L. A. Sussman (ed., tr., comm.), The Declamations of Calpurnius Flaccus, Brill (Leiden, New York, and Cologne, 1994)

This review of L. A. Sussman’s The Declamations of Calpurnius Flaccus (1994) appeared in the following year. It compliments the author for his sterling service to the study of Roman declamation, not least his pioneering translation of the difficult Major Declamations. The book argues interestingly for a late first-century or second-century date for Calpurnius. The reviewer judges that Sussman was (not surprisingly) unable to improve on the text of Lennart Håkanson, but that he discusses the problems carefully and intelligently. Some details of the translation and interpretation of this fragmentary text follow, and some new ideas are aired. The reviewer finds Sussman ‘over-hospitable to emotive alliteration’.

J. Cousin (ed., tr., comm.), Quintilien. Institution oratoire, Tome IV (Livres VI et VII), Les Belles Lettres (Paris, 1977)

This review of the fourth volume of Jean Cousin’s Budé edition of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria (1977) appeared in 1979. The reviewer judges that this volume ‘is no better, and no worse, than its predecessors’. He comments on some ‘wayward’ punctuation of the text, some unconvincing conjectures by Cousin, and an apparatus which ‘pullulates with error’. As to the apparatus, he is especially critical of the way in which, because of his misreporting of the manuscripts, Cousin makes it seem that manuscripts G and H (the latter of which, in the reviewer’s opinion, he should not be using at all) ‘are far more often right against A than is in fact the case, with the result that G is made to appear independent of A, and H a good deal more than a faithful duplicate of G’.

(1) J. Cousin (ed., tr., comm.), Quintilien. Institution oratoire, Tome I (Livre I), Les Belles Lettres (Paris, 1975)(2) J. Cousin, Recherches sur Quintilien, Les Belles Lettres (Paris, 1975)

This review, which appeared in 1977, concerns two books by Jean Cousin, the first volume of his Budé edition of Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria and his Recherches sur Quintilien, which were both published in Paris in 1975. As to the Budé, the reviewer praises the translation as ‘accurate and flowing’, but is scathing about the methodology and carelessness of the apparatus criticus. The text is more or less that of Winterbottom’s Oxford Classical Text (1970), though Cousin does not register that work. As to the Recherches, he judges, without pleasure, that Cousin ‘does almost nothing to advance, and much to obscure, the study of Quintilian’s transmission’.

An Emendation in Calpurnius Flaccus

This short paper, first published in 1999, quotes and translates three sentences from Calpurnius Flaccus’ second declamation. The speaker is an accuser, who argues that for a white woman with a white husband to give birth to a black child is certain proof of adultery, because individual races have fixed physical characteristics to distinguish them. A crucial verb in the second sentence is transmitted as mittit, ‘sends’. As this makes no sense, Schultingh long ago emended it to inficit, ‘colours’; but that is far from the paradosis, and the paper suggests instead mutat, ‘changes’. Parallels are adduced, and other points in the passage commented on.

On Impulse

This paper was first published in 1995 as one of a collection of essays in honour of Donald Russell. It explores the Latin word impetus, which in the sense of ‘impulse’ came into Latin literary criticism with connotations of lack of control and even violence. An orator might be carried away by it, while carrying his audience away too. In a specialized case, Quintilian uses the word in connection with the ‘naturalist’ orators and declaimers of his time who rejected the traditional rhetorical education and relied on the inspiration of the moment. Quintilian himself inculcated the need for reason and order: even extemporization should have its method. The inspiration experienced by poets was a different, though not unrelated, matter. The paper ends by aligning Quintilian’s views with those of ‘Longinus’, on whom Donald Russell wrote a fine commentary.

Quintiliano e Virgilio

This is an article, published in 1988, from the Enciclopedia Virgiliana (translation by Barbara Macleod). Quintilian had the highest regard for Virgil, who in his ‘reading list’ of Latin authors takes first place as Homer does among Greek writers. Indeed he judges him superior in general to Homer, while conceding that he cannot reach Homer’s peaks. Quintilian constantly quotes Virgil, especially to comment on his word usage (especially archaisms), metrical practice and orthography, and to illustrate various figures of speech. Quintilian’s relationship to the later commentator Servius is discussed. He almost never criticizes Virgil, and he assumes his readers know him as well as he does.

Declamation and Philosophy

This paper was given at a conference at Ouro Preto and published in 2006. As Cicero grew older, he became highly sympathetic to some kind of rapprochement between oratory and philosophy. He came to see that the forensic orator could not avoid talk of abstract matters, and should move freely between general and particular. Indeed, late in life, he declaimed on general questions. But (it is argued) Cicero was doing little more than bring into the realms of theory what had long been practised under the teachers of rhetoric who had trained him in declamation in his youth. The paper draws attention to ‘philosophical’ passages in preserved declamation, and to declaimers who were thought of as philosophers. It suggests that all this goes back to the preliminary exercises (progymnasmata) practised in the schools of rhetoric, especially the so-called theseis.

L. Håkanson (ed.), L. Annaeus Seneca Maior. Oratorum et rhetorum sententiae, divisiones, colores, Teubner (Leipzig, 1989)

This review of L. Håkanson’s Teubner edition of the Elder Seneca (1989) appeared in 1991 after the regrettably early death of the editor, to whom the reviewer pays tribute as a scholar ‘whose name deserves to stand alongside those of the most illustrious critics of Latin prose and poetic texts’. The text of the Elder Seneca is deeply corrupt, and Håkanson made innumerable conjectures on it. The reviewer naturally could not comment on them all; instead he restricted himself to discussion of a sample, Suasoria 7, a short piece in which the editor made as many as eighty-five changes to the transmitted text. The reviewer comments on the richness of the apparatus criticus, but he felt the lack of a companion commentary volume (Håkanson’s commentary on the first book of the Controversiae has now been published).

J. Cousin (ed., tr., comm.), Quintilien. Institution oratoire, Tome VII (Livre XII), Les Belles Lettres (Paris, 1980)

This review, which appeared in 1981, concerns the sixth and final volume of Jean Cousin’s Budé edition of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria (1980). It congratulates Cousin on his achievement, and finds that ‘it is a pleasure to report that matters here are much improved’. All the same, the irritation of the constant citation of the codex descriptus H continues. The reviewer disagrees with some of Cousin’s textual choices, and criticizes the balance of the notes, for example, the amount of space given to artistic matters (‘superfluous pages made longer by apologies for their superfluity’). The review ends with a list of ‘some miscellanea’.

S. F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome:From the Elder Cato to the Younger Pliny, Methuen & Co. (London, 1977)

This review of S. F. Bonner’s Education in Ancient Rome: From the Elder Cato to the Younger Pliny (1977) appeared two years later. Bonner was well known for his standard work Roman Declamation, published in 1949 but still very useful. The book under review is ‘bigger but equally authoritative’, and the review praises its lucidity, reticent humour, and intriguing illustrations. The book falls into three parts: the first a historical survey; the second (‘in some ways the most interesting and original’) a reconstruction of the conditions under which Roman teachers worked; and the third a detailed description of what the Roman schoolboy learned and how he learned it. The review singles out for more detailed discussion the use of imaginary laws in the declamation school.