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Tacitus and the Visurgis. A Gloss in the First Book of the Annals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

C. O. Brink
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Extract

In a paper on Justus Lipsius and the text of Tacitus's Annals, published in the last issue of this Journal, the present writer did not touch upon the difficult question of interpolations. It has been asserted that ‘there are not many glosses in Tacitus’. This can hardly hold for the Histories and Annals XI–XVI, that is, for the works contained in the Second Mediceus. In fact, the two codices unici differ in this as in other respects. As for the Med. no. II, that is, for Histories and Annals XI–XVI, I still feel convinced by W. Heraeus's and C. D. Fisher's arguments. Arguments are indeed hardly needed in a case like Hist. II, 98, where a snatch of verse has been thrust into the text, cutting one Tacitean word in two. There are not a few cases where interpolation of glosses can be proved, and the whole subject might usefully be gone over again in its own context.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1-2 , November 1952 , pp. 39 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © C. O. Brink 1952. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Syme, R., JRS XXXVIII (1948), 125.Google Scholar

2 Heraeus, W., Hermes XXI (1886), 424Google Scholar; Fisher, Tac. Hist., Oxford text, p.v.

3 Tacitus's words etesiarum flatu (Hist. II, 98, 10) reminded a reader, or corrector, of a line ending etesia flabra aquilonis: editors refer to Lucretius v, 742 and VI, 730. Trying to explain etesiae, he added the marginal or interlinear gloss flabra aquilonis, which was incorporated in the text before, or when, word-division was introduced. For it appears in M in the middle of the word etesiarum, thus: ‘et esi flabra aquilonis arum.’

4 I, 60, 4, ‘et ne bellum mole una ingrueret Caecinam cum quadraginta cohortibus Romanis distrahendo hosti per Bructeros ad flumen Amisiam mittit, equitem Pedo praefectus finibus Frisiorum ducit.’

5 See Byvanck, , Nederland in den Romeinschen Tijd (Leiden, 1945), II, 447 ff.Google Scholar; Giffen, van, Inheemse en Romeinse Terpen (Groningen, 1950), 34, 39 (nn. 35, 36), 56, 58Google Scholar; van der Heide, Gedenkboek A. E. Van Giffen (1947), 351 ff.

6 II, 8, 2 (Germanicus) ‘fossam, cui Drusianae nomen, ingressus … lacus inde et Oceanum usque ad Amisiam flumen … pervehitur.’ The position of the Fosse is not now definitely known. It is likely that it is either the Vecht or the Iissel which was canalized and connected with the Rhine by Drusus; see P-W IA 737, and above n. 5.

7 I, 60, 7, ‘ipse inpositas navibus quattuor legiones per lacus vexit; simulque pedes eques classis apud praedictum amnem convenere.’ Praedictus refers back to ad flumen Amisiam, cited n. 4.

8 ibid., 14.

9 chaps. 61 and 62.

10 63, 1, ‘cedentem in avia Arminium secutus.

11 63, 10, ‘manibus aequis abcessum.’

12 63, 11–15, ‘mox reducto ad Amisiam exercitu legiones classe ut advexerat reportat; pars equitum litore Oceani petere Rhenum iussa; Caecina qui suum militem ducebat, monitus, quamquam notis itineribus, regrederetur, pontes longos quam maturrime superare.’

13 63, 15–69.

14 70, 1, ‘at Germanicus legionum quas navibus vexerat secundam et quartam decimam itinere terrestri P. Vitellio ducendas tradit, quo levior classis vadoso mari innaret,’ etc.

15 70, 20.

16 One need hardly add that if a storm is excluded another expedition is excluded also: chap. 70 does not yield either interpretation. This note is appended in view of the opinion reported, and apparently approved, by Andresen, in Nipperdey's commentary, ad loc.

17 Thus Lipsius's Curae of 1588. Who is the ‘vir magnus et e magnis?’ Visurgin secl. Mercerus— according to our critical notes. But a glance at J. Mercier's Notae of 1599 (as printed in some of Lipsius's later editions) shows that he attributes the exclusion of Visurgin to Lipsius, not to himself; J. Ruysschaert, Juste Lipse et les Annales de Tacite (1949), 174, n. 1, has rightly made this point. So the critical note on Visurgin should rather be: Visurgin secl. Anon, apud Lipsium.

18 70, 22, ‘nec fides salutis, antequam Caesarem exercitumque reducem videre.’

19 See Furneaux's n., and J. Jackson, Loeb trans., p. 364, n. 2.

20 If, as is likely, this source was Pliny's voluminous Bella Germanica (cited at chap. 69 for a picturesque detail) the guess may be made that the river which Tacitus does not name was in his source perhaps named as the Flevus or Flevo, that is, the outlet into the sea of the lacus Flevo. This outlet was considered a mouth of the Rhine by Pliny, (NH IV, 101Google Scholar), and by Mela (III, 24). Tacitus seems not to share this assumption at II, 6; but he is opposed to precise terminology and not too much should, therefore, be made of this fact.

21 This, perhaps, suggested to Mommsen the erroneous opinion that Germanicus went to the Ems ‘from the mouth of the Rhine’ —see The Provinces of the Roman Empire, I, 51. This is refuted by 60, 8, ‘legiones per lacus vexit.’ See also n. 23.

22 60, 4–9; 63, 11–15; 70, 1–4, and 20–3.

23 For the references, see n. 20. Mercerus thought that Tacitus was referring to the Rhine. But that can be correct only in the general sense that the lacus Flevo was connected with the Rhine. See above, note 5—van der Heide.

24 Thus Lipsius in his last (posthumous) edition of 1607. This is the Οὐίδρɔς mentioned by Ptolemy II, 11, 1, and supposed to be the river Vecht which now falls into the Zuider Zee. The identification is, however, doubtful, as was remarked by Ruperti and others.

25 Thus Alting. This is supposed to be the small river Hunse near Groningen. The name does not occur in Latin; the word Unsingis was made up by Alting.

26 The question is worth discussing only along with the other glosses in Tacitus. Dr. E. A. Lowe has stressed the importance of mediæval Germany for the transmission of Tacitus's works: ‘The unique Manuscript of Tacitus's Histories,‘ Casinensia (Montecassino, 1929) i, 257 ffGoogle Scholar. The Med. no. 1 was written in the ninth century, at Corvey, a West-phalian monastery on the Weser, the very name of which I have suggested in the text, interpolated in the first book of the Annals. It may be noted that the name of the Weser occurs in a quotation from the Annals in the Annales Fuldenses written not far from Corvey, in the monastery of Fulda, in the ninth century: ‘super amnem quem Cornelius Tacitus, scriptor rerum a Romanis in ea gente gestarum, Visurgim, moderni vero Wisaraha vocant’ (Pertz, , Monum. Germaniae historica, vol. I, p. 368Google Scholar). Local patriotism may possibly account for an interest in this portion of Tacitus's works, and for an interpolation. On the other hand, the gloss may well be older.

27 Even G. H. Walther who, as has been remarked, stood by the codex readings through thick and thin, did not prove his loyalty here. He printed Alting's conjecture Unsingim.