Valerius Maximus, ›Facta et dicta memorabilia‹, Book 8

Text, Introduction, and Commentary

John Briscoe

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9783110664379
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: Literature

There is no modern commentary on the whole of Valerius Maximus' Facta et dicta memorabilia, though commentaries on books 1 and 2 have been published by, respectively, David Wardle (1998) and Andrea Themann-Steinke. Progress is likely to be made by further commentaries on individual books and John Briscoe contributes to this with a commentary on Book 8, of particular interest because of the variegated nature of its subject matter.

The commentary, like those of Briscoe's commentaries on Livy Books 31-45 (OUP, 1973-2012), deals with matters of content, textual issues, language and style, and literary aspects. An ample introduction discusses what is known about the author, the time of writing, the structure both of the work as a whole and of Book 8 itself, Valerius' sources, language and style, the transmission of the text, editions of Valerius, and the methods of citation used in the commentary. The commentary is preceded by a text of Book 8, a slightly revised version of that in Briscoe's edition in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana (1998), with an apparatus limited to passages where the commentary discusses a textual problem.

The book will give readers an understanding of an author once very popular, then long neglected and now enjoying a revival.

Commentary

1 cap. sint: A; LG have sunt, but quibus makes it clear that the clause is an indirect question with the main verb understood. sint, moreover, occurs in all three manuscripts in the list of chapters preceding the whole work (ed. 4) and in AL (it is absent from G) in the inscriptio to this book. The agreement of LG suggests that α had sunt, corrected by A from the inscriptio.

In this chapter I give references, by trial number, to the entries in Alexander.

praef. 1 quo: det. (Kempf (1854) implies Γ). α has quoque, with ut added by the correctors of A and L because of the following subjunctive. quoque has no reference and probably arose from a corrupted dittography of quo. The comparative following quo is, of course, regular in final clauses. (cf. K−St ii. 233).

ancipites iudiciorum motus: ‘unpredictable emotions of the courts’ (SB’s ‘uncertain operations of trials’ is unhelpful). V. writes iudiciorum rather than iudicum because the decision of the court represents the sum of those of the individual jurors.

2. pro quibus: G. L has per (corrected to pro) quibus de; the corrected reading of A is quibus de (the dots in my apparatus should be deleted), preceded by an erasure. per is probably an idiosyncratic error, whether of L alone or the source of AL, with pro quibus de being the reading of α, the omission of de a conjecture of G, that of pro an emendation in A to cohere with the title above. It is not impossible, though, that the latter is right, the title being derived from the original reading: pro could have been caused by pronuntiatione in the inscriptio. Causal pro is very rare before V.; cf. TLL x/2. 1434. 7 ff., citing Plaut. Truc. 230, Cic. Verr. 2. 2. 23, and Prop. 3. 7. 24; from V. they cite only 9. 13. ext. 1: there, however, it means ‘on behalf of’ and is followed by a causal clause; in the passages listed by Otón Sobrino, iii. 1628 under ‘por (idea casual)’ pro means ‘in return for’.

absol. 1. Horatius. At 6. 3. 6 V. narrated the story of Horatius, after the combat of three Horatii with three Curiatii, the result of which was to determine the outcome of the war between Rome and Alba Longa, killing his sister because she was weeping at the death of one of them, her fiancé; there he mentions only the trial before the people, when Horatius was defended by his father.

The episode is narrated at length by Livy 1. 24–26, who was almost certainly V.’s main source, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus 3. 13–18; the earliest source is Cic. inu. 2. 78–9, Mil. 7; for later sources, deriving only from Livy and Dionysius, see Münzer, RE viii. 2324.

Livy’s account has provoked a great deal of discussion, largely concerning the fetial formula, the charge of perduellio, and prouocatio. It is most unlikely that prouocatio and iudicia populi existed in the regal period. See Münzer, op. cit., 2322–7, Ogilvie, 109–17. V. simplifies by making the original condemnation the decision of the king alone and having no mention of the trial for perduellio before the duumuiri.

In my testimonia apparatus delete stop after ad.

3. M.: thus also Cicero, Mil. 7 (not diu. 2. 78–9, as claimed by Ogilvie, 116) and Dionysius in later references to Horatius (3. 27. 1, 30. 4, 31.1;). Livy (1. 26. 7, 9, of both father and son) calls him Publius, while Zonaras 7. 6. 3 calls all three brothers Πουπλιοράτιοι. It is unclear whether V. took the praenomen from another source or it was altered later by someone who had read Dionysius; corruption in Livy seems unlikely. I ought to have indicated the possibility that V. wrote P.

