, a descendant of S; Brown (1972, 48–49) describes the source of the editio princeps as a manuscript that contains “a text based on a union of M and N … that was the basis of succeeding editions for nearly four hundred years.” So although the phrase constantiaque uirtutum et Alexandrinorum imprudentia has been confronting texts that exclude it since the first time the readings of M and N were joined in a single manuscript, only Beroaldus (1504) admitted it into the text. Nobody wants it. The long string of ablatives is clumsy, and the juxtaposition of moral terms such as prudentia, constantia, and imprudentia with the matter-of-fact consuetudine nostra castris uallatis is jarring. Yet signs of disquiet percolate. Two of the variants mentioned above may originate in purposeful innovations. The transposition in V detaches the moralizing ablatives from uallatis and applies them to the main clause, where they make better sense: Quorum impetum magna cum prudentia Mithridates constantiaque uirtutum et Alexandrinorum imprudentia … sustinuit (cf. BG 7.10.3 impetum magno animo sustineant).The frequently occurring expression impetum sustinere is accompanied by a variety of modifiers in the corpus Caesarianum, but the BG passage quoted above is the only other example with a modal ablative, unless BAlex 8.4 Magno negotio impetus hostium aduersos ex munitionibus sustineri counts as one. Of course V has a habit of transposing words and phrases, and the resulting word order does not always make sense, so one cannot be sure that the transposition here is deliberate; it may have originated in an eye-skip from m- to m-.On transpositions in V see Damon 2015b, 93 with note 183. The presence of potentia is harder to explain. In a phrase that modifies uallatis it works even less well than prudentia does, and it works no better with uirtutum. Furthermore, it spoils the prudentia/imprudentia antithesis. Why is it here? My best guess is that the innovation intended here was impotentia in place of imprudentia, and that potentia attached itself to the wrong prudentia. Alexandrinorum impotentia would then refer back to the greedy haste of the Alexandrian troops in the preceding sentence (27.4 Quae primae copiae flumen a Delta transire et Mithridati occurrere potuerunt proelium commiserunt festinantes praeripere subsequentibus uictoriae societatem) and prepare the way for incaute and insolenter in the following one.These troops later remedy their tactical error and join the troops coming up from behind (27.7). The word impotentia is not Caesarian, but that is not an obstacle to seeing it as an innovation; it is applied to the behavior of (former) soldiers at Tac. Ann. 14.31.3 impotentiam ueteranorum.The related adverb is used at BAlex 33.2 regnasse impotenter Ganymeden docuimus. Early editors were aware of other manuscript variants. Vascosanus notes in his margin that the phrase missing in S and the vulgate is present in “old books” (in uetustis quibusdam codicibus). Davies, too, reports the phrase as a manuscript variant—and then condemns it as a gloss. He also, however, reports that Ciacconius knew of a manuscript containing a significantly shorter and different version, constantiaque militum (cf. Cic. Ph. 3.8 uirtute … Caesaris constantiaque militum ueteranorum). This variant shines a spotlight on the awkwardness of uirtutum in the supposed gloss. Good (or even adequate) parallels for the plural and abstract genitive are hard to find. At BHisp 17.1 we find the singular hanc uirtutis constantiam, at Tac. Germ. 8 the concrete constantia precum (it is followed by obiectu pectorum). The closest conceptual parallel is probably the Ciceronian expression constantia totius uitae (Fin. 3.50, and without totius at Sull. 73 and a handful of other spots), but it is not particularly close. When Incertus speaks of Mithridates’ constantia oppugnandi in the preceding paragraph the dependent genitive is quite different: 26.2 perseuerantia constantiaque oppugnandi quo die est aggressus (sc. Pelusium) in suam redegit potestatem. It is easy enough to imagine constantiaque militum et Alexandrinorum imprudentia (or impotentia) as an indignant addition to a passage in which the commander is given all the credit for a military success. But it is quite hard to believe in an innovation that substitutes the problematic uirtutum for the satisfactory militum. Oudendorp resists seeing a gloss here