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Hadrian's Farewell to Life: Some Arguments for Authenticity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Barry Baldwin
Barry Baldwin
Affiliation:
University of Calgary,
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Extract

T. D. Barnes has recently impugned the authenticity of these verses and calls for a defence of their genuineness. Although I agree with Fergus Millar that ‘the problem of the Historia Augusta is one into which sane men refrain from entering’,2 yet I think we can at least counter Barnes's objections.

Barnes musters four arguments which he naturally calls ‘quite conclusive’. He first points out that the verses are omitted in the epitome of Dio by Xiphilinus, who is our sole source for Dio here, and claims that it is unlikely that Xiphilinus could have omitted such a ‘striking poem’. This is putting an extraordinarily high value on Xiphilinus, who is quite capable of omitting things of greater moment than five Latin verses which he would presumably have had to translate into Greek; as an epitomator of Dio, he is inferior to Zonaras, and his account of Hadrian's reign is particularly poor.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , December 1970, pp. 372 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1970

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References

page 372 note 1 CQ N.S. xviii (1968), 384 ff.Google Scholar

page 372 note 2 A Study of Cassius Dio (Oxford, 1964), 124.Google Scholar

page 372 note 3 See Millar, op. cit. 2–3 and especially 60 ff.

page 372 note 4 HA, Hadrian 24–5.

page 372 note 5 Barnes says that miserulus occurs only in the two passages cited. But the word is also found in a line of Turpilius (ap. Non. 146. 18): ut illius conmiserescas miserulae orbitudinis.

page 373 note 1 HA, Gallieni 11. 6–9.Google Scholar

page 373 note 2 Those on Aelius, Didius Julianus, Severus, Pescennius Niger, Caracalla, and Geta.

page 373 note 3 HA, Macrinus 11. 3–7Google Scholar; Severus Alexander 38. 5–6Google Scholar; Gallieni 11. 6–9.Google Scholar

page 373 note 4 HA, Hadrian 16. 3–4.Google Scholar

page 373 note 5 Ibid. 16. 2.

page 373 note 6 Ibid. 15. 10.

page 373 note 7 Ibid. 16. 5.

page 373 note 8 ‘Veteris eloquentiae colorem adumbratum ostendit Hadriana oratio’ (Haines 2. 138).

page 373 note 9 On diminutives see Conrad, F., Gl. xix (1930–1), 127 ff.Google Scholar; Gl. xx (1930–1), 74 ff.Google Scholar; Duckworth, G. E., The Nature of Roman Comedy (Princeton, 1952), 334 ff.Google Scholar; C. J. Fordyce on Catullus 64. 60.

page 373 note 10 Animula, vagula, and nudula have obvious erotic connotations; see Pierrugues, P., Glossarium Eroticum Linguae Latinae (Paris, 1826)Google Scholar, s.v. nuditas, vagus.

page 373 note 11 Apart from the Hadrian passage and Serenus fr. 17, the Oxford Latin Dictionary cites only Sulpicius Rufus, Ad Fam. 4. 5. 4; Cicero, Att. 9. 7. 1; CIL 5. 4712.

page 373 note 12 See Lattimore, R., Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs (Illinois, 1962), passim.Google Scholar

page 373 note 13 HA, Hadrian 15. 10–11.Google Scholar