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Expectatio Corfiniensis*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

D. R. Shackleton Bailey
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Extract

Ancient historians must be thankful for what they get; but it seems a pity that the fall of Corfinium in mid-February, 49 B.C., should be the best recorded episode in Roman warfare, so far as contemporary documents are concerned. Regrets apart, however, the affair is of interest, psychological and dramatic as well as austerely military; and I think the relevant letters in Cicero's correspondence will repay further investigation. ‘quae qui legat non multum desideret historiam contextam’—if he reads perceptively.

O. E. Schmidt arranged these letters, which take up a large part of the eighth book Ad Atticum, into a narrative, and I do not propose to do that work over again. My purpose is confined to points on which I think I have something new to say. But it may be well to begin with a brief reminder of the whereabouts of the principal persons involved.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 1-2 , November 1956 , pp. 57 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © D. R. Shackleton Bailey 1956. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

*

Paper read to the Oxford Philological Society on 10th February, 1956.

References

1 Briefwechsel Ciceros, pp. 127–47.

2 Holmes, Rice, Roman Republic, III, 376 ffGoogle Scholar.

3 Att. 4, 8a, 2.

4 ibid. 1, 1, 4.

5 ibid. 8, 1, 3.

6 Schmidt, pp. 132 f.

7 Att. 8, 1, 1.

8 Schmidt, pp. 136 f.

9 Caesars Monarchie, 298; cf. Att. 7, 10, 1; 8, 11D, 5.

10 Att. 7, 21, 2.

11 ibid. 7, 16, 2.

12 Fam. 2, 16, 3; Schmidt, p. 95.

13 Att. 7, 12, 2.

14 ibid. 8, 11D, 5.

15 ibid. 8, 12C, 1.

16 See below, p. 60.

17 § 2 novi si quid esset scripsissem. He had evidently heard nothing but the bare fact of Pompey's retreat when he wrote the postscript to 8, 4, on the morning of the 22nd.

18 pp. 116 ff.

19 Att. 8, 1, 4.

20 ibid.

21 The first question comes abruptly, however, at might be inserted before ita, or take its place: at (= at enim) multi nobiscum sunt.

22 Rumours were rife that Afranius was on his way to Italy: cf. 7, 26, 1, and 8, 3, 7, where, incidentally, summa is not summa spes but ‘the long and the short of it’.

23 So Schmidt, p. 142.

24 Att. 8, 8, 2.

25 J. Ph. XXXIII (1914), 157 ff.

26 Tyrrell-Purser, IV, pp. xxviii (n. 2) and 100 (Tyrrell died in 1914).

27 So Schmidt for scis of the MSS.

28 p. 145.

29 Atticus was answering Cicero's 8, 2, of the 17th: § 4 ‘significas enim aliquanto secus quam solebas ut etiam Italia, si ille cedat, putes cedendum’.

30 So Bosius for certior.

31 p. 144.

32 Att. 8, 9a, 2.