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An Emendation in Calpurnius Flaccus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Micheal Winterbottom
Micheal Winterbottom
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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Extract

The theme of the second declamation of Calpurnius Flaccus is ‘Matrona Aethiopem peperit. Arguitur adulterii’. In one of the excerpts (ed. L. Håkanson [Stuttgart, 1978], pp. 2, 6–10), the accuser is arguing that for a white woman with a white husband to produce a black child is certain proof of adultery, for individual races have fixed physical characteristics to distinguish them. I give the text as argued for by W. S. Watt (Eranos 94 [1996], 123).

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , May 1999 , pp. 338 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1999

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References

1 The earth is visualized as flat, and the sky (and in particular the sun) as descending and getting nearer to it as it approaches its eastern edge. Cf. to some extent Tacitus, Germania 46.1; Thomson, J. Oliver, History of Ancient Geography (Cambridge, 1948), p. 329Google Scholar with n. 2. I am grateful to Professor D. A. Russell for discussing this and other points with me.

2 In the West, the inhabitants of Germany and Spain are separately characterized partly by colour, partly by size. In the East, where two unspecified areas are given bodies of different sizes, a mention of their colour cannot be foregone. And only thus is point given to vicinum: see the passages cited by Nisbet and Hubbard on Horace, Odes 1.22.21, esp. Servius on Aen. 4.481 ‘et dicta Aethiopia a colore populorum, quos solis vicinitas torret’.