(1) qua re flecte te, quaeso, et maiores tuos respice atque ita guberna rem publicam ut natum esse te ciues tui gaudeant: sine quo nec beatus nec c[l]arus nec †unctus† quisquam esse omni<no> potest. (1.35)
The base text cited, here and in the following passages, is P. Fedeli's Teubner.Footnote 1 In this case he adopts Clark's carus for clarus and Muretus's omnino. To be happy (beatus) is the goal of human life, as ancient philosophers agreed, and so is emphasized as the first predicate, Cicero just having argued from the example of Caesar's assassination that intimidation is no path to happiness. The other two predicates perhaps go back to the ‘path of glory’ which Cicero has defined this way: carum esse ciuem, bene de re publica mereri, laudari, coli, diligi gloriosum est (§33). Hence Clark's carus, a quality that necessarily implies a positive valuation by one's fellow-citizens. The problem is the third predicate. One can understand why, in light of the foregoing example of Caesar, Muretus's tutus is adopted by recent editors (Shackleton Bailey, Ramsey, Magnaldi). However, for one's fellow-citizens to rejoice that one has been born is no prerequisite for one's safety (merely their willingness to abide by the laws). Surely what one needs is another of the qualities of the person who achieves true glory, viz. laudatus. The corruption is not a difficult one, l dropping out after c,Footnote 2 a read as u and u as n; d could easily be taken for ct and the now extraneous at dropped.
(2) cum inde Romam proficiscens ad Aquinum accederet, obuiam ei processit, ut est frequens municipium, magna sane multitudo. at iste operta lectica latus per oppidum est ut mortuus … quid Anagnini? qui, cum essent deuii, descenderunt ut istum, tamquam si esset consul, salutarent. incredibile dictu, sed †cum uinus† inter omnis constabat neminem esse resalutatum, praesertim cum duos secum Anagninos haberet, Mustelam et Laconem, quorum alter gladiorum est princeps, alter poculorum. (2.106)
A description of Antony's procession through Italy. None of the many previous proposalsFootnote 3 has satisfactorily restored the corrupt matter. I suspect that cum is intrusive from the preceding or following line and that uinus conceals ad unum: ‘incredible to say, but all to a man agreed that no one returned their greeting …’.Footnote 4 ad may have dropped out following sed.
(3) foedera interea facta, regna data, populi prouinciaeque liberatae, ipsarumque rerum falsae tabulae gemente populo Romano toto Capitolio figebantur. quibus rebus tanta pecunia una in domo coaceruata est ut, si hoc genus †pene in unum† redigatur, non sit pecunia rei publicae defutura. (5.12)
Magnaldi has brought us a step closer to unravelling this passage by seeing that the transmitted hoc genus pene relates to the preceding pecunia. A correction has evidently been inserted in the wrong place, pene being a corruption of pecunia. She thus reads, very plausibly, tanta <hoc genus> pecunia (‘so much money of this type’) and deletes the following hoc genus pene in unum. This deletion, however, leaves the si-clause incomplete. What is required is a public receptacle for the money. The solution perhaps lies in Orelli's in aerarium for in unum (adopted by none of the recent editors), corrupted by truncation of the beginning of the word and by misreading of arium as unum.
(4) magnus est in re publica campus, ut sapienter dicere Crassus solebat, multis apertus cursus ad laudem. (14.17)
The mention of Crassus without praenomen seems unlikely, since there were several prominent bearers of the name. Halm proposed L. Crassus in his apparatus, Clark printed M. Crassus in his text, pointing to dicerem of MS t (the eleventh-century Tegernsee codex) as a variant for the preceding dicere and presuming that it alone preserved, in this form, the missing initial, and was followed by Shackleton Bailey. Clark's solution is unlikely, however.Footnote 5 Though Cicero's relations with M. Crassus during the latter's lifetime varied with political circumstances, after Crassus’ death Cicero was in no mood to praise the man. Rather, he excoriated a thinly disguised Crassus under the sixth Stoic paradox (‘the sage alone is rich’), and he speaks openly of Crassus’ greed and venality in De officiis (1.25, 3.73). On the other hand, as Elizabeth Rawson has pointed out, Cicero calls L. Crassus sapientissimus more frequently (seven times) than any other statesman.Footnote 6 A plausible context for the statement can also be suggested, viz. the speech Crassus delivered in 106 promoting the Servilian Law, which removed the juries from control of the equites and restored them to the senators, a speech Cicero once described as his a pueritia magistra (Brut. 164). The speech was evidently quite varied in content and manner (ibid.), but the point was to show the greatness of the Senate (and hence its worthiness to be the source of jurors). The stress on the field of honours (and hence membership of the Senate) being open to many citizens would counter any claim from opponents that the Senate was a narrowly exclusive body. Crassus alone being the transmitted text, restoration must begin from that base, and in uncial script L and C are sometimes sufficiently similar to make a saltation error plausible.Footnote 7
