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Cicero's παλiνῳδία and Questions therewith connected

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

T. Rice Holmes
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Extract

The object of this article is to ascertain as nearly as possible the dates of the conference at Luca and of Cicero's speech on the consular provinces; to identify the composition which he called his ‘palinode’; and to fix the chronological order of certain letters which relate to these points.

Writing on April 8, 698 (56 B.C.), Cicero tells his brother that on the 5th there was a debate in the Senate on the Campanian land; that on the 7th he visited Pompey, who intended to start on the IIth for Sardinia and to embark at Labro (Leghorn ?) or Pisa; and that he himself is on the point of leaving Rome, but intends, after staying successively at Anagnia, Arpinum, Pompeii, and Cumae, to return on May 6. Two years later he wrote to Lentulus Spinther that in the debate of April 5, 56, it had been resolved ‘that the question of the Campanian land should be referred to a full meeting of the Senate on the 15th of May.’ ‘After this decree,’ he continued, had passed in accordance with my motion, Pompey, without showing the least sign of being offended with me, started for Sardinia and Africa, and on the way visited Caesar at Luca. Caesar complained a great deal about my motion, for he had already seen Crassus at Ravenna, and had been irritated by him against me. Everyone knew that Pompey was much annoyed about it—so I heard from others and afterwards learned definitely from my brother. When Pompey met him in Sardinia a few days after he left Luca, he said, “You are the very man I want to see… You went bail for your brother Marcus; unless you speak strongly to him, you'll have to pay up”… He spoke of his own services to me; recalled what he had often said to my brother about Caesar's measures [in his consulship] and the pledge which my brother had given for my conduct; called my brother to witness that what he had done to secure my recall [from exile] he had done with the consent of Caesar; and asked him to commend to me Caesar's policy and aims and persuade me not to attack, even if I would not or could not support them.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , January 1920 , pp. 39 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1920

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References

page 39 note 1 Q. fr. II 5, I, 3–4.

page 39 note 2 Fam. I 9, 8–10.

page 40 note 1 Att. IV. 5.

page 40 note 2 Ibid. 6, 1–2.

page 40 note 3 Q.fr. II. 6, 2.

page 40 note 4 Fam.I. 7, 7.

page 40 note 5 Cf.De prou. cons. II, 28 and Pro Balbo 27, 61. Jullian, M. Camille (Hist, de la Gaule, III. 1909, p. 282, nn. 1, 3)Google Scholar holds that the ten legati were not lieutenant-generals, but a senatorial commission appointed to settle the administration of the conquered territory of Gaul. Apart from other reasons, my view seems to me proved by Cicero's words in the passage which I have quoted from his speech, Pro Balbo,—C. Caesarem senatus et genere supplicationum amplissimo ornauit et numero dierum nouo. Idem in angustiis aerarii uictorem exercitum stipendio adfecit, imperatori decem legatos decreuit, lege Sempronia succedendum non censuit. Test the effect of translating the passage in the sense which M. Jullian attributes to it. Again, in the passage which I cite from De prou. cons., Cicero says that some senators were opposed to granting the tenlegati, while others asked for precedents (actum est de decem legatis, quos alii omnino non dabant, alii exempla quaerebant). If it had been a question of sending commissioners, precedents, as Willems, remarks (Le Sénat, etc., II. 1883, p. 613, n. 1)Google Scholar, were easy to find. Besides, is it likely, is it conceivable that Caesar, in the full tide of success and anxious to complete his work of conquest, while he was still fighting against the Veneti, would have asked that commissioners should be prematurely sent to interfere with him (see Cic. Fam. I. 7, 10)? M. Jullian says that the threat which Suetonius (Diuus Iulius, 24) attributes to Domitius Ahenobarbus—that if he became consul in 55 B.C., he would deprive Caesar of his army (consulem se effecturum quod praetor nequisset adempturumque ei exercitum—is unintelligible unless the word legati is interpreted in his sense. Obviously Suetonius only implies that Domitius was one of the senators who, as Cicero says, resisted the dispatch of the lieutenant-generals—because they wished to prevent Caesar from continuing the war.

M. Jullian actually argues that the grant of pay for Caesar's troops which Cicero mentions implied that the war was over! Then why did Cicero, while he spoke and voted in favour of the grant, do his utmost to secure the prolongation of Caesar's command? M. Jullian does not seem to see that Cicero's speech on the consular provinces was directed against the machinations of Domitius and his coterie.

Dio (XXXIX. 25, 1), who never mentions the conference at Luca, entirely misunderstood the sense in which Cicero used the wordlegati.

page 41 note 1 Fam. I. 7, 10.

page 41 note 2 See De prou. cons. 2, 3; 7, 17.

page 41 note 3 B.G. III. 9, 2.

page 41 note 4 The Julian date is certain because the intercalary month which preceded that of 52 B.C. must have been later than 56. All chronologists admit that it occurred in one of the three years, 56, 55, and 54. Unger, G. F.(Jahrb. f. class. Philol. 1884, pp. 584–5)Google Scholar argued in favour of 56; but in a letter begun on the day before the Ides of February in that year Cicero appends the postscript XV. Kalend. Mart. (February 15); and if there was an intercalary month, such a date was impossible: it would have beena. d. X. Kal. interc. Cf. Rauschen, G., Ephem. Tullianae, 1886, pp. 19–21Google Scholar.

page 41 note 5 App.B.C. II. 32, 127. Cf. Caes.B.C. I. 3, 6.

page 41 note 6 ltin. Ant. ed. Wesseling, , pp. 289–93Google Scholar.

page 41 note 7 De prou. cons. 11, 28.

page 41 note 8 Röom. Gesch. III. 1889, p. 323Google Scholar, n.**.

page 41 note 9 Cicero, Select Letters 3, 1881, p. 179.

page 42 note 1 The Correspondence of Cicero, II 1886, pp. 47–8Google Scholar.

page 42 note 2 Att. XII. 26, 2; 2 I; 27. I.

page 43 note 1 Tyrrell evidently thought that the speech was delivered before the palinode, which in his view recorded it, was written. To my mind the words legi probarique would imply that if the palinode was the oratio de prouinciis consularibus, the written version preceded the delivery of the speech. But in that case the reasons which I have given for not identifying the palinode with the speech would still hold good: if Cicero had written what he was about to speak, he had already expressed his rejection of the old policy, and had no need to think how he should do so.

page 43 note 2 1906, pp. 57–9.

page 43 note 3 Cicero, it will be remembered, told Lentulus Spinther that Quintus had ‘reported’ Pompey's message to him (Haec cum ad me frater pertulisset, etc. [Fam. I. 9, 10]); and on May 15 Quintus had not yet returned to Italy from Sardinia. If pertulisset is to be understood in the sense which Tyrrell ascribes to it, the use of the word can only be justified by the maxim, Qui facit per alium facit per se. Cicero had doubtless received Pompey's message from Vibullius before May 15; but I am inclined to believe that Quintus delivered the message that had been entrusted to him orally, and therefore after that date.

page 44 note 1 Op. cit. pp. 42–5 (§§ 53–4)

page 45 note 1 Evidently he did not go to Antium on the way to Pompeii.