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A tragic fragment in Cicero, Pro Caelio 67?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. S. Hollis
A. S. Hollis
Affiliation:
Keble College, [email protected]
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Extract

It is appropriate that this speech should be full of quotations from Roman drama. These offered the jurymen some compensation for their enforced absence from the theatrical performances of the Ludi Megalenses; on the very day (4 April 56 b.c.) when Cicero demolished Clodia's reputation in court, her brother Clodius, as curule aedile, was nearby presiding at the opening of the Ludi. Brother and sister both had a strong interest in the stage; in Pro Sestio 116 Clodius is described as ‘ipse ille maxime ludius, non solum spectator sed actor et acroama, qui omnia sororis embolia novit’. In Pro Caelio 18 Cicero takes up Crassus' quotation of Ennius' Medea, ‘utinam ne in nemore Pelio …’ ends by calling Clodia ‘the Medea of the Palatine’. Clodius is made to address his sister in a trochaic septenarius, ‘quid clamorem exorsa verbis parvam rem magnam facis?’. A harsh parent is represented by a quotation from Caecilius, a gentle one by Micio from Terence's Adelphoe. Clodia herself is called (64) ‘veteris et plurimarum fabularum poetriae’—this phrase should not be taken to mean that she had actually written plays—and in 65 the whole affair at the baths is likened to a mime with no satisfactory conclusion (‘mimi … exitus in quo clausula non invenitur’).

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , December 1998 , pp. 561 - 564
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1998

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References

1 For the date, see R. G. Austin, M. Tulli Ciceronis Pro M. Caelio Oratio 3 (Oxford, 1960), Appendix IV; T. P. Wiseman, ‘Clodius at the theatre’, in Cinna the Poet and other Roman Essays (Leicester, 1974), pp. 159–69.

2 Quoted by Wiseman, Catullus and his World: a Reappraisal(Cambridge, 1985), p. 27 (‘Nobilium Ludi’).

3 R. G. M. Nisbet suspects an indecent pun here. For the company kept by Clodia, see Nisbet, Collected Papers (Oxford, 1995), p. 398.

4 This was not the only reference to the Argonautic myth in this trial; Atratinus called Caelius ‘pulchellulum Iasonem’, and was himself cast as ‘Pelia cincinnatus’ by Caelius(see Austin on 18.6 ‘Palatinam Medeam’ and Wiseman [n. 2 above], p. 77).

5 Pro Caelio36.

6 Pro Caelio37, quoting Caecilius 224–35 Warmington (Remains of Old LatinI, pp. 546–8).

7 Pro Caelio38, quoting Adelphoe120–1. For quotations from early Latin poetry in Cicero'sspeeches of 56–54 B.C. see Shackleton Bailey D. R., Selected Classical Papers(Michigan, 1997), pp. 179–80(in an article reprinted from ICS 8 [ 1983], 239–49, where the paragraph appears on pp. 242–3).

8 For the continuing influence (down to the Augustan period) of old Latin tragedy, see Jasper, Griffin, Latin Poets and Roman Life(London, 1985), pp.,208–9.Google Scholar

9 Wiseman (n. 2 above), p. 29 sees in ‘alveus...ille’(which he translates ‘the famous tub’) an allusion to an adultery mime in which the lover concealed himself in such a receptacle. I am not sure about thisthe lover is not immediately relevant to the context. In any case the Trojan Horse suggests tragedy.Google Scholar

10 Cf. Ennius, var. 3 Vahlen2 = Scipio7 Warmington ‘Scipio invicte’.

11 Both ‘tot’ and ‘invictos’ are picked up with equal emphasis in the next sentence, ‘tot viri ac tales [sc. invicti]’.

12 With feroin the sense of supporting, bearing the weight of (cf. OLD12). Professor Nisbet remarks that the alliteration ‘tulerit ac texerit’ suits a reminiscence of Tragedy. See n. 17 below.Google Scholar

13 Cf. Pacuvius 277 Warmington ‘compagem alvei’ (of a boat built by Ulysses), Aeneid6.412–13 ‘accipit alveo / ingentem Aenean’ (the hero boarding Charon's raft).Google Scholar

