Lucretius & Cicero - Prof. E G Sihler Paper

8/20/2019 Lucretius & Cicero - Prof. E G Sihler Paper

1/13

42 E. G. Sihler. [1897.

II. - Lucretiuis nd Cicero.

BY PROF. E. G. SIHLER,

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY.

A priori and on the basis of our general knowledge ofCicero's literary areer and his habits of work and his occu-pations before the autocratic position of Caesar became anaccomplished fact it would strike us as very improbablethat Cicero himself should have become the literary editorof another man or the literary xecutor of the same, andthis, too, in a sphere of literary ubject-matter, hich, grant-ing all that may be said as to Cicero's eclectic attitudetowards Academy and Stoa, was positively and specificallyuncongenial and unsympathetic o him. The two solitarydata of classic evidence are wide apart chronologically.i) Ciceroad Quintiun fr. II. II, 3 (February, 4 B.C.), " Lucre-tii poemnata, t scribis, ita sunt, multis luminibus ingenii,multae tamen artis. Sed cum veneris virum te putabo, siSallustii Empedoclea legeris, hominem non putabo." And2) Jerome's Latin edition of Eusebius chronology with

Jerome's supplements on Latin and Roman topics (annoAbrahae, 1923),Titus Lucretius poeta nascitur, qui posteaamatorio poculo in furorem versus, cum aliqutot ibros perintervalla nsaniae conscripsisset, uospoe/a Cicero mendavit,propria se manu interfecit nno aetatis XLIV. Whetherthis is all out of Suetonius de viris illustribus or even ofearlier traceable authority we cannot now stop to inquire.

I.Let us take up first he notice of 54 B.C.,February. It

will be both instructive and appropriate to present somesurvey of the criticism nd exegesis which have been be-

1 Cf. Reifferscheidt, uetonius, . 55. Schoene, Hieronymus, ol. II., p. xxviii,note 2. Woltyer, nemosyne, VIII., argues that there was no reason for he-


2/13

Vol. xxviii.] Luicretius nd Cicero. 43

stowed upon the passage. The by far greater part of schol-ars have considered it as incorrectly handed down in theMss. The ed. princeps, Rome, 1470,gave: Lucretii poemataut scribis lita sunt multis luminibus ingenii, etc., and thustoo Nizolius in his Cicero concordance of I546, reprints thepassage (s.v. Lucretius). Gryphius, Lugduni, 1546 (afterVictorius and Manutius): "L. poernata, ut scribis, no;z itasunt multis luminibus ingenii, multae tamen artis." Sedcumn eneris, virum e putabo: si Sallustii Empedoclea lege-ris, hominem non putabo. Notice the pointing fter he firstputabo. Lambinus in the preface of his edition of Lucre-tius, Paris, 1570,pref., . 26, wrote, very boldly and withoutany critical explanation: ". . . multis ingenii luminibustincta, multae tamen eiam artis." The edition of Olivetusas reprinted, Glasgow, I749, gives the Mss. reading withoutany change. Ernesti, whose text of Cicero was the standard

before Orelli's, placed the non before mnultis irminibuis. Andso Wieland translated, Zurich, i8o8, II., p. 285, "Die Ge-dichte des Lucretius sint wie du schreibst: wenig was voneinem glanzenden Genie zeugte, aber desto mehr Kunst."This insertion of non before luminibus, Bernhardy too pre-ferred. To the weight of these scholars was added the greatname of Lachmann.1 How impressive and decisive Lach-

mann's siding with this reading was, we may observe, e.g., inthe case of Schneidewin 2 "nach Lachmann's Bemerkungenkann an der Richtigkeit der so gestellten Negation keinZweifel sein." And so careful nd painstaking scholar asR. Hirzel treated the reading as a settled one when hewrote 3 "Auch an eine Beriicksichtigung es Lucrez (viz. inDe Deor. N) inm inne einer Anspielung auf ihn ist nicht zudenken. Denn um diese Annahme zu rechtfertigen, uissteCicero den Dichter hoher geschatzt haben als dies nach derlieving that Lucretiuswas dead in February, 4 B.C. (i.e. died October, 5 B.C.),-whereas Usener, Rh. M?us.,868, p. 679,holds the death of Lucretius n Octo-ber, 55, as incontrovertible.

1 Ed. 3, i86o, p. 62 of the notes on Lucretius, . 922.2 Philologus, 0, p. 362.8 Unterschungen u den philosophischen chrifeen es Cicero,Vol. I., I877,

p. I0.


