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VALERIUS MAXIMUS ON HIS OWN ACTIVITY (4.1.12)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2020

D. Wardle
D. Wardle*
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
*
[email protected]
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Extract

As he draws toward the conclusion of a lengthy string of Roman exempla on the topic of moderatio, a virtue highly regarded by the reigning Emperor Tiberius, Valerius introduces a brief discussion on the challenges he faces in producing the kind of account he wants to create. Unfortunately, for a rare passage in which Valerius speaks about his own work, the text is uncertain: various problems have been identified and different solutions have been proposed, but not, I will argue, ones that satisfactorily recognize the prominence of Valerius’ authorial role here or understand his meaning or pay appropriate attention to the immediate context in which he makes his remarks. I propose a new emendation which helps clarify that the primary challenge concerns the scale and the style of coverage of individual exempla required by the Facta et dicta memorabilia. I will show that Valerius deliberately alludes to his own programmatic remarks in the work's preface, which then illuminate his purpose and practice, both broadly in relation to his mission to record and praise outstanding individuals and more narrowly in providing a transition to a specific exemplum.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 756 - 761
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

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Footnotes

I wish to thank Jeffrey Murray and the anonymous readers for their comments; all remaining errors are to my account.

References

1 See Westphal, H., ‘Imperium suum paulatim destruxit: the concept of moderatio in Valerius Maximus’ Facta et dicta memorabilia 4.1’, AClass 58 (2015), 191–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 191–3.

2 Translation from Wardle, D., Valerius Maximus: Memorable Deeds and Sayings (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar with the adoption of Shackleton Bailey's ‘felicitous pen’ for the original ‘finer style’.

3 Examples of the excerpting that Valerius undertakes are well documented: see e.g. G. Maslakov, Tradition and Abridgement: A Study of the Exempla Tradition in Valerius Maximus and the Elder Pliny (Diss., Macquarie University, 1979). Different degrees of abbreviation are evident: reworking a Ciceronian exemplum, where the latter has already shaped it for his oratorical or philosophical purpose, often needs far less cutting than taking a narrative from Livy.

4 Cf. Valerius’ use of facundia and facundus for Plato (5.10.ext.2, 8.7.ext.3), Pindar (9.12.ext.7) and Livy (1.8.ext.19), of written works, and for Hortensius (8.3.3) and Caesar (8.9.3), of oratory. The anonymous reader urges the idea that Valerius may be somewhat ironic in claiming that he cannot match his sources, and suggests that 4.1.12 is a case in point, with its many rhetorical flourishes.

5 Cf. 6.2.prf., 7.2.prf., 7.3.prf., 9.3.prf., 9.11.prf., 9.11.12.

6 J. Briscoe, Valeri Maximi facta et dicta memorabilia (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1998). For a justification of this label, see D. Wardle, BMCR 1999.09.25 (http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1999/1999-09-25.html). In what previously was the standard edition, Kempf, C., Valerii Maximi Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri novem (Leipzig, 1858)Google Scholar presents the same three sections as beyond restoration. In the Budé edition—R. Combès, Valère Maxime: Faits et dits mémorables (Paris, 1997), which is of limited value in establishing Valerius’ text (see e.g. J. Briscoe, ‘The Budé Valerius Maximus’, CR 49 [1999], 76–9)—Combès admits no uncertainties and his apparatus criticus contains none of the scholarly debate around this passage.

7 For a useful introduction to the transmission of Valerius’ text, see Marshall, P.K. in Reynolds, L.D. (ed.), Texts and Transmission. A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 1983), 428–30Google Scholar and Briscoe, J., Valerius Maximus Facta et Dicta Memorabilia Book 8 (Berlin, 2019), 15–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 H. Westphal, ‘Valerius Maximus on moderatio. A commentary on Facta et Dicta Memorabilia 4.1’ (Diss., University of Western Australia, 2018), 148.