14 For the converse presentation of a ship as a horse, cf. Plautus Rudens 2689 ‘nempe equo ligneo per vias caerulas / estis vectae’. Often the Horse is spoken of as being pregnant with armed men (e.g. Ennius, Andromacha72 Jocelyn = Tragedies 80– 1 Warmington ‘gravidus annatis equus’, Aen.2.238 ‘feta armis’, Lucr. 1.476–7), and in that connexion ‘alvus’ may be used (e.g. Aen.2.401 ‘nota conduntur in alvo’).Alveus and alvus share some meanings and may on occasion have been regarded as interchangeable (in Aen.6.516 ‘armatum peditem gravis attulit alvo’, the variant ‘alveo’ is quite well supported). For traditions about the Trojan Horse, see Austin R. G. on Aen. 2.15 and in JRS49 (1959), 16–25.Google Scholar

15 Cf. Aen.2.150 ‘immanis equi’.

16 Assuming scansion of ‘alveo’as a spondee with synizesis (cf. Aen.6.412, 7.33, and 303). Otherwise perhaps ‘alvo’ (see n. 14 above).

17 I have chosen the present subjunctives on a hypothesis that these words may discuss the feasibility of building a horse large enough to contain so many armed warriors.

18 For the accompanying festivities, see Nisbet'sedition of Cicero, In Pisonem(Oxford, 1961), Appendix VIII.

19 This play was by Accius(234–47 Warraington).

20 This form may have occurred in the play (see Clausen W., CQNS 13 [ 1963 ], 85), and perhaps referred to captured Trojan spoils (cf. Aen.2.765 ‘crateresque auro solidi’, Jocelyn [n. 22 below], 140 n. 29).

21 Perhaps, more fully, ‘sero sapiunt Phryges’ (see Shackleton Bailey, ad loc). Cicero goes on to quote ‘usquequaque sapere oportet; id erit telum acerrimum’. The source is unknown (Warmington, Remains of Old LatinII, p. 623); if from the same play, perhaps from a debate on the relative worth of intelligence (sapere)and military prowess (telum acerrimum),such as I postulate (below) between Ulysses (who might be the speaker) and Neoptolemus?

22 Probably reflected in Plautus, Bacchides925fT. (cf. locelyn H.D., HSCP73 [1969], 135). We have only one quotation expressly ascribed to Naevius, Equos Troianus(16 Warmington, Remains of Old LatinI, pp. 116–17see his note adlocand on pp. 11 and 623 for further possible fragments from this or other plays of the same name).

23 A point made to me by Professor Nisbet Horace, it is true, speaks of Naevius as ‘paene recens’ (Epist.2.1.53), but he may have in mind the epic Bellum Poenicum,which could have remained on the school curriculum, like Livius Andronicus' Odyssey.

24 Note the coupling of an Equus Troianuswith a play definitely by Acciusin C i c, Ad Fam.7.1.2 (above, n. 19).

25 A corresponding Greek phrase,in the anonymous Anth. Pal.7.352.6 means ‘ a war fought against women’.

26 As Philip, Hardieon Aeneid9.617 puts it, ‘ the charge of being a “woman” is an age-old rebuke to male pride’ (comparing particularly Iliad 8.163, Hector to Diomedes, ).Google Scholar

27 A Commentary on Quintus Smyrnaeus,Posthomerica XII (Leiden,1981), p. 25.

28 Of course there is no likelihood that Quintus read old Latin tragedy. But he could well have been familiar with whatever Greek play(s) lay behind the Equus Troimus.Philostratus (Heroicus4.3) shows that elsewhere in the tradition Sthenelus objected to the morality of the Horse as (P 35.16, ed. De Lannoy L.[Leipzig, 1977]). One is reminded (with Malcolm Campbell in his edition of Q.S. 12, p. 25) of Idas' outburst (Ap. Rh. 3.558ff.) against the proposal to enlist Medea's help in order to win the Golden Fleeceit is the association with females (Aphrodite as well as Medea) which particularly riles him,(558).

29 See Austin on Aen.2.264; cf. Aen.2.44 ‘sic notus Ulixes?’ (although Laocoon has no way of knowing that Ulysses masterminded the whole idea).

30 See Shackleton, Bailey on Cicero, AdFam.7.16 = 32 S.-B.1 and n. 21 above.Google Scholar

31 I am grateful to Professor Nisbet for comments on a first draft of this article.