-
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. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 74.4 Wes Hanson and Cynthia Damon Cuius aliquamdiu Caesar irridebat inanem ostentationem et eo loco militum coartationem quem in locum nemo sanus hostis subiturus esset, cum interim Pharnaces eodem gradu quo in procliuem descenderat uallem ascendere aduersus arduum collem instructis copiis coepit.“For some time Caesar kept laughing at the empty show and the massing of soldiers in a spot into which no sane enemy would advance, when in the meantime Pharnaces, with the same pace with which he had descended into the downward-sloping valley, began to climb the steep hill opposing him with his troops in battle formation.” coartationem Brutus (cf. Liu. 27.46.2) | cohortationem MUSTV || locum ed. pr. | loco MUSTV || hostis MUSTV | hostis Bentley || in procliuem Nipperdey (cf. 76.1 et, de antithesi, Liu. 5.43.2) | in proelium ST | in bellum V | praeruptam in proelium U | in praeruptam M (u. 74.3 et cf., de antithesi, Plin. Nat. 2.174) The transmitted text of a sentence that shows an incredulous Caesar watching Pharnaces lead his army onto unfavorable ground needs repair in at least three spots: cuius aliquamdiu Caesar irridebat inanem ostentationem et eo loco militum cohortationem quem in loco nemo sanus hostis subiturus esset cum interim Pharnaces eodem gradu quo in proelium/praeruptam descenderat uallem ascendere aduersus arduum collem instructis copiis coepit. In the first two spots the problems are clear and permit convincing resolutions.We also note the excision of hostis proposed by Thomas Bentley (1742, ad loc.); the term is certainly peculiar in this context, where a more neutral word such as dux would be more plausible, if any word at all is needed. The archetype’s reading at the third spot, however, is a puzzle in itself. Since Pharnaces is at this moment moving up a hillside intending to fight a battle, the combination of in proelium and the pluperfect descenderat makes little sense. However, the presence of the unwanted expression in proelium in both branches of the stemma (ST and U) indicates that this reading was in the archetype and in its descendants ν and μ. In the ν branch V will have substituted the synonymous in bellum (for innovations in V see Damon 2015a, lviii-lix). The reading of μ is harder to discern: it must have had in proelium, since U has this phrase, but it must also have had praeruptam, which is in both U and M. It is possible but not demonstrable that these variants reached μ from the archetype (for archetypal variants see Damon 2015a, xxiv-xxv). If so, praeruptam was not transmitted to ν’s descendants, perhaps because the hyperbaton in praeruptam … uallem seemed more immediately problematic than in proelium.On hyperbata in the Bellum Alexandrinum see Gaertner and Hausburg 2013, 36–39. Incertus is particularly fond of clause-ending hyperbata of the form adjective-verb-substantive (see the discussion of 35.3 above, n. 11). Be that as it may, what one wants to know is whether praeruptam reached μ by transmission, in other words, whether it may be an authentic reading. The fact that the valley into which Pharnaces had descended was described as praerupta in the preceding sentence (74.3 At Pharnaces … descendere praerupta ualle coepit) suggests that the adjective may have been supplied here as a convenient repair for the semantic problem discussed above. On the other hand, eodem gradu suggests that Incertus wanted the two phrases read together here, and in any case he is not particularly scrupulous about avoiding repetition (see Gaertner and Hausburg 2013, 37 n. 38). But if in praeruptam was the original reading, it is hard to see how in proelium arose. It cannot have been an unconscious remembrance of a phrase used elsewhere in the corpus, since in proelium descendere occurs only at Fron. Strat. 2.1.10 ut in proelium cum coniugibus ac liberis descenderent, and in proelium is altogether absent from the corpus Caesarianum. Nipperdey (1847, ad loc.) proposed an emendation that clarifies the origin of in proelium: … cum interim Pharnaces eodem gradu quo in procliuem descenderat uallem ascendere aduersus arduum collem instructis copiis coepit. The noun will have arisen as a misreading of procliuem, an adjective that appears only three times elsewhere in the corpus (76.1 cum in procliui detruderentur hostes; BC 1.48.8 quibus erat procliue tranare flumen; BAfr 10.1 omnia sibi procliuia), in two of which it has its metaphorical meaning “easy.” Procliuis is not elsewhere applied to uallis, but it is used with topographical substantives such as pauimentum, solum, saxum, locus, and uia (see TLL 10.2.1537.68–1538.13 “de iis quae qui positionem uel formam inclinatam habent”). And it is used in antithesis with arduus at Liu. 5.43.2 (in arduum … per procliue) and Sen. Dial. 7.25.6 (in procliui … aduersus ardua). Both in praeruptam and in procliuem have merits, and it is difficult to choose one over the other. In the end, however, we decided to print Nipperdey’s emendation, to indicate that we think that in praeruptam is more likely to be a scribal innovation based on 74.3 praerupta ualle than to be authentic text.