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MARCIA CATONIS AND THE FULMEN CLARUM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2013

Patrick Tansey
Patrick Tansey*
Affiliation:
Macquarie University
*
[email protected]
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Extract

Anyone familiar with the work of Friedrich Münzer knows that he possessed an unrivalled knowledge of the Roman aristocracy of the Republic. On the rare occasion when something escapes Münzer, it is apt to pass altogether unnoticed. The following is one such instance.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , May 2013 , pp. 423 - 426
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2013

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References

1 HN 2.135–46.

2 HN 2.137. Jan, L. and Detlefsen, D., C. Plinii Secundi naturalis historia (Berlin, 1866), 99Google Scholar queried the reading princeps Romanarum and suggested princeps matronarum. Urlichs, C.L., Vindiciae Plinianae (Erlangen, 1866), 17Google Scholar identified Marcia as the grandmother of Caesar and suggested the emendation principis Romanorum avia, whereas Mayhoff, C., C. Plini Secundi nautralis historiae libri XXXVII (Leipzig, 1906), 178, 538Google Scholar thought that femina had dropped out of the text either before or after princeps. But Beaujeu, J., Pline L'Ancien, Histoire naturelle Livre II (Paris, 1951), 60, 213 n. 3Google Scholar saw no need to alter the paradosis. In any case, the description shows that Pliny's source knew the identity of Marcia.

3 RE XIV.1601 Marcia no. 113. Münzer made a study of Pliny's sources in his Beiträge zur Quellenkritik der Naturgeschichte des Plinius (Berlin, 1897).

4 De ostentis § 44 = Wachsmuth, C., Ioannis Laurentii Lydi liber de ostentis et calendaria Graeca omnia (Leipzig, 1897 2), 97.18 – 98.13Google Scholar = Beaujeu, J., Apulée: opuscules philosophiques et fragments (Paris, 2002 2), fr. 25Google Scholar. Lydus is undoubtedly the source of the Περὶ κεραυνῶν of Michael Psellus who quotes him virtually verbatim, without acknowledgement, although he omits the name of Marcia and makes no reference to Apuleius (see Duffy, J.M., Michaelis Pselli philosophica minora [Leipzig, 1992], opusc. 28Google Scholar). And Psellus was in turn copied by the author of the Codex Baroccianus Graecus 131 (see Pontikos, I.N., Anonymi Miscellanea Philosophica. A Miscellany in the Tradition of Michael Psellos [Athens, 1992], ch. 24, p. 79Google Scholar).

5 Weigl, L., Johannes Kamateros. Εἰσαγωγὴ ἀστρονομίας (Leipzig, 1908), lines 373–8Google Scholar.

6 RE no. 115. Cato divorced Marcia so that she might marry Q. Hortensius (cos. 69) and remarried her on the death of Hortensius.

7 See Rees, W.D., ‘Pregnant woman struck by lighting’, British Medical Journal 1 (1965), 103–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chan, Y.F., Sivasamboo, R., ‘Lightning accidents in pregnancy’, Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of the British Commonwealth 79 (1972), 761–2CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Weinstein, L., ‘Lightning: a rare cause of intrauterine death with maternal survival’, Southern Medical Journal 72 (1979), 632–3CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Guha-Ray, D.K., ‘Fetal death at term due to lightning’, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 134 (1979), 103–5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Pierce, M.R., Henderson, R.A. and Mitchell, J.M., ‘Cardiopulmonary arrest secondary to lightning injury in a pregnant woman’, Annals of Emergency Medicine 15 (1986), 597–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Luc. 2.331: tertia suboles; Commenta Bernensia, 2.330: tribus liberis; Adnotationes super Lucanum, 2.339: tres filios; Supplementum adnotationum super Lucanum, 2.329: tres liberos, 2.331: tres filios. The three children are: L. Porcius Cato (RE no. 8), Porcia (RE no. 29), and Porcia (RE no. 30).

9 The exceptions which prove the rule are the twelve pregnancies of Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, and the nine children of Agrippina the Elder (Plin. HN 7.57 and Sen. Helv. 16.6). Note also the author of the anonymous treatise on the domus Augusta claims that Octavia bore C. Claudius Marcellus (cos. 50) four sons and four daughters – though only one son and two daughters are otherwise attested (Lampros, S.P., ‘Ἀνέκδοτον ἀπόσπασμα συγγραϕῆς περὶ τοῦ Καισαρείου γένους’, Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων 1 [1904], 148Google Scholar).

