Brother Quintus Research Articles

THE NARRATIVES OF CICERO'S EPISTVLAE AD QVINTVM FRATREM: CAREER, REPUBLIC AND THE EPISTVLAE AD ATTICVM

Abstract The narrative and design of Cicero's overlooked collection of letters to his brother Quintus (henceforth, QFr.) demand investigation. Within each book, the constituent letters delineate the trajectory of Cicero's life, transitioning from his political prominence to his increasing irrelevance. This narrative unfolds not only within the micro-narratives of individual books but also across the macro-narrative of the entire collection. Containing only letters from Cicero to Quintus dated between 60/59–54 and featuring a notable resemblance to the Epistulae ad Atticum (henceforth, Att.) Books 2–4, QFr., it can be argued, functions as both a ‘microcosm’ of Att. and its supplement. This article addresses these issues and argues that QFr. deserves a place alongside the ‘major’ Ciceronian collections.

The Artistic Architecture and Closural Devices of Cicero’s ad Familiares 1 and 6

The Artistic Architecture and Closural Devices of Cicero’s ad Familiares 1 and 61 Luca Grillo SPEAKING VOLUMES In Cicero’s era, members of the elite wrote many letters, some of which were circulated in collections. Perhaps following the lead of models like the Elder Cato (cf. Off. 1.37) and Cornelia (Brut. 211), Cicero intended to polish and publish a selection of his.2 Of his contemporaries, Caesar (Suet. Iul. 55.1, Gell. 17.9), Varro, and even his former slave Tiro (Fam. 16.17.1), among others, most likely planned to do the same.3 Additionally, addressees often kept the letters they had received, as Atticus kept Cicero’s, and Cicero Atticus’s (Att. 9.10.4 and 16.5.5; cf. Trapp 2003.12–13). More critically, however, third parties also gathered and circulated letters. For instance, Cicero successfully used a wealth of information from letters to incriminate Verres (cf. Verr. 2.1.78, 2.3.92, and Cugusi 1970a.1.134), but in 59, he grew concerned about another governor, his brother Quintus, whom he criticized for dispatching some letters carelessly (QFr. 1.2.8). Quintus should find and destroy as many as he could, while nothing could be done about those which had been already gathered and circulated against him, called “rolls of selected letters, which are usually criticized,” “volumina selectarum epistularum quae reprehendi solent” [End Page 399] (1.2.8). In other words, supporters or detractors of public figures employed collections of letters to boost or damage their writers’ public image. Ancient authors’ intentions in collecting and publishing their own letters, then, can be seen as an attempt to control their self-fashioning and, especially, to forestall undesirable competing images. Recently, scholars have productively inquired into the self-fashioning of authors who published their own letters like Ovid, Pliny, Jerome, and Augustine (Gibson 2012, with bibliography). The case of Cicero’s ad Familiares, however, is different: most likely, Cicero did not edit this collection, and attempts to identify the editor have produced only hypotheses (cf. White 2010.31–34 and 174–75). For a long time, failure to identify the editor has prevented scholars from appreciating the artistic design that some books of the ad Familiares display as collections; and as a result, Cicero’s self-fashioning has been considered in regard to specific letters (e.g., Fam. 1.9 or 5.12) taken singulatim, without asking what image specific books broadcast. Modern editors’ decision to break up the book units and reorganize the corpus chronologically or thematically reflects a modern focus of interest:4 understandably, his letters continue to be ransacked for evidence about Cicero and for answers to various questions about his times. Recently, however, Mary Beard wondered whether by approaching these letters chronologically, as modern editors invite us to do, “we have lost as much as we have gained” (2002.115).5 Indeed, a chronological [End Page 400] reorganization deeply affects the way we approach each letter and discourages us from asking the type of questions that, following Beard, I wish to pursue in this paper. In particular, I plan to consider two books (1 and 6) as collections and argue that the letters’ dispositio, “organization,” and, especially, these books’ closures, display some bold and meaningful choices; that with these choices, the editor, whoever he was, provides a positive image of Cicero; and lastly, that taking into account the editor’s organization, and reading some letters in the context of their collection can help to clarify obscure passages. AD FAMILIARES 1 The first book of ad Familiares collects eleven letters (counting 1.5 as two): the first ten are addressed to Lucius Lentulus Spinther, who was then governor of Cilicia, and the last one to a much less prominent character, Lucius Valerius. These letters span three years, from January 56 to December 54, covering a period which was far from easy for Cicero: after returning from exile, he experienced the hostility of some optimates; he felt compelled to support Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus; and, in turn, their influence forced him to recant some of his ideals. The letters to Lentulus represent only a sample of those Cicero sent him; the...

