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A Great Orator Mislaid

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

R. Syme
R. Syme
Affiliation:
Wolfson College, Oxford
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Extract

Ser. Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51) has seldom gone short of approbation: not only noble and patrician but the first jurist to reach the consulate since Q. Scaevola. When Cicero in 63 spoke in defence of Murena he deprecated and derided the claims of legal erudition. Seventeen years later, composing in dialogue form a history of Roman eloquence, he made handsome amends to Servius, at some length (Brutus 150 ff.).

After matching M. Antonius with L. Crassus, the pair of masters who dominated the epoch preceding his own, the expositor brings Crassus into comparison with the jurist Q. Mucius Scaevola (by happy coincidence they shared the fasces in 95). Each was far from incompetent in the science professed by the other. Whereupon the alert Brutus was moved to intervene with a question: might not a similar parallel for excellence obtain between Cicero and Ser. Sulpicius, likewise coeval?

The artful device insinuates a long excursus, breaking the chronological order of the whole treatise. Together from early youth and together at Rhodes, the two friends practised the same ‘exercitationes’. In oratory Servius might perhaps have become ‘par principibus’. He preferred the law: in fact he excelled Scaevola and all predecessors, so Cicero affirms, to the ingenuous surprise of the interlocutor.

Servius had made a sagacious choice between the two civilian arts. In oratory (first in rank and estimation at Rome) Servius achieved enough for a lawyer and a consul: ‘quantum esset et ad tuendum ius civile et ad obtinendam consularem dignitatem satis’ (Brutus 155).

The Brutus furnishes ready and vivid verdicts on speakers of the time. Five consular Lentuli are put on show for style and manner, from Clodianus and Sura to the savage and minatory Crus. All dead, it is true, and they benefit from much indulgence. For Servius no writing of Cicero acclaims a public occasion when the consul displayed his talent – and no appeal to an oration of any kind. For the eloquence of Servius the friend falls back on what the legal works disclose: ‘et litterarum scientiam et loquendi elegantiam’ (153). Posterity is defrauded, the earnest student at a loss.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , December 1981 , pp. 421 - 427
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1981

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References

1 Pro Murena (4. 1. 75; 11. 1. 69); Phil. 9 (3. 8. 5; 7. 3. 18).

2 Dig. 1. 2. 44.

3 Ad Att. 12. 32. 3; 15. 17. 2.

4 Ad M. Brutum 20. 1; 23. 1 f. Both passages were neglected by Hanslik, R., RE viii a, 166fGoogle Scholar.

5 Thus R. Hanslik, op. cit. 133, 137.

6 Such is the argument of R. Hanslik, op. cit. 137. The marriage is revealed only by Jerome, , Adv. Iov. 1. 46Google Scholar: from Seneca, De matrimonio.

7 The emendation of Bergk. Not registered in the O.C.T. edition (1970).

8 The Italian volumes of CIL show no specimen. Nor can Africa oblige, often the last refuge of rarities. Africa has about sixty Lurii. ‘Veranius’ is indeed seductive.

9 Seneca, , Controv. 2. 4. 8Google Scholar.

10 Ad fam. 8. 8. 3 (Caelius Rufus).

11 Münzer, , RE Supp. v, 370Google Scholar.

12 Syme, R., Sallust (1964), p. 134Google Scholar. In 63 the wife of D. Junius Brutus (cos. 77) was a Sempronia (Cat. 25).

13 Jerome, , Adv. Iov. 1. 46Google Scholar. Given his age (about thirty) and mortality at Rome an earlier wife is not excluded.

14 Phil. 9. 12: ‘adflictus luctu non adest’. Servius was omitted from MRR (1952), cf. Historia 4 (1955), 70 = Roman Papers (1979), pp. 289 f. He may have been quaestor in 50 or 49.

15 Münzer, , RE iv a, 862Google Scholar. Also Shackleton Bailey on Ad Att. 5. 4. 1 (‘probably’).

16 Only ‘vielleicht’ in Münzer (loc. cit.) and in the commentary of Kiessling-Heinze (ed. 9, 1958).

17 Messalla Potitus (suff. 29) has been proposed by Hanslik, R., RE viii a, 136Google Scholar. It is preferable to regard him as a son of Rufus (cos. 53).

18 ILS 5989. There is also the title of ‘Calpurnia Corvini’, published in Bull. Comm. (1889), 208.

19 For the hypothesis about the sister of L. Bibulus see further History in Ovid (1978), pp. 119fGoogle Scholar. The son of Corvinus by his second wife, i.e. Cotta (cos. a.d. 20), was born c. 14 b.c.

20 PIR 2, F 590 f.

21 The word ‘Poplicola’ in the same line attaches to Pedius, cf. (against Münzer), Fraenkel, E., Horace (1957), p. 135Google Scholar. Apart from that brief comment the section devoted to Sat. 1. 10 reveals no interest in any of the people.

22 The marriage emerges from Pliny, , HN 35. 21Google Scholar. The son is identified as Q. Pedius, quaestor urbanus in 41 (ILS 3201). Hence a clue to the age of the mother.

23 Another daughter might be discovered in ‘Sulpicia Ser. f.’ who married a Cassius (ILS 3103). This lady is generally held a daughter of the jurist. Thus Münzer, , RE iv a, 878 fGoogle Scholar. (with the family stemma).

24 Frontinus, De aq. 99.

25 By his proper style surely ‘Ser. Sulpicius Postumius’. One of the earliest instances of the gentilicium of a mother or grandmother used as a cognomen.

26 Quintilian quotes or cites Pro Murena twenty-four times, the other oration only twice.

27 If so, he miscalculated, as the unanimity of modern scholarship declares and certifies.

28 For Tacitus on Pisones, , JRS 46 (1956), 17 ffGoogle Scholar. = Ten Studies in Tacitus (1970), pp. 50 ffGoogle Scholar.

29 Quintilian 4. 1. 68; 9. 3. 89.

30 Asconius 84 (speeches of Sergius Catilina and C. Antonius).

31 Seneca, Controv. 3, praef. 8.

32 Asconius 33. Sallust and two colleagues ‘inimicissimas contiones de Milone habebant, invidiosas etiam de Cicerone’.

33 Tacitus, , Dial. 37. 2fGoogle Scholar.

34 Thus Münzer, , RE iv a, 862Google Scholar; Schanz-Hosius, , Gesch. der. r. Lit. ii 4 (1935), p. 273Google Scholar; Anon. in OCD 2 (1970), p. 1022Google Scholar (with no argument).