9 Bailey, D.R. Shackleton, Valerius Maximus. Memorable Deeds and Sayings (Cambridge, MA, 2000)Google Scholar: sentio quos ciues quaeue facta eorum ac dicta quam angusto ambitu orationis amplectar. Although Valerius uses angustus only four times (8.5.6, 8.14.ext.2, 9.1.4, 9.8.ext.1), the sense is easily understood.

10 arto would be a palaeographically easier supplement, but Valerius predominantly uses this adjective in the sense of ‘close’ (see E. Otón Sobrino, Léxico de Valerio Máximo [Madrid, 1977)], 198); only at 4.4.10 does it have the sense of ‘limited’ or ‘restricted’. stricto would also give the required sense, but Valerius’ use of strictim at the end of the exemplum makes it very unlikely.

11 Westphal (n. 8), 149.

12 ambitus occurs only here in Valerius with this meaning (see Otón Sobrino [n. 10], 142); cf. OLD s.v. ambitus 5: ‘an expression, phrase’ and TLL 1.1860.46–79. That Valerius describes his writing as oratio is unproblematic: he uses the word in two other authorial passages (cf. 5.10.3, 9.13.prf.).

13 I had considered whether a copulative (et, ac or que) or an alternative (ue) is needed with the third interrogative element, as Shackleton Bailey suggests in his English translation, i.e. to read quoue or quoque, the final syllable of which it is easy to believe was lost through the following am of ambitu. However, Valerius subjects virtually all his exemplars to brevity, whether his material focusses on their words or deeds, and so the third element is hierarchically more important than the other two, and a copulative would reduce it to something of equal importance. So in English I would translate the sentence as follows: ‘I realize what citizens and what deeds and sayings of theirs I am including in how narrow a compass of my words’; cf. the translations of S. Speed, Romae Antiquae Descriptio: A View of the Religion, Laws, Customs, Manners, and Dispositions of the Ancient Romans and Others, Comprehended in their Most Illustrious Acts and Sayings Agreeable to History, Written in Latine by that Famous Historian Quintus Valerius Maximus, and now Carefully Rendred into English, together with the Life of the Author (London, 1678), 158 and Walker, H.J., Valerius Maximus: Memorable Deeds and Sayings (Indianapolis, 2004), 124Google Scholar.

14 Gertz, M.C., ‘Symbolae criticae ad Valerium Maximum’, Tidsskrift for Philologi og Paedagogik 10 (1872–3), 260–99, at 275Google Scholar.

15 Shackleton Bailey (n. 9) and Combès (n. 6) print the reading of manuscript A without obeli: sed cum magna mihi atque permulta breuiter dicenda sint.

16 Heller, H.J., ‘Emendationes Valerianae’, Philologus 27 (1868), 343–8, at 347Google Scholar.

17 Gertz (n. 14), 275.

18 88 out of 99 occurrences, by my count.

19 I follow Shackleton Bailey in accepting Madvig's narranti for the manuscripts’ narrandi.

20 For Valerius’ chapters on vice as an example of apotreptic, contrasting with the more prominent protreptic, see S.R. Matravers, Commentary on Valerius Maximus’ Book IX.1–10. A discourse on uitia: an apotreptic approach (Diss., University of Birmingham, 2016), especially 16–18.

21 This is the most plausible interpretation of uerecundia in this context (see Kaster, R.A., Emotion, Restraint and Community in Ancient Rome [Oxford, 2005], 15, 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar), which echoes the lowliness of Valerius that he highlights in the work's preface (mea paruitas).

22 Over 1,050 by my count. The opening itaque, which Shackleton Bailey rightly translates as ‘therefore’, signals the consequence of Valerius’ authorial decision.

23 For a handy summary of the possible timeframe and explanations for the renowned disagreement, with attestation in classical sources, see Beness, L. and Hillard, T.W., ‘Another voice against the “tyranny” of Scipio Aemilianus in 129 b.c.?’, Historia 61 (2012), 270–81, at 272–3Google Scholar.