READING CICERO'S AD FAMILIARES 1 AS A COLLECTION

Toward the end of the Republic, Cicero was not alone in planning to collect his own letters for publication (Att. 16.5.5). Most likely, Caesar (Suet. Iul. 55.1; Gell. NA 17.9) and Varro, among others, intended to do the same, and Cicero had access to letters by the Elder Cato (Off. 1.36–7) and Cornelia (Brut. 211). But it was not only authors or recipients who assembled and circulated letters. In December 59, Cicero wrote to his brother Quintus, who was concluding his mandate as governor of Asia, and encouraged him to leave behind a positive image of himself (relinque, quaeso, quam iocundissimam memoriam tui, QFr. 1.2.8). In particular, Cicero did not hide his concern at some carelessness Quintus displayed in sending out certain letters (litterarum missarum indiligentiam reprehensam, 1.2.7): of those, Quintus should destroy the ones he was able to find (tolle omnis, si potes, iniquas, tolle inusitatas, tolle contrarias, 1.2.8), while nothing could be done about some collections which had already been circulated and criticized (esse uolumina selectarum epistularum quae reprehendi solerent, 1.2.8). In other words, both the authors (or their friends) and their ill-wishers selected, assembled and circulated letters. Who chose which letters mattered enormously, since collections had the power to enhance or damage a person's public image.

Amor et Amicitia dans la correspondance d’exil de Cicéron

The study considers the relationships of amor and amicitia in Cicero’s correspondence of exile, with a particular focus on the exile’s main three attachments : to his wife and children, to his brother Quintus, and to his friend Atticus. In all three cases, the exile causes a major crisis, the core of which is constituted by an intense sense of guilt with a specific form in each case. Thus, Cicero’s discourse on amor and amicitia combines references to contemporary material, social and political life, with patterns taken from philosophy and literature, in order to express the tragic nature of his experience. Cicero also calls forth such key notions as sensibility (mollis animus) in the case of Quintus, or humanitas in that of Atticus, to analyse the situations and find a solution to the difficulties encountered. The study further takes into account other relationships with a particular focus on the active involvement of such individuals or groups, which benefits the exile (or on the refusal of it). Finally, the theme of the conjunction of studia and officia leads to the examination of the relation between feeling and action (it aims, accomplishments and shortcomings), both on the part of the friends and relatives and that of exile himself.

OF GODS, MEN AND STOUT FELLOWS: CICERO ON SALLUSTIUS'EMPEDOCLEA(Q. FR.2.10[9].3)

Cicero's letter to his brother Quintus from February 54 is best known for containing the sole explicit contemporary reference to Lucretius’De rerum natura, but it is also notable as the source of the only extant reference of any kind to another (presumably) philosophical didactic poem, Sallustius’Empedoclea(Q. fr.2.10(9).3= SB 14):Lucretii poemata, ut scribis, ita sunt: multis luminibus ingenii, multae tamen artis. sed, cum ueneris. uirum te putabo, si Sallusti Empedoclea legeris; hominem non putabo.Lucretius’ poems are just as you write: they show many flashes of inspiration, but many of skill too. But more of that when you come. I shall think you a man, if you read Sallustius’Empedoclea; I shan't think you a human being.

An gravius aliquid scribam: Roman seniores write to iuvenes

I USED TO WONDER WHEN READING HORACE SERMO 2.1 the fictive dialogue with the real-life jurisconsult, C. Trebatius Testa, why this expert advises the poet to oil up and swim the Tiber whenever the satirical impulse keeps him from sleep.' Although the exercise is certainly appropriate to young jocks of Augustan Rome, it seems like a frivolous antidote to the literary obsessions of a man almost 40. Unexpectedly the answer popped out at me from a letter that Cicero had written to a much younger Testa in December 54 while Trebatius was serving as a member of Caesar's camp in Gaul. Not Horace's athletic proclivities are in question, but those of Testa. More cautious in military than in judicial affairs, as Cicero styles him, Testa is a studiossissimus homo natandi, who has nonetheless balked at a swim in the ocean.2 Undoubtedly, Cicero is referring to Caesar's first British expedition from which Testa had somehow managed to excuse himself. Either from him, or more likely from his brother Quintus, who was a member of the invading company,3 Cicero had heard of the soldiers' difficult landing. As Caesar reports, the soldiers of the tenth legion,

The Date of Cicero's Pro Archia

The Bobiensian scholiast tells us that the speech Pro Archia was delivered by Cicero in a court presided over by his brother Quintus as praetor, who held this office in 62 B.C. The scholiast makes two clear references to Quintus (ad Pro Archia 3):(a) Archias presented this case, dealing with the Papian law on Roman citizenship, in the court of Quintus Cicero, the brother of this Marcus Tullius …(b) It is significant that he makes mention of the praetor himself, that is of his brother Quintus Cicero, who was in charge of the trial. Indeed, it is most appropriate that he speaks in praise of a fine poet in the court of someone who takes pleasure in pursuits of this kind, for Quintus Cicero was a writer not only of epic, but also of tragedy.