3/13

44 E. G. Sihler. [1897.

bekannten /elle des Briefes an Qitintus der Fall war." Itcannot be denied that the student of the Ciceronian passagerealizes in.himself sense that the words are not complete,or that there s an inconsistency etween the first nd secondpart of the judgment; viz.,that the presence of lumina nzgeniinormally would have as a corollary the absence of art, andvice versa, that technique and inspiration will, as a rule, notdwell in the same poetical writer n fairly qual proportion:the tamen n the second part would ndeed seem to point that

way. Meanwhile,we may note that the drift of criticism ofthe editors of Cicero's letters in more recent times has, onthe whole, been conservative. Thus Le Clerc, Paris, I821,whose admirable version of the entire passage I append:" Oui, vous avez raison, tel est le poeme de Lucrece; beau-coup d'eclairs de g6nie, et cependant beaucoup d'art. Maissi, a votre retour, ous lisez les Empedocl6es de Sallustius,

vous serez un h6ros; un homme en serait incapable." Healso argues that the notice of Lucretius was evoked andsuggested by his death; in fact, hat the entire reference toL. had its raison d'tre therein. With all his conservativepresentation of the text, however, he says: "Il est malheu-reux que le seul passage ou nous pouvions trouver des ren-seignements et sur l'opinion des contemporains t sur un

fait assez important e la litt6rature omaine,oit si peu de-

veloppd t pr/sente ant d'incertitudes," hich s to the point.The Mss. reading has been maintained lso by Orelli, and byBaiter and Kayser. Schneidewin after approving of Lach-mann's reading of non multis luminibus et, goes on to say:Aber es nimmt wunder dass man sich allgemein mit der Stri-bbi


4/13

Vol.xxviii.] Lucretius nd Cicero. 45

examine Schneidewin's proposed change. It is necessarythat we realize how impossible it is to postulate such sym-metry f writing n Ciceronian etters of this sort. We mayeasily recognize that in many of the shorter etters addressedto intimates such as Quintus, there is every evidence of ahurry. Many of these letters, s a whole, are short becausethe writer s in a hurry; e.g. ad Quint. fr. II. 6 (8): the in-dividual clauses are themselves short, following each otherin rapid succession: the correspondents understand eachother, there is no need even of being more explicit; briefindications or hints or summary eports suffice, hese lettersare written 7rpay,luaTtIcCo9 valde," a phrase used by Marcusof a letter of Quintus, ad Quiint. r. II. I4 (I5 b), 2. At thattime, February, 54 B.C., Quintus was evidently not in thecity; and still, considering hat he had undertaken to joinas legatus the headquarters of Caesar, at that time looking

forward o a second crossing of the channel and a secondinvasion of Britain, one would have expected that Quintuswould have been at the capital to equip himself for soweighty nd distant a post. But it would seem that at thistime, and for considerable time, Quintus had been engagedin building operations on an extensive scale: he was buildinga mansion on the Palatine hill, a mansion not completelyfinished n October,

54,and in those winter days, as Drumannplausibly suggests, Quintus was inspecting the progress ofbuilding or of rebuilding of various villas,2 e.g., the "Arca-num," near Arpinum, he " Manilianum," costly and elabo-rate project, not completed n the following eptember. Thelatter part of the letter ad Quint. fr. II. i i (which letter sbrief nough in itself), with its "cum veneris," uggests thatthe return of Quintus was looked forward o as being notvery far distant, and the "reliqui dies" in this very lettersuggest that the very days of Quintus' absence from thecapital and from Marcus were numbered and determined:the impatience of Quintus for all and every piece of news isclearly expressed or suggested: " Reliquis diebus si quid erit

1 Drumann, VI., p. 732sqq. Abeken, Cicero n seinenBriefen, . 154.2 Cf. ad Q.fr. II. i.


5/13

46 E. G. Sihler. [1897.

quod te scire opus sit, aut etiam si nihil erit, amen scribamquotidie aliquid." Cf. also the passage in II. IO (12) 5,written n the same month of February, 54, "litterae autemad id quod expectas (something from Caesar concerning helegatio of Quintus Cicero under him) fere cum tuo redituiungentur." The return f Quintus, therefore, as definitelyfixed at the time these letters were written. The brevityand desultory haracter of the hasty notice of Lucretius inMarcus Cicero's letter, in fact, at the fag-end of a hasty

letter, is eminently onsistent with the circumstances nwhich the letter was written.

