Between March and July of 45 b.c.e., Cicero wrote — and twice rewrote — a dialogue whose extant fragments are known collectively in scholarship (though not attested in Cicero) as the Academica. From any perspective, this is a demanding set of texts: they stage a technical dispute on sense-perception, adopting into Latin specialised terminology that draws on definitions, themes and arguments developed over 200 years of exchange between Academics and Stoics, as well as among Academics themselves. References to the work over numerous letters and later treatises leave little doubt that Cicero is here staking out his own philosophical position. These letters also situate the Academica in its political and social context, offering a unique window onto the philosopher at work, as he unsuccessfully seeks to suppress the first version (of which the second book survives, the Lucullus) and continues to re-read and edit the final version, the four Academici Libri, well after release to its dedicatee, Varro.
With the publication of a critical edition in the Oxford Classical Texts (OCT) series and an introduction, commentary and translation (ICT) of the Academica, Tobias Reinhardt delivers a systematic and erudite contribution to scholarship on a treatise in need of a guiding light in the absence of either a complete commentary since James Reid (1885) or a critical edition since Otto Plasberg (1908).
The ICT sets out its central preoccupations in a series of introductory essays that lend a monograph-like (certainly monograph-length) orientation and weight to the work. Front and centre is the epistemological dimension of Cicero's project. R. mobilises an impressive range of logical, conceptual, semantic and lexical perspectives to reconstruct and evaluate arguments underpinning the scepticism of Academics whose views are condensed in or have left a trace on the Academica. R. places the evolution of Hellenistic scepticism within the framework of the debate on the cataleptic impression, the keystone Stoic construct safeguarding the veridicality of perceptual and non-perceptual experience (§§4, 5), and reconsiders the evidence for Carneades’ sceptical alternative, the persuasive impression (πιθανόν). He then discusses how the πιθανόν shaped, and was shaped by, the development of sceptical thought up to and including Cicero (§§6, 8), with a keen eye on the historiographical and institutional narratives used to legitimise these positions (§7).
The breadth of the introduction, together with the depth of the ICT's end matter (notably two appendices presenting judiciously edited and commented texts from Aulus Gellius to Numenius, 805–36) and several excurses, contributes to making the volume a remarkable instrument for further study, an interpretive effort that is exhaustive and encloses the universe of resources needed to understand Cicero's philosophical project.
But R.'s objective is not simply to illuminate and explore. Far from a sprawling compilation of readings, the ICT follows well-defined argumentative tracks to make sense of the whole and find solutions to textual and theoretical puzzles, interlacing readings across introduction, commentary and appendices. Nowhere is this more evident than in his re-interpretation of Carneades’ persuasive impression and its evolution into Cicero's probabile. In the introduction, R. argues that this construct involves a hierarchy of πιθανά (lxxxii–lxxxiii) whose degree of persuasiveness (or ‘plausibility’) is determined by logical and phenomenal considerations (lxxx, cv, cvi). His model foregrounds the πιθανόν's congruence with other accepted impressions (lxxxv–lxxxix, xci, xciii–xciv, ciii–cvi), awareness of its provisional status (testing and future impressions may overturn acceptance: xcii–xciv, cv–cvi), and recognition that the πιθανόν tells us something about the ‘state of affairs in the world’ (cvi). R. has no doubt that Cicero follows Clitomachus in what has been construed as a radical interpretation of Carneades, the centrepiece of which is the probabile as a form of approval that amounts to a detached and circumspect endorsement, not quite a ‘belief acquired or expressed’ (cviii). The rest of the ICT then responds to this introductory brief, as the relevant lemmas confirm, expand or draw out the implications of R.'s claims. For example, traces of the hierarchy are found in Luc. 35–36 (426–8) and given a significant place in the reconstruction of the lost book of the first edition, the Catulus (407–9, 441, 638, 667); the extended lemma on Luc. 104–105a underpins R.'s edifice of the probabile and makes sense of a difficult passage that, for R., gives a positive account of Clitomachean approval (654–61) — critically, a reading that rests on a textual emendation (the addition of a negative particle, Luc. 104; OCT 129. 4).
Some readers might find consultation overly laborious, given the dependence on Reid's commentary for syntactical explanation (a debt duly acknowledged: xxii) and the fact that explication is rarely ad locum but is given in the introduction or prefatory comment. Others may find the focus on epistemology through an analytic lens rather narrow, with some fundamental hermeneutic concepts unreflectively or partisanly defined in the analytic tradition (e.g. belief on 660). Others still may wonder whether on occasion R. misjudges the balance between explanation and interpretation, excluding from his enquiry alternative yet well-established interpretive approaches. In his ‘one sense’ of the probabile (ci–cii), for example, R. allusively dismisses the French tradition drawing attention to the oratorical, aesthetic and subjective dimensions of the probabile that affirmed its importance as a bridge between rhetoric and philosophy in Ciceronian thought.
Although these observations in no way detract from the accomplishment of this study, the project does falter when it comes to the OCT. The slim volume is attractively presented and usefully brings together an overview of the manuscript tradition. However, the apparatus and appendix critica (AC) fall short of the ICT's level of precision and include some puzzling observations. For the Lucullus at least, the OCT seems to follow Reid's text (which, as R. acknowledges, ‘in many cases prints the vulgate’: OCT xxxvi) in two ways that present issues: (i) loci where the OCT follows Reid in adopting neutral variants found in the recentiores without a note in the apparatus. For example, the word order of potius illum (Luc. 3; 72. 28) or enim est (Luc. 31; 89. 10) reverses the order found in the principal ninth-century manuscripts of the Lucullus (designated as B AV) that were painstakingly recorded in Plasberg; (ii) loci where the OCT follows Reid in printing conjectures of earlier editors without reference in the apparatus, such as Lambinus's quia acervum (Luc. 49; 98. 14), a correction of qui acervum (found in B AV). There are also a handful of loci where the OCT departs from B AV, but does not follow Reid, again without explanation: as far as this reviewer has been able to verify, oraclis is only found in the OCT (Luc. 47; 97. 10), as is vinculis (Luc. 61; 105. 6), substituting oraculis and vinclis respectively.
In terms of the AC, there are several inaccuracies in how it reports B AV and the activity of the later correcting hands in this trio of manuscripts. It is not clear whether R. consulted these manuscripts in person: the present review is based on inspecting images of B AV and scrutiny of Plasberg's apparatus. By way of illustration (again selecting from numerous such incidences), the AC indicates that nec on 73. 6 (Luc. 4, …arbitrabantur, nec vero ineunte…) is a reading of AaBV2 and that AV have ne. The superscript indicates later layers of correction. Consultation of A and V has shown that nec does not appear as a correction but is in fact the original reading (certainly A does not have ne in the original hand). Two paragraphs earlier, the AC notes that haerebant on 72. 8 is found in B, without pointing out that the first e is a later correction. As a final example, the AC prints vive as a reading found in A and B on 120. 10 (Luc. 88, also in the OCT's apparatus). However, A has vivū and B has vivum, readings also printed in Plasberg's apparatus ad loc.
The meaning of the text remains largely unaffected by the problems identified. Nonetheless, given the importance of textual emendations made to support substantive philosophical arguments, these technical shortcomings erode the reader's confidence in this area of the project. Furthermore, this also undermines one of the AC's objectives as set out by R.: to identify and evaluate the activity of these correctors (OCT, lxxi). While this reviewer is not persuaded that Plasberg will be supplanted by the OCT, the commentary is a milestone in the study of the Academica, one that will stand the test of time and enrich discussions on Cicero's philosophy, Academic history and Hellenistic epistemology.
