Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T16:13:38.475Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Speech of Curtius Montanus: Tacitus, Histories IV, 42*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

R. H. Martin
R. H. Martin
Affiliation:
University of Leeds.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

When a Roman historian came to compose the orations that convention permitted him to include within his pages, all the arts of rhetoric were at his disposal. But in one signal sphere the historians renounced the procedure that Cicero had enjoined in theory and displayed in practice, the employment of the rhythmical clausula. Or rather, in reaction against the Ciceronian cadences they favoured other rhythms, not least the spondaic. The tendency is as true of Livy as it is of the patently anti-Ciceronian Sallust. Tacitus too, though in less marked degree, follows the historians' practice—a liking for the dispondaic ending and no disinclination for the heroic clausula (), but also a considerable fondness for the ditrochee. According to Zielinski the following patterns (C2 (+ C22esse uideatur) + C3 + T24 + M3 ( + M23)) account for almost 75 % of all Cicero's final clausulae (actually 73·8%): the figures for the historians are Sallust 28·3%, Livy 25·9%, Tacitus 44·8 %. The intermediary position that Tacitus adopts is not without its advantages. When Petillius Cerialis addresses the Treviri and Lingones as a bluff soldier, unaccustomed to public speaking, he can emphasize his pretence of artlessness by the heavy spondaic endings of his first two sentences —and similarly at the end of the chapter.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 1-2 , November 1967 , pp. 109 - 114
Copyright
Copyright ©R. H. Martin 1967. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 But, it seems, with a much greater tolerance for the triple trochaic ending, which in Cicero is a very rare phenomenon.

2 Zielinski, T., Das Clauselgesetz in Ciceros Reden: Philologus, Supplementband 9 (1904), 589–844Google Scholar.

3 Capital C, T, M, D represent Cretic, Trochee, Molossus, Dactyl respectively; suprascript 1 or 2 indicate that the first or second long syllable of the foot is resolved into two shorts—thus C = - ⌣ - C2 = - ⌣ ⌣ ⌣; the final figure 2 or 3 indicates that the named foot (C, T, etc.) is followed by a trochaic cadence of two or three syllables ().

4 Of types classified by Zielinski as V(erae) and L(icitae).

5 Figures extracted from those given by Ullmann, R., Les Clausules dans les discours de Salluste, Tite Live et Tacite (Symbolae Osloenses III (1925), 65–75)Google Scholar.

6 Hist. IV, 73, ‘neque ego umquam facundiam exercui et populi Romani uirtutem armis ādfīrmāuī: sed … statui pauca disserere quae … utilius sit uobis audisse quam nobīs dīxīssē’. The chapter ends with the clausulae prǣtēxūntūr and ūsūrpārēt.

7 Tiberius, it may be surmised (cf. Ann. IV, 39–40), would have thought long and replied in writing.

8 Tacitus, Dialogus 23, ‘nolo irridere … illud tertio quoque sensu … positum “esse uideatur”’.

9 An attempt to examine the extent to which Tacitus varies his style according to differences of speaker and occasion might repay study; even the obvious question, whether his treatment in Annals varies from that in Histories seems not to have been fully explored—it would in fact reveal that clausulae from speeches in oratio recta are perceptibly less Ciceronian in Annals, though still not in the degree practised by Sallust and Livy. Some details about the length of speeches and the relative frequency of oratio recta and oratio obliqua are considered by MissMiller, N. P. in A. J. Ph. 85 (1964), 279–96Google Scholar.

10 In Hist. III, 20 Antonius Primus after extended oratio obliqua (the same technique in III, 2) bursts into oratio recta. There are only three sentences, and the fact that two of them end with favoured Ciceronian clausulae (ullae mănūs pōssūnt and munimēntă mīrāntes) is statistically not significant.

11 Oxford Text, Giarratano, and Teubner are in effective agreement over punctuation throughout the passage. I print the Oxford Text, but with Messalla (for Messala).