The welcome parallel of ad Quiint. r. II. I3. 3 (written nthe same month f February, 54B.C.) greatly ids us in settingforth ven more clearly the desultory ype of these aphoristicreferences to letters and literature: they are mere "Fill-steine," s the Germans wouldsay, to round out a letter when

graver matters had given out: " omniza olzig-ot novi scribamaliquid ad te, sed ut vides, res me ipsa deficit: itaque ad Cal-listhenem t ad Philistum redeo in quibus te video vo/uitatum(i.e. recently). Callisthenes quidem volgare et notum nego-tium. . . . Siculus ille capitalis, reber, cutus, brevis, aenepusillus Thucydides -in short, f Ciceroever uttered iterarycriticism ff hand, hurriedly, arelessly, hough t is true also

entirely without any fear or favorwhatever, t was in these

letters. Therefore we must resign ourselves to the sobernecessity of not making too much (nor too little) of them.Whether Quintus had been reading the particular rolls orindividual chartae which Marcus had read before, r whetherhe even then possessed copies of the identical parts or of thewhole corpus, f a corpus there was, no one 1now can, in myopinion, demonstrate r assert anything bout.

But, convinced as we are that there is not the slightestnecessity of changing the Mss. reading in the slightestrespect, we will return from this point and briefly presentwhat remains to be told of the most modern critical opinion

I Though Prof. R. Y. Tyrrell, orrespondencef Cicero,Vol. II., p. Io6, says:" Cicero had probably ometime uring he ast four months eador heard read tohim the de rerum natura, and had sent t to his brother n finishing t."


6/13

Vol. xxviii.] Lucretius nzdCicero. 47

on our subject. Munro,l fter very calm weighing of themain data involved, uggests that we refrain rom nsertingany non in either part of the judgment; but "this now," hesays, "would be a very easy [sic] correction: Lucretii poe-mata, ut scribis, ita sunt multis luminibus ingenii: multaetarnen artis esse cum inveneris, virum e putabo; si SalustiiEmpedoclea legeris, hominum non putabo." But apart fromforcing cum into a quasi-hypothetical se as would certainlybe the case through the parallelism of the twofold utabo,the change of veneris is absolutely unnecessary. I haveshown before, from closer inspection of the actual circum-stances surrounding nd attending he correspondence f thebrothers n February-March, 4 B.C., that czum eneris s clearand apt. The main business of Quintus being to satisfyhimself s to the general advancement of building operationson his several, or on several of his country seats in the

Volscian hills and elsewhere, some attention to letters andliterature was most welcome to him to beguile the time; butas for any consecutive or hard study of books like the poe-mata of Lucretius, when within a very brief time he hadshifted o Greek historians ike Philistus and Callisthenes,-it seems to me to be out of the question.

R. Y. Tyrrell, who, n most of the other matters, ubstan-tially agrees with

Munro's presentation f the tradition, if-fers2 in his view of the text; while changing not a singleword, he assumes an aposiopesis: " Sed cum veneris . . .Virum te putabo," etc., an entirely new sentence beginningwith virzum. The aposiopesis does not impress me as neces-sary. Dr. T. Maguire, n the Hernathena, IV., p. 419 sq.,maintains he Mss. text without ny change whatever, efend-ing the tamen with a parallel from Terence, Adelphi, . 2, 30,Alieniore aetate post faceret tamnen, nd interprets he pas-sage thus "The poetry of Lucretius is just as you write;

1 Notes, II., I893, p. I9. T. T. Cornelissen, Mnemosyne, I889, p. I28 sq., likesMunro'; suggestion, ut (like Schnieidewin) islikes heabl. of quality n juxta-position with gen. of quality; he himself uggests: L. p., ut scribis, ta sunt,multis uminibus. Multaetamen rtis i conviceris, irum e putabo.

2 Correspondenzce f Cicero, Vol. IL., letter 32, p. io6.


7/13


8/13

Vol. xxviii.] Lucretius nd Cicero. 49

disses idque Pompeiocontendenti edisses,etenim vehementerorabat." This, too, is doubtlessly the proquaestor Cn. Sal-lustius of Syria, 50 B.C., ad Fan. II. I7. The historian,S. Crispus, who turned to literature fter his governorship nNumidia, nd probably nly after Caesar's assassination, s notto be mistaken for the literary riend f 54 B.C. Our knowl-edge of Sallustius Crispus, of his development and career,makes the data of 54 plainly napplicable to the latter, who, tthat time, was not merely Caesarean, but, as tribunus lebis52, a very short time afterwards,' oremost n passionate andturbulent partisanship, pposed to Cicero's political friends,and abandoned to shameless passions and intrigues in hisprivate life, paramour of Fausta, and subsequently expelledfrom he Senate.2 No, Sallustius Crispus, by all the tokensof psychologrical nd moral consistency, was not the man who,in 55-54, would have composed a Latinization of the specu-

lative and didactic poem of Empedocles, and enjoyed rela-tions of literary nd political intimacy with Marcus Cicero.3The association of Lucretius and the Empedoclea of Sallust,in Marcus Cicero's letter, uggcrestsomy mind the probabilitythat Sallust latinized a hexametrical riginal n hexameters,that Lucretius' poemata " might have been called " Epicurea,"-they were so, -as well as that Sallust's effort was inferiorto that of

Lucretius; thatthe

production was a tremendousbore to read, requiring n encdurance ar above the limits ofordinary human powers; in fact, that the man who wouldread it throglugh ust be cast in a heroic mould.

