TYRRELL AND PURSER'S CORRESPONDENCE OF CICERO.*
PROFESSOR TYRRELL'S Latin scholarship is too well known for praise, and it may be taken for granted that he knew what he was about when he made Mr. Purser co-editor with himself of this third volume of his admirable edition of Cicero's Correspondence. He was paying a great and, we make no doubt, a thoroughly well-deserved compliment to Mr. Purser by doing so, and we are glad to find that we can say that the present volume is quite as satisfactory as its prede- cessors were. It is easy to predict, therefore, that when finished, Tyrrell and Purser's edition of Cicero's Corre- • Ihe Correarmdence nf M. T. Cicer.. Vol. 1II. Edited, with Notes and an Introduclion, by Pr”fessor R. Y. Tyrrell and L. O. Purser, Fellow and Tutor of Trinity college, Dublin. Dublin : University Press. 1890.
spondence will be placed in the foremost rank of English editions of the classics, and will be referred to by Oxford and Cambridge scholars with feelings of sincere respect and admiration. It behoves us to say thus much with some emphasis, because in the following notice we may have to express dissent more than once with some of the views of the Dublin editors. In the introduction, for instance, we are unable to agree with them in attributing the early death of Catullus to his passion for Clodia. That dissolute queen of a dissolute section of Roman society jilted the poet, we are told, for Cicero's lively correspondent, Ccelius. Certainly, if Clodia were Lesbia, this may be accepted as a fact. But then, it must also be accepted as a fact that this glass of fashion and mould of form, Rufus Ccelins, was nard and cassia proof, and as malodorous as an olens gregis maritus. It is dangerous to treat the sallies of a young poet like Catullus as if he were pouring himself out as plain "as downright Shippen or as old Montaigne." His Lesbia may have been that "twopenny-halfpenny Clytemnestra," as these editors call Clodia ; and we may remark by the way that "copper whore and husband-killer" would bring out more clearly what Ccelius meant when he dubbed her " quadragenaria Clytemnestra." The question is one not worth discussing seriously, but we feel that there is something to be said for Professor Nettleship's view that Clodia was not Lesbia, though there can be no doubt that the weight of authority is strongly against that view. The editors, we are delighted to find, treat Brutus as we have always thought that he deserves to be treated. He was, in the opinion of the present writer, what Johnson called Harris of Malmes- bury, "a bad prig;" and this phrase can best, perhaps, be explained by saying that it is equivalent to the Ameri- canism, "a prig, and bad at that." Cato was a satis- factory prig, but "the noblest Roman of them all" seems to us a born humbug. Cicero and Atticus, for reasons best known to themselves, chose to idealise him, and Plutarch, with Shakespeare's aid, has made a hero of him. But we infer from some of the letters in this volume, that the real Brutus was just the man to wring, if he could, from the hands of provincials, their vile cash by any misdirection. It is noticeable, too, that in his treatise" De Claris Oratoribus," or "Brutus," Cicero, painting obviously from the life, puts no sentiments into the mouth of Brutus which are not stamped with priggishness. It is curious that the editors, while quoting Cmsar's opinion of Brutus as decisive, quote only so much of it as tells, if anything, in favour of Brutus. " Quid- quid vult, valde vult," is a testimony to the energy and persistence of Brutus's will; but it is preceded by a sentence in which the judgment of Brutus is roughly disabled. It must be said, though, that other editors differ about the insertion of a non of much virtue in that sentence, so we must wait with patience to see what reading these editors adopt.
