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Calvus Ex Nanneianis1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
Cic. Att. i. 16. 5. Nosti calvum ex Nanneianis ilium, ilium laudatorem meum, de cuius oratione erga me honorifica ad te scripseram. …
In a recent article (CQ,xviii [1968], 296–9) Dr. T.P.Wiseman has (a) vigorously attacked the almost universally accepted view that the person to whom Cicero here alludes is Crassus, urging instead that the villain of the piece is C. Licinius Macer Calvus, and (b) proposed νєανίαις for the manuscript reading Nanneianis with which he would, I imagine, be unhappy, as others have been before him, even if he accepted the identification with Crassus.
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References
page 183 note 2 Or Calvum. Some editors print with a capital C although they take the phrase to refer to Crassus. The problem, of course, would not have presented itself to Cicero.
page 183 note 3 Which would seem inescapable if Crassus is out and the reading calvum is sound. It has in fact been doubted by some (e.g. Tyrrell, who offered callidum), but there is no need to reject it.
page 183 note 4 I do not repeat Manutius's explanation here; it may be found in Wiseman's article and in the Standard commentaries. When I say that Wiseman may be right to reject it, it is with the broad objection that the theory is too far-fetched that I have some sympathy. Wiseman's subsidiary point, the spelling discrepancy between our passage and Comm. Pet. 9, should carry no weight. Obscure proper names can suffer far worse than this at the hands of scribes.
page 183 note 5 He is also troubled by the lack of any other evidence that the adjective was applicable to Crassus. Although he does not seem to lay much stress on this point, it is perhaps worth while suggesting that the argument may have even less force than he believes. Corroboration is likely to be found in only two authors, Cicero himself and Plutarch. It should therefore be pointed out that Plutarch does not seem to mention the (notorious) baldness of Julius Caesar; neither (unless I have missed or forgotten something) does Cicero. This seems to rob the argument from silence of most of its force.
page 184 note 1 U.C.P.C.A. ii (1951), 157 n. 129.Google Scholar
page 184 note 2 And I do not see that we need invariably regard it as a near-obscenity even in impolite literary forms. Need there, for example, be anything sinister about Plaut. Amph. 462?
At this point, a piece of comparative lexicography may be interesting. Gk. øαλακρός is used in technical writing (Hippocrates); by Herodotus (in ethnographical vein); and in comedy. On the other hand it seems to be avoided by the orators, by the tragedians (except when writing satyr-plays), and by Thucydides and Xenophon. One might infer that Plato would never have used the word unless absolutely compelled to do so by exigencies of subject-matter; but the inference would be wrong, cf. the little bald tinker at Rep. 495 e.
page 184 note 3 Pis. 19, cf. R. G. M. Nisbet ad loc.
page 184 note 4 But not, I think, all; for example, does the letter explicitly claim that calvus ex Nanneianis did his dirty work openly? Cicero claims to have certain knowledge, but that is not the same thing. Had someone asked him how he knew, I suspect that the word comperi (cf. Att. 1. 14. 5) might have featured in his reply. I also wonder whether Wiseman does not treat the rhetorical tetracolon arcessivit … dedit with more respect than it deserves.
page 185 note 1 Cf. Balsdon, J. P. V. D., Historia xv (1966), 65–73, esp. 72–3.Google Scholar
page 185 note 2 Balsdon, , in Cicero (ed. Dorey, T. A.), p. 190Google Scholar, suggests that there were ‘only three men for whom Cicero feit genuine hatred’, and that Crassus was one of them. I would not dissent.
page 185 note 3 R. G. M. Nisbet, pp. 196–7 of his edn. of in Pisonem.
page 185 note 4 Though perhaps Wiseman overestimates the positive attractions of Licinius Calvus. There is certainly nothing intrinsicaliy implausible in the suggestion that he might have supported Clodius in 61, but (if one discounts the present passage) I know of no clear evidence concerning his precise political affiliations at this date, and he appears only once in Cicero's correspondence (a brief mention as Macer Licinius at QF 2. 4. 1, 56 b.c.) before the Civil War. This silence seems somewhat surprising if Calvus was regarded as an active and effective Clodian as early as 61.
page 185 note 5 As for ex Nanneianis, Manutius may after all have been right. But perhaps text and/or explanation are now irretrievable.