III.

There remain a few words to be said about the notice inHieronymus-Suetonius: " cum aliquot libros per intervalla

1 Asconius n Milonianam, 45, " sunt autem contionati o die (quo Clodiusoccisus est) ut ex actis apparet C. Sallustius t Q. Pompeius Rufus) utrique tinimiciMilonis t satis nquieti."

2 Varro n Gellius, 17, i8; Dio, 40, 63.8 A. Schoene, t is true, has reasoned for the authorship f the historian, ut

he has neglected he essential data given above, Fleckeisen'sJahrb., i866, I.,p. 751sqq.


9/13

50 E. G. Sihker. [1897.

insaniae conscripsisset uospostea Cicero emendavit. In thefirst lace, we must not, at the outset, assign to this noticethe same authenticity nd intrinsic genuineness as we do tothe passage in the letter to Quintus. The indefinite liquotlibros would seem to suggest that L. left a fragment r anincomplete work, whereas the exposition of the Epicurean"cctpato, 4vo-loXo7y$a"was completely et forth n the firstfive, f not in the first our books, and Book VI. (largely wrep'TCv IeTeWpAwZ) s, in its nature, conigeries, nd exhibits thetraces of incomplete arrangement, isproportionate labora-tion of certain parts, and excessive summarization f others,elsewhere. I will state frankly, t once, that I entertain buta very slender faith in the correctness2 f the words "quospostea Cicero emendavit." Do the extant philosophical ooksof Cicero suggest or furnish any evidence bearing on thisquestion ? Emendare, no matter how loosely or how super-

ficially t was meant, should involve, at least, close and re-peated reading; but for a number of years M. Cicero waspressed for time, or engaged in his own composition.3 Cf.ad Att. 4, i6, 2, "1rem plurimi tii, quo egomaxime egeo ; adQ.fr. III. 3, I, "diem scito esse nullum uo die non dicam proreo; ita, quicquid conficio ut cogito, n ambulationis empusfere confero." Soon afterward he explains his inability to

conipose poetry: " deest mihi quidem opera quae nonmodo

tempus, ed etiam animum vacuum ab omni cura desiderat,"ad Q. r. III. 4, 4; and about the same matter: " quod me deversibus faciendis ogas, ncredibile st, mi frater, uam egeamtempore," ad Q.fr. III. 5-6, 4. Soon after came the Milo-Clodius episode, with the terrific train in the mechanism ofthe current overnment, nd the extraordinary measures andevents consequent upon the killing of Clodius, with M. Ciceroas a central figure; then came the Cilician proconsulate of

1 To use a phrase of the philosopher himself, etter to Pythocles, Diog.Laert. X.

2 There are scholars who refer hem to QuintusCicero [who composedfourtragedies n sixteen ays, d Quint.fr. II. 6, 7.]

3 Beginningwith de Republica, 4 sq. B.C., at which he worked deliberately,and, for him, lowly,makingmany hanges, d Quint.fr. II. 5, I.


10/13

Vol. xxviii.] Lucretius nd Cicero. 51

Cicero, 5I-50; then the struggle between Caesar and theSenate, the outbreak of the Civil War, Cicero's temporaryexpatriation, Caesar's domination, he wretched confusion ofCicero's domestic relations nd of his financial ffairs. Then,and not till then, came the conviction that his politicalcareer was at an end, and the resolution,' " optimarumartium vias tradere meis civibus," and "docere atqueerudire iuventutem," the rapid production of the "H or-tensius, De Finibus, Tusculanae disp., Academica, de NaturaDeoruim, de Consolatione, Laelihs, Cato maior, de Divina-tione really because he did not know what else to do;cf. ? 6. It was a quasi " sententiam dicere " and " con-tionari," a period of intense and rapid production n whichhis antagonism to Epicurus and all his works is traceableas a red thread.

