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A Note on Res Gestae Divi Augusti, 34, 3*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Extract

The Latin text of the final sentence of chapter 34 of the Res Gestae is now beyond any serious doubt. It runs ‘Post idtempus auctoritate omnibus praestiti potestatis autem nihiloamplius habui quam ceteri qui mihi quoque in magistratu conlegae fuerunt’.(The Greek version, as preserved in the Monumentum Ancyranum is quoted later.) The purpose of this note is to determine as precisely as possible what these Latin words mean and to discuss their significance.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © F. E. Adcock 1952. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

*

This paper was read to the Cambridge Philological Society on 8th March, 1951.

References

1 The letters in italics are supplied or confirmed by the Monumentum Antiochenum. The ‘f’ of fuerunt at the end is almost certain in the Mon. Ant.; in the Monumentum Ancyranum there are traces of letters after conlegae.

2 cf. for instance a rather similar remark in Cornelius Nepos, Chabrias 4, 1; ‘Erat in classe Chabrias privatus, sed omnes, qui in magistratuerant, auctoritate anteibat’. The suggestion of A. Magdelain (Auctoritas Principis. 47 f.) that ‘auctoritate’ means ‘in virtue of my auctoritas’ is refuted by Last, H.M. in JRS XL, 1950, 120Google Scholar.

3 This order of words is approved by the scholars to whom Wilcken refers in the Exkurs to his ‘Zur Genesis der Res Gestae divi Augusti’, Berl. S.B. 1932, 241.

4 ‘Über ein Gesetz der indogermanischen Wortstellung,’ Indogerm. Forschungen 1, 1892, 332 ff., esp. 412 ff. cited in Wilcken, to which I owe the reference.

5 o.c. p. 242.

6 In Museum Helveticum IV, 1947, 101115Google Scholar.

7 ‘de façon assez capricieuse, parfois nettement fautive’. J. Gage Res Gestae divi Augusti, p. 45 f.

8 See Wilcken o.c. 242.

9 e.g. by Gagé, o.c., p. 147, ‘magistratu ne peut strictement 'appliquer qu'aux consulats d'Auguste, partagés avec un collègue de 28 à 23.’

10 In ‘Die Amtsgenossen des Augustus’, Phil. Woch. 1932, col. 227 ff. (in Poland Festschrift).

11 Staatsrecht II3, 2, 1167, cited by Kornemann l.c.

12 If the formulation was, as Hohl suggests, originally devised for the purposes of Augustus' autobiographical commentary about 24 B.C. when it would refer to colleagues in the consulship, and then borrowed for the Res Gestae, it would be borrowed, and retained, if it was borrowed early,because it was continuously true, or at least continuously convenient.