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Hirschfeld and Judeich on the Lex Pompeia Licinia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

T. Rice Holmes
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Extract

Before the year 1857, when Mommsen published his celebrated treatise Die Rechtsfrage zwischen Caesar und dem Senat, most scholars believed that Caesar's provincial command legally expired at the end of 49 B.C.; but Mommsen demonstrated the falsity of this opinion, and for nearly half a century it was an article of faith that the date fixed was the 1st of March. I may remark parenthetically that, although this date is usually quoted, it would be more correct to say the 28th of February. In 1904, however, Otto Hirschfeld gave reasons for believing that Caesar's command was not expressly secured beyond March 1, 50; and although Ludwig Holzapfel vigorously defended the orthodox view, Hirschfeld remained for several years in possession of the field. In 1913 Walther Judeich, while admitting that Hirschfeld had worsted Mommsen, argued, ‘convincingly’ as Mr. F. E. Adcock thinks, that the date was December 29, 50. The writers of the article on Latin Literature in The Year's Work in Classical Studies (1915), noticing the reissue of the third volume of The Correspondence of Cicero, remark that ‘the authors [Tyrrell and Purser] still hold the pious faith that Caesar's command in Gaul was to run out on the 1st of March in 49; it is a pity,’ they add, ‘in view of Hirschfeld and the rest, that they have not shown the English reader their grounds for that belief.’ I propose in this article to give mine for sharing it.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 1916 , pp. 49 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1916

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References

page 49 note 1 Klio, 1904, pp. 76–87; 1905, pp. 236–40.

page 49 note 2 Ib., pp. 107–16.

page 49 note 3 Rhein. Mus., 1913, pp. 1–10.

page 49 note 4 The Year's Work in Classical Studies, 1914, p. 125.

page 49 note 5 I took account of Hirschfeld's, view, in so far as it bore upon a passage in B.G., viii. 39Google Scholar, 3, in Caesar's Conquest oj Gaul2, pp. 832–4, and of Judeich's, in my edition of the Bellum Gallicum (1914, pp. 388–9)Google Scholar.

page 49 note 6 15, 37.

page 49 note 7 Att. vii. 7, 6; 9, 4; Phil. ii. 10, 24.

page 49 note 8 ii. 46, 2.

page 49 note 9 Pomp. 51–2; Cras., 15; Caes., 21.

page 49 note 10 B.C., ii. 17–18.

page 49 note 11 Diuus Iulius, 24.

page 49 note 12 xxxix. 33, 3; xliv. 43, 2. Cf. xl. 59, 3.

page 49 note 13 xliv. 43, 1.

page 50 note 1 Klio, 1904, p. 83.

page 50 note 2 Die Rechtsfrage, etc.. pp. 51–2.

page 50 note 3 Fam., viii., 8, 9.

page 50 note 4 Willems, P., Le sénat, etc., ii. 562–3Google Scholar.

page 50 note 5 Klio, 1904, p. 84.

page 50 note 6 Willems, P., Le sénat, etc., ii. 588–9Google Scholar.

page 50 note 7 See Klio, 1904, p. 85.

page 50 note 8 Cic., Att., viii. 3, 3.

page 50 note 9 Dio, xl. 56, 1.

page 50 note 10 Ib.; Suet, , Diuus Iulius, 28Google Scholar.

page 50 note 11 Klio, 1904, p. 84.

page 51 note 1 Is it certain that anyone demanded that Caesar should be recalled after—that is, immediately after—March 1, 50 ? The only evidence is in Fam., viii. 8, 4: (plane perspecta Cn. Pompeii uoluntate in earn partem) ut eum decedere post Kalendas Martias placeret. I suggest that these words mean, not ‘that a decree should be passed for Caesar's quitting his province after the 1st of March’ but ‘that a decree should be passed after the 1st of March for Caesar's quitting his province’; and I find that Watson, (Cicero: Select Letters, 1881, p. 236)Google Scholar interprets them in this sense. Cf. § 5 of the same letter. It is true that M. Marcellus ‘proposed to fix the end of Caesar's government on the 1st of March’ (Att., viii. 3. 3), and, notwithstanding the opinion of Lange, L. (Röm. Alt. iii. 374)Google Scholar, I am inclined to think that he means March 1, 50, not 49; but Pompey resisted this proposal. Moreover, the first sena torial resolution of September 29, 51—that the question of the consular provinces was to be brought before the House on March i, 50—wias not vetoed by the tribunes who favoured Caesar; and it certainly would have been if it had implied that he could be legally recalled on that day.

page 51 note 2 Att., vii. 7, 6.

page 51 note 3 Rhein. Mus., 1913, pp. 4–5.