12 I have ignored questions of ‘typology’ (i.e. of word-division within the clausulae; cf. H. D. Broadhead, Latin Prose Rhythm). Even if redemisti and fatigaret (and dies primus) are classified as I2 (i.e. iambic ₊ ₋ ), they still remain preferred Ciceronian clausulae; cf. Broadhead pp. 68 f. Similarly the analysis of the two examples which I have hesitantly classified as S21 and S123 is immaterial. No analysis can bring them into Zielinski's V and L classes.

13 In view of what is said above (note 1) it is worth observing that all five examples of T2 are ‘Ciceronian’; none of them gives a triple trochaic ending.

14 Orator 210 f., esp. 224, ‘breuitas faciet ipsa liberiores pedes’.

15 e.g. ‘salutem redimere’, Verr. II, 69; ‘accusare … quam … emori maluit’, Clu. 42 (∼ ‘perdere alios quam periclitari ipsi maluerunt’); ‘cruentata caede … sanguine imbuta est’, Mil. 18: ruina and prosternere are both, in the metaphorical sense, favourite words of Cicero, though they are not so used by him together.

16 For the problem of balance and increasing (sometimes decreasing) length in dikola and trikola in Latin see E. Lindholm, Stilistische Studien zur Erweiterung der Satzglieder im Lateinischen.

17 See R. G. M. Nisbet ad loc. in his edition (Oxford 1961) of Cicero's in Pisonem. The context of the whole paragraph in Cicero is relevant here; cf. especially Nisbet's note on line 10 (iuuentus). I do not press the fact that Cicero's languet corresponds closely in sense and context to Tacitus' elanguimus.

18 ‘septuagiens sestertio saginatus’ may well be a further instance; cf. pro Sest. 78, ‘rei publicae sanguine saginantur’. Saginari as a pejorative metaphor is very rare outside these two passages. Doubt arises only because in Tacitus saginatus is a Renaissance correction of M's signatus. If there should be any question of the correctness of the alteration, the ‘Ciceronian’ parallelism of the passage might be adduced.

19 Not, of course, truly Ciceronian: Tacitus is not aiming at pastiche. Rather, he seeks to infuse a tincture sufficient to give the whole a colour perceptible to the discerning eye (and ear). It scarcely needs demonstrating that there is much in the speech that Cicero could not have written—the final sententia alone (‘optimus est post malum principem dies primus’) might suffice. But a few other examples may be noted. hiatu = auiditate is unique in classical Latin (one must go to Ammianus and Christian writers for the nearest parallels); fulgeo (metaphorical) ₊ ablative appears in Horace and Livy, and then in Silver Latin (cf. TLL vi. I, 1511, 28 f.); of the three adjectives in the trikolon ‘innoxios pueros, inlustris senes, conspicuas feminas’, inlustris alone is Ciceronian (unless one accepts with the MS. the archaic innoxium at Leg. 3, 6); ‘seque et delatores’: for -que et see Kühner-Stegmann II 37c ‘que … et kommt bei vielen Schriftstellern, namentlich Cicero, Cäsar, Nepos, gar nicht vor … So auch in der Weise, dass -que an ein Personalpronomen gehängt wird … regelmässig so bei Sall. Tac. Cf. Leumann-Hofmann-Szantyr, Lat. Grammatik § 2836 (p. 515); subuertere is not in Cicero or Caesar; note the oxymoron of florere (and uigere) with nequitia: Cicero has both verbs, but of res bonae only; for uigere ₊ malae res cf. Sall., Cat. 3, 3 ‘audacia, largitio, auaritia uigebant’: TLL seems to offer no parallel for florere with nequitia (uel sim.); intestabilis is not in Cicero, and for the phrase ‘intestabilior et saeuior’ cf. Ann. VI, 51, ‘intestabilis saeuitia’ (from Tiberius' necrology); durare is not in Cicero in any sense: as intrans. = ‘continue to exist’ it is mostly poetical and post-Augustan prose.