Tullo: PA^c. α has Tullio, an easy error by a scribe thinking of Cicero (though it does not occur in the MSS of Livy 1. 22. 1–32. 1).

3–4. ad populum prouocato iudicio: Livy 1. 26. 8 ‘prouoco’ inquit. itaque prouocatione certatum ad populum est. For prouocatio I do no more than refer to Oakley, iv. 120–34.

4. alterum … alterum: the first alterum refers to an individual, the second to the collective noun populus. The usage appears to be unique (TLL i. 1740. 50 ff. do not cite the passage).

5. immaturum: ‘untimely’ (SB’s ‘precocious’ (cf. Otón Sobrino, iii. 1027 ‘precoz, apasionado’) gives the wrong sense). V. took the phrase from Livy 1. 26. 4, where it is put into the mouth of Horatius as he kills his sister. The only other occurrence of immaturus in V. is 5. 1. 7, of military service undertaken (by a Numidian) at too young an age.

impie: V. impius, impie, and impietas occur a total of eighteen times in V; he chooses impie here because it conveys the sense both of an offence against close relatives (cf. TLL vii/1. 621. 1 ff.) and of the religious offence of parricidium.

6. forti: the coupling of fortis with punitio has puzzled a number of critics: Kraffert proposed fortis, agreeing with dextera, Gertz feroci, Shackleton Bailey fortis facti (a scribe’s eye would have moved from the first ti to the second). In fact, fortis here has the sense of ‘severe’ found at Quint. decl. 286, Plin. epist. 5. 16. 10, Tac. ann. 1. 29. 3, all cited by OLD s.u. 5b., and constitutes the first occurrence of the usage. V. has in mind the lex horrendi carminis cited at Livy 1. 26. 6. Kempf (1854) wrongly took forti punitione to refer to the murder of Horatia, so that the phrase means ‘the blame incurred by the severe punishment’.

liberata: Lipsius proposed librata, apparently meaning ‘poised (sc. to strike a blow)’, so that the fortis punitio is the murder of Horatia. V. may sometimes write obscurely, but obscurity should not be introduced by conjecture; it is, though, not an objection that librare is not found elsewhere in V.

6–7. consanguineo … cruore: the blood he had spilt was related to his own. consanguineus occurs also at 5. 5. 3; it is found from Plautus onwards, though never in Cicero’s speches (cf. TLL iv. 359. 14 ff.).

7. haurire: syntactically with tantum … quantum … gloriae, but it is the verb regularly used of drawing blood.

absol. 2. Ser. Sulpicius Galba (Alexander 1). See also 7.1, 9. 6. 2. V.’s source is Cic. Brut. 89–90, but he portrays the episode as if it were a trial before a iudicium populi (though in line 14 he talks of a contio; cf. damn. 3 n.). In fact L. Scribonius Libo, plebeian tribune in 149, proposed that a special court should be established to try Ser. Sulpicius Galba (58), praetor in 151 (and subsequently consul in 144), who, as propraetor in Further Spain in 150, had murdered or sold into slavery a large number of surrendered Lusitanians (for full citation of sources see Münzer, RE ivA. 762–3; cf. MRR, i. 456–7, 459); Cato’s speech and Galba’s histrionics took place at the debate on Libo’s rogatio, not at a trial. The same version is found at Livy 39. 40. 12, but not at per. 49, and in a number of other sources (see my note on Livy loc. cit., failing to mention V.). In V.’s time, of course, controversial tribunician legislation and trials before the people were things of the past and V. neither understood nor cared about the details. Contrast his apparent knowledge about matters of private law, evidenced in ch. 2. On the episode cf. Astin, SA 58–60, Cato, 112–13.

8. pudicitiae: Horatia’s expression of her grief is portrayed as if it were itself a sexual act.

8–9. pudicitiae … populus … postea plus … placidum … praestitit: the alliteration is probably not deliberate; cf. Goodyear, i. 339 n. 1.

9. Libone: L. Scribonius Libo (18). V.’s early readers will have been reminded of M. Scribonius Libo Drusus, who in AD 16 was accused of conspiracy against Tiberius and committed suicide (Tac. ann. 2. 27–32, cf. p. 4); he was not necessarily a direct descendant of the tribune of 149 (for his immediate ancestry see Münzer, RE ii...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Text
• Commentary
• Appendix
• Addenda
• General
• Language and Style
• A. Literary
• B. Inscriptions, Papyri and Coins
• Latin
• Greek