page 51 note 4 Fam., viii. 11, 3.

page 51 note 5 Klio, 1904, p. 82. Cf. ib. 1905, p. 239.

page 51 note 6 The Correspondence of Cicero, vol. iii., p. lxxix.

page 52 note 1 I have not noticed the reasons which Momm-sen, (Die Rechtsfrage, etc., p. 53Google Scholar, n, 138) gave for believing that Caelius was thinking of 49 B.C., because they depend upon the hypothesis, which he believed that he had proved (pp. 40–1), that Caesar's command could not be lawfully terminated before the end of February, 49.

page 52 note 2 Mommsen, (op. cit., p. 54Google Scholar and n. 140) ap-parently thinks that this supposition is defensible, Cf. p. 53, n. 143. 3

page 52 note 3 B.G., viii. 39, 3.

page 52 note 4 Klio, 1904, p. 83.

page 52 note 5 Ib., p. 78.

page 53 note 1 In earn partem [sc. Aquitaniam] est profectus, ut ibi extremum tern pus consnmeret aestiuorum (B.G., viii. 46, 1). Holzapfel, (Klio, 1905, pp. 113–14)Google Scholar has anticipaed me in calling attention to this passage.

page 53 note 2 B.G., iv. 20, 1. See also iv. 4, 7 (reliquam partem Mentis); v. 31, 4 (reliqua pars noctis); vii.10. 1(reliquam partem hiemis); vii. 25, 1 (reliqua parte noctis); B.C., iii. 28, 6(reliquam noctis partem), etc.

page 53 note 3 See the preceding note.

page 53 note 4 What I have written in the text disposes of the attempt which made, Hirschfeld (Klio, 1905, p. 237)Google Scholar to answer Holzapfel (see n. 1 above). Hirschfeld, however, insists that even if by unam aestatem Hirtius meant the summer of 50, ‘this can only be used as an argument to prove that Hirtius had in view the actual facts of the case, namely, that Caesar, considering the resolutions passed by the Senate in Rome, might only remain on in Gaul for the summer of 50.’ Hirschfeld seems to have forgotten that the Gauls could not in the summer of 51 have foretold senatorial resolutions the earliest of which were passed on the 29th of September of that year (Fam., viii. 8, 5). The only way of evading the conclusion which I have drawn from the statement of Hirtius would be to adopt a theory which Watson, (op. tit., p. 287)Google Scholar notices,—that Caesar's second term of five years was to run ‘from the day of the enactment of the consular law [lex Pompeia Licinia] in 55 B.C., supposed to have been November 13.’ Now on November 15, 55, Cicero, writing from Tusculum, says (Att. iv. 13Google Scholar, 2) that Crassus has already left Rome for Syria; and it is evident from the narrative of Dio (xxxix. 33–9) that the consular law had been passed long before.

page 53 note 5 Rhein. Mus., 1913, pp. 1–2.

page 53 note 6 Schmidt, O. E., Der Briefwechsel des M. Tullius Cicero, p. 101Google Scholar.

page 54 note 1 Att., vii. 7, 6.

page 54 note 2 Schmidt, O. E., op. cit., p. 102Google Scholar.

page 54 note 3 Att., vii 9.4.

page 54 note 4 The Correspondence of Cicero, iii. 291. Watson, , op., p. 285Google Scholar.

page 54 note 5 B.C. i. 6. 5.

page 54 note 6 Cf. Att., vii. 7. 5, with Fam., viii. 13. 2.

page 55 note 1 This view is supported by the two passages (B. C, i. 2, 6; 9, 2) in which Caesar says that [on They could not have been the first or any other January 1, 49] the Senate resolved that he should disband his army before a specified day (ante certam diem), and that his enemies, by disregard-ing the law [of 52] which authorized him to stand for the consulship in his absence, deprived him of six months' tenure of his command (ereptoque semenstri imperio). Lange, (op. cit. 398)Google Scholar identifies certam diem with July 1, the last day on which Caesar could present himself in person as a candidate for the consulship. I believe that he is right, because the six months of which Caesar was to be deprived must have been the last six months of the year (cf. Livy, , Epit., 108)Google Scholar. six months; for if, although the law of 52 authorized him to stand for the consulship in his absence, he had been obliged to return to Rome immediately after his election, he would have gained nothing in immunity from prosecution and might just as well have returned on March 1. Evidently then his enemies, when they appointed his successor in January, 49, did not require him to resign his command until nearly six months later.

page 55 note 2 Rhein. Mus., 1913, p. 3.

page 55 note 3 Ib., p. 7.

page 56 note 1 Rhein. Mus., 1913, pp. 6–7.