Was Cicero, a nouus homo from Arpinum, looking to virtuous men from the past for guidance and inspiration, at least (the lofty thought lifting its prose to an unfinished hexameter: uērum ut opīnor homō nouus Arpīnās …, Inu. Cic. 5)?Footnote 1 ‘Quite the contrary’, Cicero’s malignant critic blusters (Inu. Cic. 5):
homo leuissimus, supplex inimicis, amicis contumeliosus, modo harum, modo illarum partium, fidus nemini, leuissimus senator, mercennarius patronus, cuius nulla pars corporis a turpitudine uacat, lingua uana, manus rapacissimae, gula immensa, pedes fugaces—quae honeste nominari non possunt, inhonestissima.
[H]e is the ficklest of men, submissive to his enemies but with his friends high-handed, of one party today, of another tomorrow, faithful to none, so very fickle a senator, an advocate for hire, with no part of his body free of shame: unreliable (OLD s.v. uanus 4) his tongue, most grasping his hands, sizable his gullet, too fleet his feet, but most indecent the parts that cannot be named with any decency.
This indignant—and, it will be argued, subcutaneously witty—outburst has long been known, as R.G.M. Nisbet observed some sixty-five years ago,Footnote 2 to possess a close parallel in another piece of writing attributed to Sallust, the second epistle to Caesar (Ad Caes. sen. 2.9.2):
an L. Domiti magna uis est, quoius nullum membrum a flagitio aut facinore uacat? lingua uana, manus cruentae, pedes fugaces: quae honeste nominari nequeunt, inhonestissima.
Or does Lucius Domitius possess great strength, no limb of whom is free from infamy or crime: unreliable his tongue, bloodstained his hands, too fleet his feet but most indecent the parts that cannot be named with any decency?
Their comparison had yielded ‘no agreed result’ as to either’s priority.Footnote 3 But Nisbet then adduced a third passage from a speech by Lycurgus—lost to us but retrievable from a Latin translation by the late Augustan (most likely) Rutilius Lupus in his treatise De figuris sententiarum et elocutionis (1.18 = Rhet. Lat. Min. page 11 Halm):Footnote 4
cuius omnes corporis partes ad nequitiam sunt appositissimae: oculi ad petulantem lasciuiam, manus ad rapinam, uenter ad auiditatem, membra quae non possumus honeste appellare ad omne genus corruptelae, pedes ad fugam, prorsus ut aut ex hoc uitia aut ipse ex uitiis ortus uideatur.
This man’s every body part is most suited for wickedness: his eyes for wanton lust, his hands for stealing, his stomach for gluttony, the parts that we cannot name with any decency for every form of corruption, and the feet for flight; so that it seems as if either vices are made of this man or he himself out of them.
Given the blatant parallels, Nisbet thought it certain that both Latin texts were ultimately ‘derived from the lost speech by Lycurgus᾽, arguing further (if with less cogency and certainty) not only that both Latin writers would seem to have had access to Rutilius’ Latin rendering specifically, but also that the author of the epistula would seem to have drawn additionally on the prior adaptation of Rutilius’ passage in the invective (as had, in fact, been David Ruhnkenius’s opinion already: see n. 4).
The argument to be presented here will focus on the invective, which, I should like to propose, modifies the Rutilian original so as to pun on its own omission of a crudity contained in its second model. That model is Sallust’s own description of the Catilinarian crowd (Cat. 14.2–3):
nam quicumque inpudicus, adulter, ganeo,Footnote 5 manu, uentre, pene bona patria lacerauerat quique alienum aes grande conflauerat, quo flagitium aut facinus redimeret, praeterea omnes undique parricidae, sacrilegi, conuicti iudiciis aut pro factis iudicium timentes, ad hoc, quos manus atque lingua periurio aut sanguine ciuili alebat, postremo omnes, quos flagitium, egestas, conscius animus exagitabat, ii Catilinae proxumi familiaresque erant.
For whatever debauchee, philanderer, or glutton had squandered his family’s property in gaming, feasting, or lechery; anyone who had run up immense debt in order to buy his way out of a shameful deed or crime; further, absolutely everyone convicted of murder or sacrilege (or fearing prosecution for their deeds); moreover, those whose hand and tongue supported them by perjury or the murder of their fellow citizens; finally, all who were hounded by depravity, poverty, or a guilty conscience—all these were Catiline’s nearest and dearest friends.Footnote 6
As appears—and was briefly noted by the nineteenth-century commentator Christian Herzog but then, apparently, forgottenFootnote 7 —Sallust uses the same three body parts that occupy the middle of Lycurgus’ pentad (oculi … manus … uenter … membra quae non possumus honeste appellare … pedes), omitting, as Kevin Muse astutely observes, ‘the eyes and feet, which, notably, are not easily depicted as the direct instruments of financial waste’. But where Rutilius will resort to the decorous circumlocution, Sallust opts for the obscene mot juste, penis.Footnote 8 There can be little doubt about that word’s flavour, as Cicero, in a roughly contemporary letter to Papirius Paetus (Fam. 9.22.2), discussing res et uerba turpia, classifies the term in question in obscenis.Footnote 9 Little wonder, then, that Fronto felt the need to justify its occurrence (De eloq. 4.2, text and translation by Charles Haines [see n. 10]):
Sallustius … quique manu uentre pene bona patria lacerauerat. uides quantum similitudine uerborum formae assecutus sit, ut uerbum postremum, quamquam parum pudicum, non indecorum esse uideatur; ideo scilicet quod <duo> uerba similia praecedant. quodsi ita haec uerba contra dixisset: quique pene bona patria lacerauerat, inditaFootnote 10 obscenitas uerbis appareret.
