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The Commentariolum Petitionis: Some Arguments Against Authenticity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

R. G. M. Nisbet
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Extract

There are two formidable arguments against the authenticity of the Commentariolum Petitionis. In the first place its purpose is not clear. It is too rhetorical to be a private letter (and the last sentence actually invites suggestions for improvements); but equally it is too cynical to have been published during an election campaign (cf. especially §§ 5, 19, 35, 42, 45–7, 52). Secondly, in several passages the commentariolum bears a close resemblance to the in toga Candida, which on the face of it was written later; and there are conspicuous objections to the view that M. Cicero borrowed from his younger brother. Other suspicious circumstances can also be mentioned, notably the silence of Asconius and the transmission side by side with the undoubtedly spurious epistula ad Octavianum.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 1-2 , November 1961 , pp. 84 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © R. G. M. Nisbet 1961. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 For text see Watt, W. S., ad Q. Fratrem, etc., Oxford, 1958.Google Scholar For discussions of authenticity see Eussner, A., Commentariolum Petitionis examination atque emendatum, Virceburgi, 1872Google Scholar; Hendrickson, G. L., AJP XII, 1892, 200 ff.Google Scholar and Decennial Publications of Univ. of Chicago, first series, VI, 1904, no. VI; Henderson, M.I., JRS XL, 1950, 8 ff.Google Scholar

2 Annali della r. scuola normale superiore di Pisa, XV, 1892, 73. On this view the four cases mentioned are not arranged chronologically.

3 comm. 8 = tog. cand. ap. Asc. 74 KS (Antonius and the Greek); comm. 10 = tog. cand. 78 and 80 (Marius Gratidianus); comm. 10 = tog. cand. 82 (Fabia); comm. 12 = tog. cand. 83 (‘duas in r.p. sicas destringere’). If the whole speech had survived the number of resemblances might be surprising.

4 Note especially comm. 17 ‘ut tributes, ut vicini, ut clientes’, Mur. 69 ‘clientis vicinos tribulis’; comm. 24 and Mur. 47 ‘in suis vicinitatibus et municipiis gratiosi’; comm. 34 ‘coniectura fieri poterit quantum sis … virium et facultatis habiturus’, Mur. 44 ‘coniecturam faciant quantum quisque animi et facultatis habere videatur’; comm. 35 ‘hac consuetudine quae nunc est 〈ad〉 pluris veniunt’ (ad is Professor Watt's supplement), Mur. 44 ‘cum iam hoc novo more omnes fere domos omnium concursent’; comm. 56 ‘ut videare accusationem iam meditari’; Mur. 43 ‘accusationem meditari visus est’.

5 de orat. 2, 10 (addressing Quintus) ‘sed sive iudicio, ut soles dicere, sive … pudore a dicendo et timiditate ingenua quadam refugisti, sive ut ipse iocari soleo, unum putasti satis esse non modo in una familia rhetorem, sed paene in tota civitate …’.

6 Puteanus's Scapulas is plausible; for financial transactions by P. Scapula see Quinct. 17–20. A few sections later there is a reference to the atria Licinia (Quinct. 25).

7 I wish to thank Mr. Gordon Williams for discussing this article with me. Dr. R. Kassel has obtained for me photographs of Eussner's rare pamphlet; they may now be found in the Bodleian Library.