Beyond (Dis)belief: Rhetorical Form and Religious Symbol in Cicero's de Divinatione

Beyond (Dis)belief:Rhetorical Form and Religious Symbol in Cicero's de Divination* Brian A. Krostenko Introduction In Cicero's de Divinatione, Marcus and his brother Quintus present cases against and for the idea that divination is possible.1 The work has received mixed and sometimes conflicting interpretations. Older commentators, subscribing in various degrees to the view that Roman religion was progressively declining, or that it had become a mere tool in the hands of corrupt politicians,2 have seen the case made by the skeptical M. as a genuine refutation of the possibility of divination, with the pietistic Q. as the straw man.3 More recent commentators [End Page 353] have detected subtler political motivations4 and even denied that Cicero means one side to win at all.5 This article, which draws especially upon Linderski (1982) and Schofield, aims to expound an interpretation that joins the idea, developed in more recent work, that the second book is not an unproblematic account of Cicero's own views on divination, to the conviction, commoner to older scholarship, that the contemporary state of the politico-religious system was important to the work's conception. I will suggest that de Divinatione is not quite, or not merely, a discussion of the question of divination, but is an indirect and dialectical attempt to construct a normative definition for religious symbols in Roman culture, among which divinatory practices, in the form of augury and extispicine, were especially prominent. De Divinatione illustrates the inadequacies, for the purposes of Roman social practice, of both the fideistic and the skeptical approach to such symbols; but, having illustrated these inadequacies, the text also points dialectically in the direction of a tertium quid that avoids the pitfalls of both positions. Cicero's method of illustrating the shortcomings of fideism and skepticism is unusual: it is broadly speaking, rhetorical, even poetic, rather than philosophical. The failings of the two positions are brought to the fore by aspects of what may be called, loosely, the rhetorical form of the argument: how Cicero arranges and fits out the speech of each debater—the distributio and ornatus of each book, to use the technical language of rhetoric. In writing de Divinatione Cicero obviously drew on various philosophical source materials, from the Stoics for arguments in favor and from the Academics for arguments against.6 In adapting these philosophical positions, Cicero, as an oratorical craftsman, naturally structured them for rhetorical effectiveness and added [End Page 354] rhetorical flourishes—figures of speech, details of presentation, illustrative quotations from poetry, and the like. That is one of the strengths of the orator, as against philosophers, who in Crassus' formulation, use a "thin and bloodless idiom" (tenui quodam exsanguique sermone), whereas only a proper orator can expound on the same topics "pleasantly and impressively" (cum omni iucunditate et grauitate, de Orat. 1.56-57). The sorts of structures Cicero uses and the flourishes he adds are not, however, empty, mechanical, or indiscriminate additions, but distinctly and consistently different for each half of the dialogue. These details, I will suggest, were sensitively selected by Cicero, with his highly refined sense for who should speak in what way—in short, his decorum—in order to produce certain ideological polarities between M. and Q. These polarities, in turn, emphasize that both fideism and skepticism fail to provide an adequate account of the Roman practice of divination. De Divinatione also presents a dialectical solution to these inadequacies, in two ways. There is first M.'s occasional insistence that Roman ritual practice be maintained, which, far from mere pragmatism, is, as I will argue below, precisely the resolution to which the text's opposing tensions point. However, the most interesting part of the dialectical solution is, like the inadequacies themselves, also indicated in a "rhetorical" rather than a "logical" way. The de Divinatione contains substantial quotations from Cicero's previously independent poetry; in this article I will be especially concerned with the quotations from the Marius and the de Consulatu suo. Notably all the quotations appear in Q.'s half of the argument: that is, Q. uses his own brother's poetry against him; M. the character in effect argues against Cicero...

The Comment Ariolum Petitionis

1. The Commentariolum Petitionis is not in the Codex Mediceus of Cicero's correspondence with his brother Quintus, but it appears at the end of the letters to Quintus in the other manuscripts. It starts in the normal manner of a letter (QVINTVS MARCO FRATRIS. D.) and is, or purports to be, a collection of tips on canvassing set in the particular context of M. Cicero's consular candidature in 64: a composition of his brother Quintus. It is printed as no. 12 in Tyrrell and Purser's collection of Cicero's Letters.

Forerunners of the Gracchi

The tribunate of the plebs, according to a statement that Marcus Cicero puts into the mouth of his brother Quintus, was an office born in sedition and destined to create sedition (‘in seditione et ad seditionem nata,’ Leg. III, 19). There were two major periods of sedition. The first, the time of strife between patricians and plebeians, lasted from the birth of the tribunate in the early fifth century to the Lex Hortensia of 287 B.C. The second is usually dated from the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 to the dictatorship of Caesar, a time when the tribunate was repeatedly an instrument of revolution, now accompanied by violence. The general view is that in the century-and-a-half between these two periods the tribunes, except in the time of Gaius Flaminius, were in accord with the Senate and were indeed agents of senatorial rule.