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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. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 47.2 Tim Warnock and Cynthia Damon Capit ex eo proelio penterem unam triremes duas dicrotas VIII compluresque remiges Octauianos.“From that battle he gained possession of one penteris, two triremes, eight two-banked galleys, and several of Octavius’ oarsmen.” ex MUSTV (cf. BAfr 40.5) : ex Schneider coll. 16.6 | penterem Stephanus (cf. BAfr. 62.5) : penteremem MUSTV | remiges Octauianos MUSTV (cf. 16.6) : celoces Octauianas Stadler (cf. Liu. 21.17.5) This sentence describes the ships captured by Vatinius after defeating Octavius near the island of Tauris (45–46; mod. Šćedro in Croatia). Three types of ship are mentioned here. The term for the largest ship, as transmitted, is a bizarre bilingual hybrid, penteremem. This certainly refers to what is elsewhere called a quinqueremis (sc. nauis; 13.4, 13.5, 16.6, 46.1, etc.). The same hybrid probably stood in the archetype at BAfr 62.5 (penteremes MU : pentemeres T : pentymeres V : penteres S), whence it was corrected in S to a Latin form, penteres, modeled on trieris (= τριήρης).Trieris is correctly transmitted at BAfr 44.2 nauis trieris; it also appears at Nep. Alc. 4.3 and at Sal. H. fr. inc. 11 Maurenbrecher. A similarly formed word, hexeris, occurs three times in Livy (29.9.8, 37.23.5, 37.30.2). Outside of the two occurrences in the Caesarian corpus, penteris is only found in Isid. Orig. 19.1.23. On the names of Roman warships see recently M. Guérin, “La série des lexies biremis/triremis/quadriremis/quinqueremis navis: Une curiosité morphologique et sémantique,” in: P. Duarte et al., eds., Histoires de mots: Études de linguistique latine et de linguistique générale offertes en hommage à Michèle Fruyt. Paris. 135–153. In the present passage penteremem was emended to penterem by Stephanus in 1544, and the Greek cognate sits comfortably in a sentence that also contains dicrotas (sc. naues = δίκροτας ναῦς). Although the numerical portion of such compounds may occasionally have been indicated with a Roman numeral in the archetype (Vremes appears in M and V at BC 3.111.3, for example), it seems unlikely that a scribe expanded V to pente-. The innovation probably arose under pressure from the other -remis compounds in the vicinity, including triremes in the same list (cf. 46.1 quinqueremi and quadriremem, 46.5 quadriremis). Stadler (1907, 1119) proposed adding one more Greek-derived boat term to this list, emending remiges to celoces. But the capture of rowers with their boats is reported in another “cost-of-battle” summary earlier in the text (16.6 capitur hoc proelio quinqueremis una et biremis cum defensoribus remigibusque; cf. BC 3.24.3 quadriremem cum remigibus defensoribusque suis ceperunt, BAfr 63.3 triremem … onustam remigum epibatarumque cepit), so the repair seems superfluous. Schneider’s excision of ex, on the model of 16.6 (quoted above), has better justification, but it too seems unnecessary, since Vatinius’ possession of the enemy ships may have arisen “in connection with that battle” or “from that battle,” i.e., during (cf. 46.5) and after it. It is clear from the narrative that Octavius abandoned his fleet to its fate, since in his flight he was only accompanied by a few small ships that “chance had preserved” (46.6–7, esp. naues nonnullae quas casus … uindicarat; 47.4 paruis paucisque nauigiis).Andrieu prints ex but translates “dans cet engagement.” The construction at BAfr 40.5 nonnulli ex Curionis proelio capti is similar, and refers to noncombatants taken prisoner after a battle in which the commander perished (BC 2.44.2).