10 Festus, 190 L (Occisum); Plin. HN 2.145; cf. Tert. Apol. 48.14–15.

11 Another occurrence of the phenomenon is recorded by Varro in the third book, De auguribus, of his Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum: Lucius Scipio cum aurum factum haberet in cista viminea, fulmine ita est ictus, ut cista esset integra, aurum conliquisset (Cardauns, B., M. Terentius Varro Antiquitates rerum divinarum, [Wiesbaden, 1976], fr. 53Google Scholar). See also Lucr. 6.228–37, 348–56; Sen. Q Nat. 2.31; Suda, Κ 1379 and Ψ 123 Adler; [Arist.] Mund. 395a Bekker; Posidonius fr. 338 Theiler; Arrian, Fragmenta de rebus physicis § 3 Roos and Wirth (= Stob. Flor. 1.29); Σ Ar. Eq. 696 b, d and Nub. 395 e, 396 a; Etymologicum Symeonis 1.172.20–4 Lasserre and Livadaras; and Εnn. Ann. 555 Skutsch. For the theoretical background see Thulin, C.O., Die etruskische Disciplin: Die Blitzlehre (Göteborg, 1906), 56fGoogle Scholar and Gilbert, O., Die meteorologischen Theorien des griechischen Altertums (Leipzig, 1907), 619f, esp. 636fGoogle Scholar. Wildfang, R.L., ‘Fulgura et fulmina: or what it portends when the family tomb is struck by a fulmen quod decussit’, in id. and Isager, J. (edd.), Divination and Portents in the Roman World (Odense, 2000), 67–78Google Scholar argues that the seemingly discordant accounts in Sen. Q Nat. 2.40, Plin. HN 2.137, and Serv. Aen. 1.43, 2.649 can be harmonized and reflect a unified system of classification for lightning bolts according to the damage they inflict.

12 De mensibus 4.116 Wünsch (Beaujeu fr. 22), De ostentis § 3 line 40, § 4 line 25 (Beaujeu fr. 23), § 7 line 9 (Beaujeu fr. 24), § 10b line 45, and § 54 line 13 Wachsmuth (where Apuleius is credited with a commentary on the Libri Tagetici).

13 See L. Schwabe, RE II (1896), 249 Appuleius no. 9; Schanz, M., Geschichte der römischen Literatur bis zum Gesetzgebungswerk des Kaisers Justinian2 (Munich, 1905), III.135Google Scholar; and Sallmann, K. (ed.), Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike: Die Literatur des Umbruchs von der römischen zur christlichen Literatur 117 – 284 n. Chr. (Munich, 1997), 313Google Scholar; and Harrison, S.J., Apuleius: A Latin Sophist (Oxford, 2000), 29Google Scholar. The identification is convincing because Lydus' description of Apuleius as μέγας indicates a person of renown, and Apuleius of Madaura elsewhere evinces an interest in lightning (see Flor. 2.8, De mundo 3, 8, 15, 22, 37, De deo Soc. 6 – assuming the latter two works are correctly attributed to him). Lydus also mentions ‘the Roman philosopher Apuleius’ in his De magistratibus populi Romani (Bandy, A.C., Ioannes Lydus. On Powers or the Magistracies of the Roman State [Philadelphia, 1983], 234Google Scholar). Weinstock, S., ‘Libri fulgurales’, PBSR 19 (1951), 138Google Scholar n. 80 identifies Apuleius with the medical writer Apuleius Celsus, but this is rightly rejected by Mastandrea, P., Un neoplatonico latino Cornelio Labeone (Leiden, 1979), 82 n. 30Google Scholar.

14 See for example Kroll, W., ‘Plinius und die Chaldaer’, Hermes 65 (1930), 10 n. 4Google Scholar; Harrison (n. 13), 29; and Beaujeu (n. 4), 177 n. 3.

15 See Plin. HN 2.99 and Apuleius in Lydus, De ostentis § 4 (Beaujeu fr. 23), Plin. HN 2.137 and Apuleius in Lydus, De ostentis § 44 (Beaujeu fr. 25), Plin. HN 2.150 and Apuleius in Lydus, De ostentis § 7 (Beaujeu fr. 24).

16 Beiträge zur Quellenkritik der Naturgeschichte des Plinius (Berlin, 1897), 98, 248–9.Google Scholar See also Thulin (n. 11), 62–8, 78 on the relationship between Plin. HN 2.137, Arrian and Etruscan doctrine.

17 Kroll, W., Die Kosmologie des Plinius (Breslau, 1930)Google Scholar, 38. See also Weinstock (n. 13), 123–4.

18 Beaujeu (n. 4), 180 n. 1.

19 Mastandrea (n. 13), 82–3.