Cicero's acquisition as a student of Greek philosophy) not

appropriation as a follower f that sect) had been concludedlong before Lucretius' hexameters came under his notice.When he desires Epicureans to be spokesmen he has themrefer o Zeno, the scholarchos2 of 79 sq., whom Cicero him-self heard at Athens (cf. de Deor. Nat. I. I 3): " summa . . .memoria pronuntiabat plurimas Epicuri sententias iis ipsisverbis, uibus erant scriptae," nd Cicero further vailed him-self of Philodemus,3 he intimate friend f Piso, whose

rollsconstituted the heaviest unit of authorship n the vast massof Epicurean production ound n Piso's villa at Herculaneum,the contents of which, s analyzed by Comparetti,4 eflect na striking manner the thoroughness f devotion of an earnestEpicurean. According to Comparetti's report, there werethree copies of the thirty-seven olumina of Epicurus 7rept4v6Os0: but then, two thirds of the papyri belonged to,

1 As stated n the famous urvey eDivin. II. I.2 Princeps Epicureorum e Deor. Nat. I., ? 59. Cf. de Fin. I., ? i6, nisi

mihi Phaedrum, inquam, mentitum aut Zenonem putas, quorum utrumque audivi,cum mihi nihil ane praeter edulitatem robarent, mnesmihi E icuri sententiaesatis notae sunt, etc.

3 Cf. Sauppe, Ausgewihkte Schriften, I896, p. 403, "aus PhilodemusBucheirepl culTe/elas."

4 Relazione uipapiri Erco/anesi, Accademiadei Lincei, 878.


11/13

52 E. G. Sikler. [I897.

i.e. were from the pen of, PhilodemusI himself; and of 342papyri unrolled, ut twenty-four ere Latin

Besides, the Epicurean system had from 270 down beenpreserved more in the precise form f a creed, or even of acatechism,2 ncapable of any essential modification r devel-opment,3 differing herein not a little from the Stoic andAcademic schools. We may notice the observation f Cicero,Academ. I. 2, 4: " Si essent Graecis doctrinis ruditi, Graecapotius quam nostra lecturos," curiously llustrated in the

inventory of Piso's villa above, which, too, in a measureaccounts for the obscurity of Lucretius' poem in the firstgeneration after 55 B.C. ; the prestige of Greek books, thevery mass of them, was as yet too overwhelming,; he workof Lucretius belonged to the category of productions Acad.l.c.) "quae nec indocti intelligere possent, nec docti legerecurarent." In ??5-6 Cicero, in a tone bordering on con-tempt, efers o the popular presentations f Epicureanism byAmafinius and Rabirius; would he have omitted, t least, toname Lucretius in this connection, when his glance sweptover the entire field of Roman production s it was extantin 45 B.C., if he had then iven siucha study o Lucretius s isconsistenzt ith "emendare," no matter how loosely or super-ficially onsidered I think not. That we, at many points

in the philosophical reatises f Cicero, are reminded fdidac-

tic points n Lucretius, .e. of our main source of knowledgeof Epicurean doctrine, proves nothing; such are, e.g., theattack upon the Stoic accommodation of natural speculativescience to the traditional forms of popular mythology, de

1Cf the parallelsbetween Philodemus nd Cicero, de Deor. Nat. I., in Diels,DoxographiGraeci, 529-550.

2 Cf. the KvpLas6,as, Diog. Laert. X. [and de Deor. Nat. I. 26, 72, "Istaenim vobisquasidictata redduntur,"7 eFin. I., ? 27, " cum praesertim lla per-discere udus sset ], deDeor. Nat. I., ? 85, taque n illis electis ius brevibusquesententiis, uas appellatisK6ptas86,av, tc.

8 Zeller, Stoics, tc., Engl. version, 892, p. 420 : "This philosophical terility,this mechanical anding ownof unchangeable rinciples."

4 How Zellercomesto conclude hat he book of Amafinius as a sequenceofthe visit f the Greek philosophers o Rome in 155, I do not know. Zeller, b.,p. 411, foot-note 4.


12/13


13/13

54 E. C. SihZer. [1897.

agunt eumque venerantur ut deum, liberatum enim se pereum dicunt gravissimis ominis, errore empiterno t diurnoac nocturno metu " with which cf. Lucretius, V. 7: namquesi, ut ipsa petit maiestas cognita rerum dicendum est, deusille fuit, deus, inclyte Memmi, qui princeps vitae rationeminvenit am quae nunc appellatur sapientia, quique per artemfluctibus tantis vitam tantisque tenebris in tam tranquillaet tam clara luce locavit."

The parallel, by the by, had not escaped the wonderfulgleaning of Munro.

Lucretius & Cicero - Prof. E G Sihler Paper

Documents

Transcript of Lucretius & Cicero - Prof. E G Sihler Paper