The noted Ciceronian scholar D. has added to his impressive list of commentaries on political and philosophical works (De Officiis [1996], De Legibus [2004], De Natura Deorum [2003]) and orations (Catilinarians [2008], Pro Sexto Roscio [2010]) with the publication of the Pro Caelio. It is a welcome addition to the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series, as this ‘most attractive speech’ (p. ix) is often read in university courses by graduate and undergraduate students alike. Such readers have long depended upon R.G. Austin's edition (3rd edition 1960) which, despite Austin's ‘formidable learning’, contains flaws ‘which time has tended to magnify’ (p. ix). Hence the need for this new edition. The Latin text printed is that of Maslowski (1995), with some 40 deviations by D. (pp. 28–31) which are discussed ad loc. in the commentary. The book also includes a full bibliography and three indexes: Latin words, Greek words and a general index, which lists names, places, grammatical points, legal matters and other issues of importance and interest.
D.'s Pro Caelio begins with a 31-page introduction comprised of 17 sections: ‘The charge and the court’; ‘Procedure in the Quaestiones Perpetuae’; ‘The crime and its background’; ‘The date of the trial’; ‘The defendant’; ‘The prosecution team’; ‘The prosecution strategy’; ‘The defense team’; ‘The general defense strategy’; ‘Cicero's approach’; ‘Clodia's rôle’; ‘The outcome and the sequel’; ‘Language and style’; ‘Periodic style, rhythm’; ‘Relation of the delivered and published speeches’; ‘The published speech and its afterlife’; and ‘The text’. Some of these sections are more useful than others, but all have something substantial and insightful to offer. Those that deal with the charges and procedure and the strategies of those involved in the trial (especially the defence team), are mainly aimed at helping the reader to understand the issues; in these sections, D. not only cites a wide range of secondary literature, but also provides citations from other speeches of Cicero and from the Letters in support of his assertions. In some instances, however, D. declines to state his own opinion; for example, in the discussion of the identity of Clodia (p. 14), the reader is well-informed as to the possibilities, but must decide whom to follow regarding this question.
The longest section in the introduction concerns language and style (pp. 17–22). Here D. is in his element; the presentation of this material (which is often difficult for students) is clear and elucidating, with many good examples of Cicero's mature style, his manipulation of word order (pp. 19–20), his use of elements such as personification, other figures of speech and, above all, metaphor (pp. 21–2). This section is followed by a rather more complicated discussion of prose rhythm, which is hard to follow. D.'s explanations, however, are quite detailed and many examples of Cicero's favourite clausulae are provided; thus a close study will reward the diligent reader.
The commentary is extraordinarily detailed. At the outset, D. provides a summary of the speech in the traditional rhetorical divisions (exordium, refutatio, etc.); each of these has a section-by-section outline of its contents, which previews and clarifies Cicero's argumentation. There are boldface section numbers and lemmata, but since there are no line numbers printed anywhere in the book, it is quite difficult for the reader to coordinate the commentary and text, resulting in time wasting and frustration as the words or phrases under discussion are not clearly apparent. This presents a major problem in using the otherwise excellent commentary. This appears to be something imposed by the Press, and which the Press ought therefore to correct in subsequent editions of this text and future commentaries in the Green and Yellow series.
D. tends to cite quite long chunks of text for examination, and then goes through the passage in lengthy sentences with multiple semi-colons, which can be quite confusing to follow. That said, his notes are extremely full and sensible. Individual words are frequently glossed, with precise references to the OLD, but D. rarely offers a continuous translation; the student has to work it out, which is as it should be. Copious examples of similar usages, references to other passages in Cicero and other ancient authors, to earlier commentaries, grammatical sources and articles on related topics abound. Each lemma selected for comment is thus a gold mine of information, sometimes daunting, but in the end mostly worth the effort. An example follows.
D.'s treatment of ergo haec deserta … moderatioque teneatur (sec. 42, p. 128–9), a citation encompassing five lines of text (p. 46), includes discussion of jussives as granting concession; Cicero's return to the metaphor of the path of life (sec. 41), this time implying two paths, ‘one of Virtue, the other of Pleasure, as in Prodicus’ famous allegory of Hercules at the crossroads retold by Xenophon (Mem. 2.1.21–33) and in turn by C. (Off. 1.118)'; two references to Moretti (2006 and 2007) on the description of Virtue's ‘derelict path’ (deserta … uirgultis); the idea that adulescentia be granted some pleasure as is ‘natural’ to youth, with references to sections 30a, 28 and 41 and to Gildenhard (2011), who finds ‘“systematic exploitation of new-comic morality” in our speech unparalleled in C.’s oratorical corpus'; a grammatical point regarding the use of non in a jussive clause; citations of other appearances of directa ratio (Part. 130; Var. L. 10.43; Quint. Inst. 9.1.3); and finally noting the hendiadys of praescriptio moderatioque. All this, and Cicero's sentence (as punctuated by D.) continues for a further eight lines. In all, the commentary provided by D. on section 42 covers two full pages, more than twice that of Austin. Clearly there is a great deal of information in D., but some interesting (and helpful) points are not made; for example there is no mention of the antitheses a few lines further along in 42 (ne probrum … inferrat) noted by Austin. I suspect that perhaps this reflects D.'s high expectations of the skills and interests of his intended audience. In my opinion, only highly trained and very competent students will be able to reap the full benefits of D.'s extensive and learned commentary; less advanced students may well be overwhelmed by the amount and variety of information given.
As mentioned at the beginning of the review, this is one of a series of outstanding commentaries on Cicero that D. has given us. Yet there is still much work to be done on this most prolific author, and it is to be hoped that D. has the interest and stamina to continue his excellent work in the field of Ciceronian studies.
