(1) 2.4:
itaque me non extrema †tribus† suffragiorum, sed primi illi uestri concursus, neque singulae uoces praeconum, sed una uox uniuersi populi Romani consulem declarauit.
Cicero narrates his election as consul. The above is the text printed by G. Manuwald, who notes that the construction of tribus is ‘odd’ and was queried by J.-L. Ferrary. She suspects that tribus ‘may be an explanatory gloss (or part of it) that entered the text’ and should therefore be deleted with Kayser. She rejects Richter's conjecture diribitio for tribus as palaeographically implausible.Footnote 1
The critique of the transmitted text and of the previous conjecture is evidently correct: extrema tribus can hardly be limited by suffragiorum; and the rare technical term diribitio (‘the sorting (of votes)’: OLD s.v.) seems, even apart from palaeographical cosiderations, unlikely to have found a place in this sentence, which is the climax of Cicero's depiction before the People of the scene of his victory in the consular elections.
A substantive in the nominative case is evidently needed instead of the corrupt tribus to contrast with illi uestri concursus in the following clause. Nor is it clear how tribus could have formed a gloss or part of a gloss.
Perhaps this alternative might be considered: itaque me non <enumeratio> extrema<e> tribus suffragiorum ‘therefore it was not the tallying of the votes of the final tribe …’, where extremae for extrema was proposed by Ferratius.Footnote 2 If this is right, enumeratio is the missing substantive; it can easily have dropped out by saltation prior to ex-. Once that had occurred, tribus would naturally have been taken as a nominative and the ‘correction’ of extremae to extrema would have been all but inevitable. The text so restored would yield, in contrast to Cicero's election (as he portrays it), the picture of a close election in which the outcome hinges upon the tally reported by the last tribe polled.
(2) 2.13:
legem hominis contionemque exspectabam; lex initio nulla proponitur, contionem inprimis aduocari iubet. summa cum exspectatione concurritur.
Cicero describes the circumstances of the contio at which Rullus expounded the text of his bill. This is the transmitted text, printed by Manuwald, although she admits it is ‘difficult’. She notes that Madvig proposed in pridie Idus (that is, 12 December) in lieu of inprimis and that this creates a palaeographically plausible contrast to initio.Footnote 3 She rejects this substitution of a specific date, however, on the ground that this would make it obvious that the anticipation stressed by Cicero lasted only two days (that is, since the tribunes’ entry into office on 10 December). She defends the transmitted inprimis with reference to OLD s.v. 2: ‘As the first item in a series, the first stage in a process, etc., to begin with, firstly; also (c. sense 1), first in order of importance.’Footnote 4 This, however, does not really solve the difficulty, which was evidently the fact that initio in the previous clause and inprimis in this one seem to be more or less synonymous.
Might one consider instead in praesentia? The adverbial expression offers a contrast to initio in that it means ‘for the present’ (OLD s.v. praesens 16), yields good sense in context (Rullus offering a contio ‘for the present’ pending publication of the text of his bill) and is used by Cicero in no fewer than twenty-eight passages of his speeches, treatises and letters.Footnote 5 A scribe could be forgiven if, upon encountering in pr-, he fell into the commoner expression inprimis.
(3) 2.100:
quare, modo ut uita suppetat, quam ego summis <***> ab istorum scelere insidiisque defendere, polliceor hoc uobis, Quirites, bona fide: …
In the concluding section of his speech Cicero offers a pledge to the People. This is Manuwald's text, differing from Marek's only in that the latter prints si, rather than ut, with a part of the transmission, a difference unimportant for present purposes. Manuwald discusses previous proposals, finding them unsatisfactory, and concludes that ‘it is best to postulate a lacuna at least hiding a noun; the finite verb might also have been placed there or at the end of the clause (after defendere)’.Footnote 6 This diagnosis seems to be correct.
As the noun missing beside summis one might wish to consider uiribus. The combination occurs only once in Cicero, at Arat. 101: uiribus erumpit qua summis spiritus Austri. Though also found in other poets (for example Verg. Aen. 5.226, 9.531, 9.744), it is not exclusively poetic: Quintilian offers summis eloquentiae uiribus and summis ingenii uiribus (Inst. 5.1.2, 6.1.44), and Apuleius has the phrase four times.Footnote 7
In addition, one suspects that the missing verb (to be inserted after defendere) is paro. Comparable perhaps is the passage in which Cicero discusses Deiotarus’ taking of auspices prior to his departure to join the Pompeian side in the Civil War: the bird-signs could advise him on the success (or otherwise) of the expedition, but not his duty, Cicero argues: nec enim ei cornix canere potuit recte eum facere quod populi Romani libertatem defendere pararet (Div. 2.78). The short verb beginning in p- and ending in -o can easily have been skipped when followed immediately by polliceor.Footnote 8
