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THREE TEXTUAL PROBLEMS IN CICERO'S PHILOSOPHICA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2017

Andrew R. Dyck
Andrew R. Dyck*
Affiliation:
Los Angeles
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Extract

dixerit hoc idem Epicurus, semper beatum esse sapientem … quem quidem, cum summis doloribus conficiatur, ait dicturum: ‘quam suaue est! quam nihil curo!’ non pugnem cum homine, cur tantum †habeat† in natura boni …

This text, containing Cicero's oft-repeated canard, is deeply problematic. Both Reynolds and Moreschini resort to daggers here. Madvig's abeat for habeat has failed to convince, since Cicero appears to use abeo metaphorically without specifying the place of origin or destination of movement within a narrowly circumscribed semantic field which does not encompass our passage. C.F.W. Müller, on the other hand, offered aberret, which can appear without such specification in the sense ‘be deceived’ or the like. Editors evidently hesitate, however, because of the difficulty of explaining the corruption. Perhaps one might rather consider the merits of haereat. haereo can mean ‘be stuck in difficulties’, but the usage is uncommon enough that it could easily have been a stumbling block for an inattentive scribe. Moreover, in some scripts where r is written with somewhat elongated hasta and an arc curving down, it can be easily confused with b; and once haebeat appeared, the ‘correction’ to habeat was all but inevitable.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , May 2017 , pp. 310 - 312
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Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2017 

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References

1 Also at Fin. 2.88, Tusc. 2.17 and 5.31. Epicurus’ view is not that the sage takes pleasure in being tortured but that he will be happy (eudaimōn) even if tortured (fr. 601), because of the memory of prior pleasures.

2 Reynolds, L.D. (ed.), M. Tulli Ciceronis De finibus bonorum et malorum libri quinque (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar; Moreschini, C. (ed.), M. Tullius Cicero, Fasc. 43, De finibus bonorum et malorum (Munich and Leipzig, 2005)Google Scholar. Reynolds's apparatus criticus should be consulted for further detail. For the textual tradition of Cicero's philosophica, see the contributions at Reynolds, L.D. (ed.), Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 1983), 112–35Google Scholar.

3 Cf. TLL 1.69.74 (‘de mensura’), 1.69.79 (‘de tempore’), 1.70.6-7 (‘de rebus cum tempore evanescentibus’) and 1.70.27 (‘de affectibus, sensibus, somno, sim.’).

4 Cf. OLD aberro 5a; TLL 1.73.42, citing Off. 1.100 quam [sc. naturam] si sequemur ducem, numquam aberrabimus.

5 OLD s.v. 8; TLL 6.3.2498.25.

6 Ed. M. Pohlenz (Leipzig, 1918).

7 Ed. M. Giusta (Turin, 1984).

8 There is a similar idea at Att. 12.46.1: ex<cul>to (Victorius) enim <in> (Wesenburg) animo nihil agreste, nihil inhumanum est (15 May 45, not long before work began on the Tusculans).

9 Pliny, on the other hand, assigns the death to natural causes (HN 7.122). F. Münzer, RE s.v. ‘Rupilius 4’ places the elections in 131 or 130; they should in any case be placed shortly before the death of Africanus, whose support for the candidate is attested (Amic. 73).