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The Text of the Pseudo-Ciceronian Epistula Ad Octavianum
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
The pseudo-Ciceronian Epistula ad Octavianum enjoys the unmerited distinction of being preserved not only in most of the manuscripts which contain the AdAtticum letters but also in some of those which contain the second half of the Ad Familiares letters; the former tradition is usually designated Ω, the latter I shall designate X. It was on the Ω tradition that the earliest printed texts were based. In the sixteenth century Cratander (1528) and Turnebus (1565) introduced a number of readings from the X tradition; some of these were incorporated in the vulgate, but the printed editions from that of Lambinus (1565) to that of Purser (1902) still continued to be based mainly on Ω. In 1913, in an article in Eranos, xiii. 136–46, Sjögren set himself to prove that the value of Ω had been overrated in the establishment of the text, and that greater importance should be attached to X than to Ω; and in accordance with this view, in his 1914 Teubner text, Sjögren follows X, as against Ω, about twice as often3 as Purser does. This view of Sjögren's, I believe, will not stand examination, and to disprove it is the purpose of the present article.
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References
1 All those used by Sjögren except E (Ambrosianus E 14 inf.) and N (Laurentianus Conv. Suppr. 49).
2 ‘Equidem vitiis virtutibusque codicum perpensis pro certo habeo FH, si rem universam spectamus, maiore emolumento quam Ω ad verum recuperandum adhiberi.’
3 In 37 passages, as against Purser's 18.
4 Cf. Mendelssohn's, edition of the Ad Fam., Praef. xx ff.Google Scholar
5 Cf. ibid. xxi ff.
6 Cf. ibid. xxii ff.; Constans, , Cicéron, Correspondence i. 276.Google Scholar
7 I.c. xxvi ff.
8 R.E.L. viii (1930), 345 ff.Google Scholar; Correspondance, i. 19 ff.Google Scholar
9 Constans, , Correspondance, i. 20 ff.Google Scholar
10 I have ignored (as being valueless) nearly everything peculiar to B.
1 Cf. Sjögren, , Commentationes Tullianae, 92–103.Google Scholar
2 I.c. xxiv.
3 In my text-references the first figure is the number of the section, the second the number of the line within the section reckoned from Sjögren's text (but approximately the same for any modern text, e.g. that of Purser).
4 e.g. 2. 3 libera ut esset X; ut esset libera Ω; ut libera esset Cratander.
1 So also is his quotation of Paridem patriae (6. 9) in Adv. Book xxvii, ch. 30. This should not be adduced (as it is by Purser and by Sjogren) as though Turnebus found it in some manuscript used by him; he himself makes no such claim, and he is obviously quoting the phrase (inaccurately) from memory of the current editions (which all read, as Ω, patriae Paridem). It is a safe guess that his manuscripts here read, as X, patrem patriae, and that Turnebus refrained from quoting this reading in Book xvi, ch. 8, because he recognized that it was wrong and the reading of the current editions was right.
1 Vol. vi, 2nd edn. (1933), p. 339. The note here shows that the reading oppressus [instead of oppressa) in the text is due to nadvertence.
1 In less than one quarter of these passages does Sjögren's apparatus reveal the facts.
1 This variant would be extraordinary in any text other than the present: desperation, as Wesenberg, (Emendationcs Alterae, 147–8)Google Scholar points out, spoils the image of afflictam ac prostratam rem p. … extulisti; it is a wilful rewriting, aided by the confusion of the per and pro contractions.
2 In Sjögren's edition this foolish reading is, by an oversight, attributed to Ω instead of to X.
3 Another example of a rewriting consequent on an omission.
4 For this intrusive et, which has origi nated in a punctuation mark, cf. Sjögren, , Comm. Tull. 38.Google Scholar
5 This process is carried still farther by B, which reads pellitur, ‘when the enemy is iriven from his position’(!).
6 The only exception is at 2. 8, where the Ω manuscripts have inserted est (in different aositions) to repair the damage done by the accidental omission of habet (that habet was jriginal, is shown by the traces of the uxusative significationem which survive in Ω). All the other wrong readings of Ω are honest [and common) scribal errors.
7 In less than half of these passages does Sjögren's apparatus reveal the facts.
1 Wesenberg wished to insert it, and C. F. W. Mueller was inclined to agree with him.
2 Edition, Praef. p. x.Google Scholar