It is a matter of small importance, but more than once, if we are not mistaken, we find them somewhat to seek in the French, with which, following Mr. Jeans's example, they seem fond of rendering Cicero's little bits of Greek. He speaks good-humouredly of " quod eat subinane in nobis et non c'egootaof,oy." And they render these words thus : "That little strain of vanity and touch of chauvinism which is in my nature." The italic is theirs, and shows that they ought to have written chauvinisrne ; but " jingoism" is the nearest English equivalent for the French word, and although Cicero had by kind a sub- stratum of sturdy antique Roman jingoism, he would scarcely have characterised that feeling or failing as non cipanotop. Again, when he says of the success of his operations against the Pindenessians, "I did not know what a general I was, I am quite swelled out with pride, and have a right to be (recte wspug ird,e4ai),"—the version which the editors give of the last half-humorous phrase, "I am entete with myself," seems misleading. They notice, of course, Cicero's mistake in writing " Phliuntii " for " Phliasii," and it is curious that, with " Mytilenas " in the text, they write " Mitylenas " in their prefatory note, and " Mitylene " more than once in their commentary. They are inexact, too, in saying that the word which Cicero coined to express the nature of the Claudian house, " Appietas," was used by him "to explain the possession of the noble name of Appius." But nothing can be better or more to the point than their quotation from Tennyson in illustration of " Appietas,"—" Sir Aylmer Aylmer in his Aylmerism." We think also, with some diffi-
dence, that they have spent more trouble than the work was worth in suggesting fresh readings. Cicero says, for instance, in a letter to Atticus "Illud, potato, non adsmibis et tibi gratias non egit.' " It is plain, as will be seen from the con- text, that tibi is, through carelessness, written for mihi. Still, the meaning is plain enough, and putato may—we do not say that it does—mean pretty much what Falstaff's "think of that" did in his address to Master Brooke. In any case, it is better than any of the conjectures which are here propounded for it. We may say the same of those which are offered for jam Romm in the following sentence :—" Jucundam ease tibi jam Rome filiam gaudeo " (" I am glad that your daughter is pleasant company for you in Rome now"). Why jam.? ask the editors, and why .Romie ? So they propose, very unhappily, to read guadrimam, or jucunde moratam, or tanta icyj, and say that anything is better than plain tantopere. But why should not jam Roma stand on the supposition that Atticus's little four-year-old had ceased to make night hideous in the capital for her father P She had hitherto, it would seem, found the fumum strepitumque Borax too much for her health or temper. One most masterly conjecture, which every reader of Cicero's letters will thank the editors for printing for the first time in the text, is L. Dindorf's correction of Gizp6n-vphz oCproz, in a well-known passage in a letter from Delos. "I have no mind, therefore, to hurry," Cicero writes, "or to budge from Delos, till I see signs of fair weather from pennants," &c. "Nisi omnia axporipta op,s viderim " is what a poor conjecture makes him say, for the manuscript reading is (or rather was) past praying for. That reading is " cixparnpioni jura ;" and for this, from a line out of Archilochus beyond all question known to Cicero, L. Dindorf has restored the true reading, "nisi omnia i-'pa NpEoy porn viderim." The Gyrean hills formed a land or water mark to the man who was sailing from Delos to the isle on which they stood, and if they were clear, he might sail with a clear conscience. This is, from a literary point of view, one of the finest emendations ever made, and L. Dindorf would deserve infinite credit for it, even if Mr. Tozer should scatter it to the four winds of heaven by saying that the Gyrean hills are not visible from Delos. We devoutly hope that they are.
There are one or two minor points, in connection with modern literature, on which it seems permissible to differ from the editors. They say, for instance, that the wild fast- nesses of Cilicia were the haunts of robber chieftains as brave, if not as romantic, as Rob Roy, Roderick Dhn, and Dirk Hatteraick. The last-named rascal seems as much out of place here as Sir Peregrine Pickle did in Alison's account of the defeat of the Imperial Guard at Waterloo. And after quoting with admiration Cicero's eloquent tribute to the genius of Cesar after his murder, they, with curious in- felicity, illustrate that tribute by some bald and wooden lines from the eulogy which Lord Tennyson puts into William of Normandy's mouth over the dead body of Harold. We think, too, that as they correctly translate " laureolam in mustaceo querere " by "looking for his bays in a wedding-cake" in their notes, they ought not to translate it by "looking for his bays in a laurel-cake" in their introduction. And we mention this because, although we are unable on the spur of the moment to suggest a modern equivalent for this expression from modern literature, they ought perhaps to have found one, and, with the aid of the editor of Notes and Queries, might have done so without much difficulty.
We have nothing further to say at present in praise of this most praiseworthy edition of a collection of letters which are above all praise. We are glad to agree with the editors that Cicero's poems are not so ridiculous as they are thought to be by those who have not read the fragments which remain of them. And as for his soldiership, which they also vindicate from the contempt from which it never emerged, there is this at least to be said. If Lord Wolseley deserved the pudding and praise which he received for such a victory as Tel-el- Kebir. Cicero most certainly deserved the triumph for which he strove neither wisely nor too well. When the next volume appears, it will be time enough to examine the view which the editors appear to hold about Cesar. He was a profligate, no doubt, but he was guiltless of the cruelty which makes pro- fligacy so deadly and so contemptible. And the bribery and corruption which he practised were, in all probability, the only means by which he could, carry out his grand, and on the whole beneficial, schemes. His administration of the land which he won so well might not satisfy the Cato who made his own quietus for himself at Utica. But the elder and better Cato, who praised Hannibal Barca,'s rule in Spain so warmly, would have waxed as eloquent in eulogy o Caesar's rule in Gaul.
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