20 Elsewhere Livy may be laid under contribution, as in the speech of Vocula, Dillius (Hist. IV, 58Google Scholar; cf. Syme, Tacitus pp. 201, 610, and Appendix 34); and, of course, Sallust (e.g. Mucianus' speech in Hist. II, 76–7; cf. Syme, p. 196). But an extended Ciceronian vein has no parallel in Tacitus.

21 For the structure of the phrase cf. Hist. I, 43 in. ‘insignem ilia die uirum …’ and Heubner's note ad loc.

22 Cf. Syme, Tacitus p. 108.

23 Have the events recorded in XIV, 48–9 any relevance here ? The praetor Antistius Sosianus was accused by Cossutianus Capito (son-in-law of Tigellinus) because he, like Montanus, ‘probrosa aduersus principem carmina factitauit uulgauitque’; it was Thrasea who secured his acquittal.

24 Groag, in PIR2 II, 1615–16Google Scholar reasonably questions whether the young man who was warned off politics in A.D. 66 can be a leading speaker in the senate some four years later (Hist. IV, 42). If the doubt is justified, the speaker of Hist. IV, 42 is the father for whom the poet son is spared. The connection of a member of the family with Thrasea and Soranus and the context of Ann. XVI remains—and remains unexplained.

25 See Pliny, ep. 1, 5, 1–3; 14, 1, and for Pliny's friendship with Helvidius Priscus fils cf. 4, 21, 3; 3, 11, 3; 7, 30 4–5; 9, 13 (throughout).

26 ‘Ait timere se ne animo meo penitus haereret quod in centumuirali iudicio aliquando dixisset, cum responderet mihi et Satrio Rufo, “Satrius Rufus, cui non est cum Cicerone aemulatio, et qui contentus est eloquentia saeculi nostri”. respondi nunc me intellegere maligne dictum, quia ipse confiteretur; ceterum potuisse honorificum existimari. “est enim” inquam “mihi cum Cicerone aemulatio, nec sum contentus eloquentia saeculi nostri”.’

27 In the upshot ‘nothing happened’ (Syme, Tacitus 77).

28 Syme, ibid. 209, n. 4.

29 So Gerber-Greef, Lexicon Taciteum 869a, ‘exempla (Strafexempel) … mores i.q. egregii mores Vespasiani’; and, in essence, most recently in his Penguin translation of Histories, K. Wellesley, ‘But exemplary punishment has a more lasting effect than moral influence’.

30 I cannot profess to find it satisfying; the sentence introduced by sed should contain, not a call to action, but a statement to explain why, in spite of the present feeling of security under Vespasian, there was still cause for apprehension; this in turn—if the argument had followed a logical course—could have led naturally to the exhortation to act.

31 A purely general statement such as ‘precedent endures longer than character’ may more nearly convey the sense of the Latin.

32 It may be, as Professor Badian suggests to me, that I exaggerate the abruptness of the break here. It is certainly possible for a sentence such as that beginning elanguimus … (‘We have fallen away …’) to precede and strengthen an appeal for immediate and vigorous action. Perhaps we even expect such an appeal to follow here: if so, we are disappointed. No exhortation follows: instead, the conclusion underlines that the most opportune time for action is a time that is already past. The penultimate sentence (elanguimus … ), which might indeed have led to a final appeal for action, is now seen, from its conjunction with optimus est … dies primus, to carry instead a note of regret for the opportunity that has been missed. Such was not the actual end of the speech that so fired the senate in A.D. 70 (see next note): if Tacitus chose instead to end on a ‘dying fall,’ he had good reason for doing so.

33 And the beginning of the next chapter (tanto cum adsensu senatus auditus est Montanus ut spem caperet Helvidius posse etiam Marcellum prosterni) makes it clear that what moves the senate is Montanus' call to exact vengeance, not his final note of resignation.

34 This is the spirit that animates Maternus' speech in the closing chapters of the Dialogus (cc. 40–41).