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TWO TEXTUAL NOTES ON CICERO, DE OFFICIIS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2019

Andrew R. Dyck
Andrew R. Dyck*
Affiliation:
Los Angeles
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Extract

(1) 1.21:

ex quo, quia suum cuiusque fit eorum quae natura fuerant communia quod cuique obtigit, id quisque teneat; †e quo si quis† sibi appetet, uiolabit ius humanae societatis.

The base text cited is that of Winterbottom. After discussing the origin of private property, Cicero asserts that it should be maintained as distributed (id quisque teneat). Of the matter marked corrupt, e quo (sometimes written ex quo or with a letter deleted after e; see Winterbottom's apparatus criticus) is likely to be a repetition of the preceding ex quo and therefore intrusive (as Winterbottom suggested ad loc.: ‘fort. delendum’). si quis evidently requires supplementation. Müller (after marginal corrections in printings of Lambinus's edition) inserted quid after quis, but in that case one would expect a further specification (quid alienum or the like). The better candidate for the supplement after quis is perhaps plus, the reading of the two fifteenth-century Munich codices 7020 and 650 (M and S respectively), an easy error. Cf. Cic. Leg. agr. 3.13: cum plus appetat quam ipse Sulla …; Sull. 84: ut ego mihi plus appetere coner quam quantum omnes inimici inuidique patiantur.

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Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , December 2019 , pp. 910 - 911
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019

(1) 1.21:

ex quo, quia suum cuiusque fit eorum quae natura fuerant communia quod cuique obtigit, id quisque teneat; †e quo si quis† sibi appetet, uiolabit ius humanae societatis.

The base text cited is that of Winterbottom.Footnote 1 After discussing the origin of private property, Cicero asserts that it should be maintained as distributed (id quisque teneat). Of the matter marked corrupt, e quo (sometimes written ex quo or with a letter deleted after e; see Winterbottom's apparatus criticus) is likely to be a repetition of the preceding ex quo and therefore intrusive (as Winterbottom suggested ad loc.: ‘fort. delendum’). si quis evidently requires supplementation. Müller (after marginal corrections in printings of Lambinus's edition) inserted quid after quis,Footnote 2 but in that case one would expect a further specification (quid alienum or the like). The better candidate for the supplement after quis is perhaps plus, the reading of the two fifteenth-century Munich codices 7020 and 650 (M and S respectively), an easy error.Footnote 3 Cf. Cic. Leg. agr. 3.13: cum plus appetat quam ipse Sulla …; Sull. 84: ut ego mihi plus appetere coner quam quantum omnes inimici inuidique patiantur.

(2) 1.49:

multi enim faciunt multa temeritate quadam sine iudicio †uel morbo in omnes uel† repentino quodam quasi uento impetu animi incitati; …

This is a locus conclamatus, for which no satisfactory solution has been found.Footnote 4 The first uel should surely be emended to uelut so as to show that morbus is being used metaphorically;Footnote 5 the two possibilities could have induced readers to think of a uel … uel construction, even though the two parts are not truly parallel.

Holford-Strevens apud Winterbottom proposed supplying prodigi after omnes, but there appears to be no parallel for construing prodigus with in + accusative,Footnote 6 and it would be hard to explain the corruption. Perhaps rather in omnes <liberales>, the thought thus rounded off with a ditrochaic clausula. liberalis is not negative per se. liberalitas is, however, the main topic of this section (1.42: de beneficentia ac de liberalitate dicatur), with repeated discussion of who does or does not qualify as liberalis. That the quality is carried too far is implied by in omnes and made explicit by uelut morbo. For liberalis with in + accusative, see Planc. 63: Cyrenis liberalem in publicanos, iustum in suos fuisse; Sen. Ep. 20.3: obserua te … numquid in te liberalis sis, in tuos sordidus. Footnote 7 The error is easily explained by saltation from -es to -es.Footnote 8

References

1 Winterbottom, M., M. Tulli Ciceronis De officiis (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar.

2 Müller, C.F.W., M. Tulli Ciceronis De officiis libri tres für den Schulgebrauch erklärt (Leipzig, 1882)Google Scholar, ad loc.

3 The presence of the reading in these two witnesses suggests that it may have been the reading of L (London, Harley 2716) and thus be Carolingian; cf. Winterbottom (n. 1), viii–ix.

4 For discussion, see Dyck, A.R., A Commentary on Cicero, De officiis (Ann Arbor, 1996), 164–5Google Scholar.

5 So already Pohlenz, M., Antikes Führertum: Cicero De officiis und das Lebensideal des Panaitios (Leipzig and Berlin, 1934), 36 n. 3Google Scholar.

6 See TLL 10.2.1612.10–19. The usage of Sil. Pun. 15.495–6 (belloque parata | prodigere in bellum) is dubiously relevant to Cicero.

7 See further TLL 7.2.1291.11–45; OLD s.v. liberalis 4.

8 I would like to thank this journal's reader for helpful suggestions.