but he too balks at uirtutum, proposing uirium instead, a collocation for which no good parallel exists. Madvig achieves a satisfactory expression by supposing that uirtutum originated in uirtutis tum, and that the loss of tum prompted the addition of magna before its correlative cum and et to supply the necessary connective tissue (cum prudentia constantiaque uirtutis tum Alexandrinorum imprudentia), but the string of innovations is implausibly elaborate. Klotz queries the relevance (and therefore likelihood) of the beginning of the supposed gloss: “quid in faciendis castris constantiae sit non uideo.”Klotz tentatively suggests transposing the string to the following sentence, where it can modify magnum numerum eorum interfecit. But an innovation that results in the movement of a substantial chunk of authentic text over the seventeen intervening words is hard to credit, and anyway he does not explain what to do with uirtutum or how constantiaque makes sense when paired with eruptione undique facta. On long-distance transpositions proposed for this tradition see Damon 2015b, 131 with note 5. It is clear that the tradition’s archetype contained glosses of both the one-or-two word varietySee, e.g., BC 1.1.1 [a Fabio], 1.4.3 [adulatio], 3.2.2 [inopia nauium], 3.11.1 [Corcyrae], 3.101.4 [circiter XL]. and longer phrases, which are generally self-contained units.See, e.g., BC 1.7.2 [quae superioribus annis armis esset restituta] 2.4.4 [uehementiusque exterreamur], 3.11.1 [antequam de mandatis agi inciperet], 3.48.1 [Id ad similitudinem panis efficiebant.], 3.101.4 [pari atque eadem ratione egerunt], 3.112.12 [nutricius pueri et procurator regni, in parte Caesaris], 3.112.12 [Haec initia belli Alexandrini fuerunt.]. See also on 7.2 above for a possible gloss in the Bellum Alexandrinum. For further details, see Damon 2015b, 59–60. One might defend printing the text of S by saying that the string constantiaque … imprudentia was a gloss in the archetype and that S transmits the text of the archetype but not the gloss.Klotz and Andrieu, who accept the S vs. beta stemma, relegate constantiaque … imprudentia to the apparatus and signal no omission in the text itself, which suggests that they think the string arose in beta, not the archetype. On this reasoning see Damon 2015b, 18 note 48 and 23–29. However, in none of the other long glosses in this tradition does S lack the string that editors excise.The closest parallel is found at BC 1.82.1, where S omits two non-adjacent words from a passage where editors make more wholesale excisions. Alternatively, it is possible to follow Landgraf (1891b, 9) in explaining the text of S as the result of an eye-skip from prudentia to imprudentia. This would be one of many such omissions, perhaps engendered by the simultaneous substitution of prudentia for potentia.See, e.g., BC 1.6.3, tota … refertur om. S (17 words omitted after a preceding refertur); 1.40.5 5 cuius … legionibus om. S (7 words omitted after a preceding legionibus); 1.74.4 interim … adducunt om. S (8 words omitted after a preceding mittunt); 3.13.2 simul … incidit om. S (8 words omitted after a preceding contendit); 3.60.5 cum … 61.1 erant om. S (11 words omitted after a preceding transierunt), BAlex 2.1 magnumque … adduxerant om. S (12 words omitted after a preceding miserant), 15.8 atque … exposceret om. S (16 words omitted after a preceding peteret), 17.5 constiterunt … litore om. S (12 words omitted after a preceding litore). For another omission by S in a passage involving archetypal variants see BC 1.6.2. So it seems worth taking another look at this supposed gloss. The phrase constantia uirtutum is both unusual per se and hard to square with the context: what virtues are we supposed to see here?Andrieu dubs constantiaque … imprudentia “un énoncé énigmatique” (1954, LXVII). We have one in prudentia, obviously, but for others we have to reach back to 26.2, perseuerantia constantiaque, where it is disconcerting to find constantia itself as one of Mithridates’s virtues, or 26.1 magnae nobilitatis domi scientiaeque in bello et uirtutis fidei dignitatisque in amicitia Caesaris, where uirtus is one of his qualities. It is hard to believe that the gloss began with this problematic phrase—the addition of -que would have occurred when the gloss moved into the text—so it is perhaps worth considering whether the gloss started earlier, with the first of the