Bellum Alexandrinum: 7.2

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

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

Born digital.

7.2–3

Cynthia Damon

Erat autem magna multitudo oppidanorum in parte Caesaris, quam domiciliis ipsorum non mouerat quod ea se fidelem palam nostris esse simulabat et desciuisse a suis uidebatur, ut mihi defendendi essent Alexandrini—neque fallaces esse neque temerarii—multaque oratio frustra absumeretur. (3) Cum uero uno tempore et natio eorum et natura cognoscatur aptissimum esse hoc genus ad proditionem dubitare nemo potest.“Moreover, there was a large crowd of townspeople in Caesar’s district, whom he had not removed from their homes because they were making an open show of being loyal to our men and seemed to have cut their ties with their own side, so that I would have to defend the Alexandrians, saying that they are neither deceitful nor impetuous, and much verbiage would be spent to no purpose. (3) But when their community and character are considered simultaneously, no one can doubt that this race is perfectly prepared for treachery.”

domiciliis S | domicilius V et MT per compendia | domicius U per compendium || ut … (7.3) potest MUSTV, quod defendit Madvig (‘… neque quemadmodum addere in mentem cuiquam venerit intelligere possum’) | [ut … (7.3) potest] Gruterus ut glossema teste Oudendorp | ut mihi MUSTV | at mihi si Madvig | ut mihi si Klotz || neque1 MUSTV | quod neque ed.pr. (cf. Liu. 42.41.13) || esse Nipperdey | essent MUSTV || multaque MUSTV | multa ed.pr.

In the passage quoted above the string ut … absumeretur is excised by Gruterus (along with the following sentence), emended by many, and daggered by Andrieu. The general problem is the loose logical connection between the Alexandrians’ apparent loyalty to the Romans (uidebatur) and the idea that they require a defense from the author (ut mihi defendendi essent). What we want to be told instead, as Madvig observed (1873, 281), is why the Roman fears expressed in 7.1 (alii … extimescerent … quod neque celari Alexandrini possent in apparanda fuga, … neque illis imminentibus atque insequentibus ullus in naues receptus daretur) were justified. A further problem is that the hypothetical defense is contradicted by later critiques centered on Alexandrian deceptiveness (24.1 Caesar etsi fallacem gentem semperque alia cogitantem, alia simulantem bene cognitam habebat, 24.3 regius animus disciplinis fallacissimis eruditus, ne a gentis suae moribus degeneraret; cf. also 24.6 fallaciis pueri).

Editors who accept the basic authenticity of the transmitted text have to contend with a series of problems within the string itself, the most significant of which lie in the connectives. As transmitted the relevant part of the passage reads as follows:

… desciuisse a suis uidebatur ut mihi defendendi essent Alexandrini neque fallaces essent neque temerarii multaque oratio frustra absumeretur.

The connectives string together three dissimilar propositions: the opening reference to the necessity of a defense stands in parallel to neque fallaces essent neque temerarii, which looks like part of the hypothetical defense and therefore seems to warrant subordination, and also to a declaration that defense would be a waste of breath, where the apparently adversative sense needs more than a linking -que. The following sentence compounds the problem by abandoning the idea of defense and instead indicting the Alexandrians for their aptitude for treachery. (Here, however, we do get a nice robust uero.)

Smaller problems include the singular pronoun mihi, which clashes with the normally plural forms used for self reference by the author, and the word absumo, which is used nowhere else in the corpus and generally avoided by Incertus’ contemporaries. The punctuation is another variable: the string ut … absumeretur is sometimes printed as a stand-alone sentence and sometimes integrated with what precedes. The passage also suffers from guilt by association, so to speak, in that criticism of the Alexandrians is associated with textual problems elsewhere in the work.See, e.g., 27.5 [uirtutum et Alexandrinorum imprudentia], BC 3.112.12 [nutricius pueri et procurator regni, in parte Caesaris], and the excision suggested at 24.2 (adulta iam aetate puerum). Of relevance also, perhaps, is the peculiar repeated omission of the subject Alexandrini (16.7, 17.4, 17.6). But none of these has anything like the complicated structure of the present passage.

Gruterus’ excision is a drastic response to this assemblage of problems of sense and usage. They look less unacceptable if considered one by one.

1) Mihi is indeed a striking move by Incertus, who momentarily turns the reader’s attention to himself.Thus Madvig (1873, 281): “mire scriptor suam personam interponit.” As was mentioned above, for authorial comments he, like Caesar, usually employs the plural (28.2 demonstrauimus, 33.2 docuimus, 69.1 and 78.2 scripsimus, 74.3 audiebamus). However, there are exceptions to this, in Incertus as in Caesar (30.5 demonstraui, 35.3 scripsi). Such passages are generally cross references, but he occasionally speaks as a historian at work (23.1 ut coniectura possumus: cf. also nobis at 3.1 and 19.6, with textual notes ad locc.). Since the unusual mihi here is paralleled by an equally unusual mihi in a similar sort of ethnographic reflection at BG 6.14.4 (id mihi duabus de causis instituisse uidentur [sc. Galli]), it does not in itself warrant suspicion about the authenticity of the passage.