Sallust says … ‘and one who had also wasted his patrimony manu uentre pene. You see how much the writer has effected by the likeness in the form of the words,Footnote 11 so that the last word though far from modest does not strike one as indecent: for the reason doubtless that two similar words precede it. But if on the other hand he had spoken the words thus: quique pene bona patria lacerauerat, the obscenity attached to the words would be obvious.
Sallust’s phonetically as well as semantically memorable triad (which appears to be unparalleled)Footnote 12 and its use of penis specifically help explain three noteworthy differences between the invective and the Rutilian passage: first, where Rutilius speaks of partes [quae] ad nequitiam sunt appositissimae , Cicero’s clever critic speaks of nulla pars corporis a turpitudine uacat , thus rewriting the Rutilian phrase with the help of Sallustian terminology attested nearby. While neither nequitia nor appositus (let alone the superlative) is attested in the historian’s extant work, turpitudo appears at Cat. 13.2: ‘To those men, it seems to me, riches have served as a mere plaything; for they rushed shamelessly to misuse what they could have possessed honorably’ (quibus mihi uidentur ludibrio fuisse diuitiae: quippe, quas honeste habere licebat, abuti per turpitudinem properabant). Similarly, the critic’s verbal phrasing a turpitudine uacat also resonates in the immediate Sallustian context (Cat. 14.4), where those Catilinarians are mentioned who (once) were ‘without guilt’ ( a culpa uacuus ).
Second, while Rutilius mentions—explicitly and in their ‘natural’ place between the stomach and the feet—membra quae non possumus honeste appellare ad omne genus corruptelae, the author of the invective drops membra and relocates quae honeste nominari non possunt inhonestissima to the emphatic final position of the clause, thus having it illogically but emphatically follow pedes fugaces.Footnote 13 Thirdly, within that last colon, the said author not only gives an additional Sallustian ring (cf. the polar expression honesta atque inhonesta at Cat. 30.4; Iug. 31.12, 80.5) to the almost commonplace thought of whatever or whomever cannot be named honourably without a qualification (as Seneca has it at Controu. 2.4.6),Footnote 14 but also adds the extremely rare and emphatically condemnatory superlative inhonestissimus.Footnote 15
By removing the relative clause to the end of the sentence the author of the invective also (and crucially) allows for the sound pattern of the three Sallustian nouns to be discernible: his string of disyllabic nouns manus … gula … pedes echoes Sallust’s (crisper) manu, uentre, pene.Footnote 16 Noticeably, pedes now occupies the position of Sallust’s pene, a term which rather decisively falls into the category of quae honeste nominari non possunt inhonestissima. To anyone familiar with the original Sallustian tricolon, this latter remark following pedes, where Sallust had penis, thus puns on the speaker’s actual inability to mention that most shameful part, honourably or otherwise; and so he dropped it—with a playful emulative wink at his audience.Footnote 17
The Sallustian impersonator draws attention to his polysemous performance elsewhere; this clever play is thus not out of character.Footnote 18 But it is too clever for Sallust himself, of course, in so far as it is part of a speech that was allegedly composed in 54 but presupposes the Bellum Catilinae, which the historian wrote in the late 40s.Footnote 19 The impersonator’s familiarity with Sallust’s work has been amply demonstrated; in fact, in the passage in question, further Sallustian elements can be identified: the coordination modo harum, modo illarum partium appears prominently in Sallust’s sketch of Catiline’s physiognomy and gait (color ei exsanguis, foedi oculi, citus modo, modo tardus incessus, Cat. 15.4), and lingua uana may have been suggested to the impersonator both by manus atque lingua (as quoted above, page 2 but see also n. 16) and by the memorable uana ingenia (neque ego per ignauiam aut uana ingenia incerta pro certis captarem, Cat. 20.2). Here, this connoisseurship allowed him to notice the parallel between Sallust’s own description and the Rutilian characterization and to modify the latter so as to pun on the former.
The author of the second epistle took advantage of the Sallustian passage, too, it would seem, as he inserted the pairing flagitio aut facinore, which is a Sallustian favourite that occurs not once but twice in 14.1–2 (omnium flagitiorum atque facinorum … cateruas …, quo flagitium aut facinus redimeret). But there are further complications. Nisbet argued that uana lingua in the invective was motivated by the maliciously misappropriated concedat laurea linguae (Inu. Cic. 3.2; cf. n. 16); the author of the epistula copied it from the inuectiua, even though it did not include the Ciceronian verse (or an equivalent).Footnote 20 Similarly, Hugh Last made a strong case for further instances of this author’s insensitive imitation of phrases that he found in the first epistle, most especially his regurgitating the epigrammatic praise ‘that men have sooner grown weary praising and admiring your generosity than you have doing deeds that are worthy of glory’ (prius defessi sunt homines laudando atque admirando munificentiam tuam quam tu in faciundo quae gloria digna essent, Ad Caes. sen. 2.1.6; cf. Ad Caes. sen. 1.1.2) in a context wherein ‘the epigram is spoilt; the logic is destroyed’.Footnote 21 Just so, the epistle appears to follow the invective once again when it leaves the relocated quae honeste nominari nequeunt, inhonestissima following pedes, although the pun is lost owing to the explicit mention of membra and the omission of the middle reference to the gut that maintains the Sallustian triad.Footnote 22
While this difference need not necessarily argue the chronological priority of the invective vis-à-vis the second epistle, it does show the author of the former to be cleverer than not just Sallust but the author of the epistle as well—albeit in different ways.
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