ablatives in this string: magna cum prudentia. If the original gloss was in the nominative (magna prudentia constantiaque uirtutum et Alexandrinorum imprudentia) it would resemble others in this tradition,One might compare the two-part gloss preserved in m at BC 1.28.2 after iubet: caesar castrum subit. pompeius ultra mare fugit. Moral-commentary glosses can be found in U, e.g. on 63v misericordia in uictore praestantissima, on 65v commune uitium (see Damon 2015a, xliv). and cum could have been added when the phrase was integrated into the text.This emendation was proposed by Dallas Simons in LATN 540, spring 2015. This hypothetical gloss maps acceptably onto the text, in which the praise of Mithridates in the present sentence is followed by criticism of the Alexandrians in the next: Cum uero incaute atque insolenter succedere eos munitionibus uideret eruptione undique facta magnum numerum eorum interfecit. On the other hand, magna seems oddly fulsome for a gloss. A different solution was suggested tentatively by Dübner and embraced by Landgraf (1891b), who suggested that constantiaque belonged in the text and the rest arose from a marginal gloss of the following form: uirtutes Mithridatis. Alexandrinorum imprudentia, a shorter form of the gloss discussed above. Dübner’s solution supplies a possible origin for the problematic uirtutum, which started life as a nominative plural referring to prudentia constantiaque and was converted into a genitive when it was moved into the text. Klotz' point about the apparent irrelevance of constantia remains, but the pair prudentia constantiaque can perhaps be explained by the antithesis with the following incaute atque insolenter, itself an unusual collocation in the corpus. In general, the presumption of a gloss here is strengthened by the presence of another string of suspect words involving criticism of Alexandrians at BAlex 7.2. On the other hand, Incertus does have a reason to “talk up” Mithridates’ virtues here, in that this loyal royal ally will receive a kingdom as a reward from Caesar later in the work, in a passage that refers the reader back to chapters 26–27: 78.2 Mithridaten Pergamenum, a quo rem feliciter celeriterque gestam in Aegypto supra scripsimus, regio genere ortum, disciplinis etiam regiis educatum … regem Bosphori constituit.Furthermore, Mithridates’ claims on Caesar seem to have been a matter of dispute. Incertus’ account of Mithridates’ march to Alexandria differs substantially from the two accounts by Josephus (BJ 1.187–92, AJ 14.127–39), who provides many more details and credits Antipater, not Mithridates, with the decisive actions. Josephus cites Asinius Pollio and Strabo (AJ 14.138–39) and mentions none of Mithridates’ qualities. Dio’s account (42.41–43), too, has different details but keeps Mithridates in the spotlight. He introduces the paragraphs on Mithridates’ res gestae with a catalogue of qualities (26.1 magnae nobilitatis domi scientiaeque in bello et uirtutis fidei dignitatisque in amicitia Caesaris) and works his virtues into the narrative itself (26.2 perseuerantia constantiaque oppugnandi, 27.5 prudentia and possibly constantia). Constantiaque in our passage could certainly be a carryover from 26.2, but in favor of its authenticity are both the antithesis with incaute atque insolenter and Incertus’ penchant for pairing such abstract nouns (11.3 scientia et uirtute, 15.1 scientiam atque animi magnitudinem (similarly at 31.1), 16.5 sollertia atque ars, 42.2 prudentia ac diligentia, 43.1 uirtute et scientia, 48.3 disciplinam seueritatemque (similarly 65.1), 51.4 labor aut uigilantia, 55.2 dignitatis et gratiae, 65.1 ambitione atque indiligentia, 68.1 prudentiae ac diligentiae, 68.1 hospitio atque amicitiae).On such pairings in the BAlex see recently Gaertner/Hausburg (2013, 37 with nn. 34, 37). On balance it seems that Dübner’s emendation best accounts for the features of this problematic passage, particularly the origin of uirtutum. The string of ablatives is still awkward, but there is a comparable collection in the preceding paragraph (25.2 magnis circumdatum copiis multiplici praesidio pertinaciter propugnantibus et copiarum magnitudine … et perseuerantia constantiaque oppugnandi quo die est aggressus). The somewhat irrelevant praise of Mithridates can be ascribed to political exigency, and the fact that S makes one of its characteristic eye-skips here is coincidental.