2) Absumeretur is the only word in the passage that is alien to the Caesarian corpus and indeed to its time period. One might have expected consumeretur, from a synonymous verb that occurs more than 40 times in the corpus (cf. BC 1.33.4 frustra diebus aliquot consumptis). But the presence of the wrong prefix is a very slender cause for suspicion, since altering the prefix is a frequent form of innovation in this tradition and the often abbreviated con- is particularly susceptible.See Damon 2015a, 172–74.

3) The logical problems mentioned above have elicited numerous repairs. Many editors will have felt, with Madvig, a reluctance to excise something whose origin they cannot explain.Thus Madvig (1873, 281): “eiicere ea non audeo, quod neque, quemadmodum addere in mentem cuiquam venerit, intelligere possum, nec huiusmodi annotationum aliud vestigium in Caesaris codicibus reperio.” In the editio princeps the string ut … absumeretur appears with four deviations from what we now know to be the paradosis, and two of these emendations were accepted by many subsequent editors, namely, the addition of quod after Alexandrini and the excision of -que.

… desciuisse a suis uidebatur ut tum mihi defendendi essent Alexandrini quod neque fallaces essent neque temerarii: multa oratio frustra absumerent.

The first of these innovations creates the subordination desiderated above, the second improves the logic somewhat but leaves multa … absumerent rather isolated. Neither tum nor absumerent is essential to the repair and they were quickly dropped when better manuscript evidence became available, as in the edition of Vascosanus, who also retained -que and repunctuated:

… desciuisse a suis uidebatur: ut mihi defendendi essent Alexandrini quod neque fallaces essent, neque temerarii, multaque oratio frustra absumeretur.

With this repair multa … absumeretur is now parallel to defendendi essent in a clause whose loose syntactic connection to desciuisse a suis uidebatur matches the above-mentioned looseness of thought. The ut-clause has to be a result clause of sorts, but the antecedent cause is the unstated implication of uidebatur: “they seemed to have cut their ties with their own side (but people feared they had not).” And even with this inference the connection between cause and result is quite loose. Only when we get to following sentence, with its introductory cum uero, do we see that the point of our passage is that it would be a waste of time to argue that the fears were misplaced, since the evidence for Alexandrian treacherousness is close to hand.Vielhaber suggested that the interpolation excised by Gruterus displaced some original text, the sense of which is perhaps preserved in aptissimum … potest (1869, 555). As Madvig says, Incertus uses “inutilibus verborum ambagibus” here (1873, 281). The quod-clause, too, is odd. There are no parallels in the Corpus for defendere quod; one has to go to Livy for an equivalent (42.41.13 non sum defensurus … quod Dolopas armis coercuerim). Aldus substituted si for ut, addressing the loose connection by creating an independent conditional sentence, but this repair also requires accepting multa for multaque. The compound innovation is hard to explain in both Aldus’ version and Madvig’s improvement on it:

… desciuisse a suis uidebatur: at mihi, si defendendi essent Alexandrini …, multaque oratio frustra absumeretur.The second ellipsis is present in Madvig’s article, so it is not clear whether or not he accepts Nipperdey’s esse. Presumably so. See further Gaertner/Hausburg 2013, 68 n. 185.

Nipperdey addressed the quod-clause problem by substituting esse for essent2:

… desciuisse a suis uidebatur: ut mihi defendendi essent Alexandrini neque fallaces esse neque temerarii, multaque oratio frustra absumeretur.Klotz merges Aldus’ conditional with Nipperdey’s indirect statement: … desciuisse a suis uidebatur: ut mihi, si defendendi essent Alexandrini neque fallaces esse neque temerarii, multaque oratio frustra absumeretur. But the genesis of the three-fold innovation is hard to explain.

The innovation is easy to explain as a “correction” designed to bring esse into alignment with the nearby subjunctives essent and absumeretur. There are comparable snippets of loosely integrated indirect statement in the Corpus, often in connection with verbs denoting emotional intensity, as here with defendendi.Cf. BG 3.6.1 (cohortati), 6.41.1 (questus); BC 1.64.2 (dolere), 2.4.3 (precibus et fletu), 3.28.4 (iureiurando), 3.31.4 (militum uoces), 3.82.4 (implorarent), and see Damon 2015b, 107 n.8. In the relevant TLL examples of defendere with acc. + inf. (TLL 5.1.298.84–299.4) the equivalent for Alexandrini in our passage is a reflexive pronoun (e.g., Liu. 32.40.1 ille ab ipsis Argiuis se defenderet accitum). The nominative temerarii in our passage indicates that the “snippet” is notionally dependent on a verb such as uiderentur. And Incertus gives us another rather loose result clause at 22.2: Nec diuulgata Caesaris hortatio subsequi legionum aut laborem aut pugnandi poterat cupiditatem, ut magis deterrendi et continendi a periculosissimis essent dimicationibus quam incitandi ad pugnandum. Here the syntax is similar, if less complex.

On balance it seems best to accept this minimally emended text. The logic is murky and the language awkward indeed, but the very murkiness of the logic is, as Madvig saw, an argument against ut … absumeretur (let alone ut … potest) being an interpolation.