A Review of M. Durand's La Date Du De Divinatione

Abstract

M. Rene Durand's theory, as set out in Melanges Boissier (1903), is that Cicero's De Divinatione was composed in January-February, 44 B.C.; that immediately after Caesar's assassination (March 15, 44) Cicero, in great haste to publish this treatise, revised it, interpolated passages (including the reference to Caesar's death), wrote the proemium to the second book, and published the entire work between March 15 and April 6, 44. M. Durand's argument in support of his theory is so brilliant and forceful and so plausibly presented that it is not surprising that it has been accepted by many eminent scholars as having settled the long-mooted question as to whether Cicero wrote this treatise before or after the Ides. But this argument, we believe, is more speciou-s than sound, and is based on assumptions demionstrably false, as, in the following discussion, we shall endeavor to show. M. Durand's assertion that the De Divinatione was published after the Ides and before the De Fato must be accepted as true. This is clear from the proemium to the second book of the De Divinatione and from the references, among others, to Caesar's death in 1. 119 and 2. 23. The composition, however, he places before the Ides and, in doing so, discusses the question by giving his reasons (1) why the treatise could not have been written after the Ides, and (2) why it must have been composed prior to the Ides; i.e., in JanuaryFebruary, 44. His first point is that the De Divinatione preceded the De Fato and the De Fato was begun May 1, 44 B.C.