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The books of Phaedrus requested by Cicero (Att. 13.39)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Kirk Summers
Kirk Summers
Affiliation:
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
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Extract

Around 16 August of 45 B.C. Cicero wrote a brief letter to Atticus (Alt. 13.39) in which he reminds Atticus to send the books of the Epicurean scholarch Phaedrus that he had requested. The Greek words in the text of his request have been corrupted through the centuries

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , May 1997 , pp. 309 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1997

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References

1 Shackleton-Bailey, D. R. (ed.), Cicero′s Letters to Atticus (Cambridge, 1966), vol. 5 letter 342 (hereafter S-B.);Google ScholarTyrrell, R. Y. and Purser, L. C., The Correspondence of Cicero (Dublin, 1915), vol. 5 letter 659.Google Scholar

2 S.-B., p. 387.Google Scholar

3 See Alt. 13.38 (S-B. 5.341, dated c. 15 August 45 B.C.). Taken in conjunction with de divinatione 2.3–4, it is clear that Cicero has finished (or just about finished) the Tusculan Disputations and is in the midst of writing the de natura deorum. For a discussion of the dating see Pease, A. S. (ed.), M. Tulli Ciceronis de natura deorum (Cambridge, MA, 1955), vol. 1, pp. 20–22.Google Scholar

4 Philippson, R., ‘Die Quelle der epikureischen Gotterlehre in Ciceros erstem Buche de natura deorum’, SO 19 (1939), 15–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Ibid., 29–31. Also Pease, op. cit., passim, and Gigante, M., Philodemus in Italy, transl. by Obbink, D. (Ann Arbor, 1995), pp. 5–7.Google Scholar

6 On this see Raubitschek, A. E., ‘Phaidros and his Roman pupils’, Hesperia 18 (1949), 96–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 101–102; repr. in The School of Hellas (Oxford, 1991), pp. 337–344. For Epicurus′ participation in ‘all the traditional festivals and sacrifices’, see Philodemus, 1.730–751 (Obbink) and Diogenes Laertius 10.118.

7 As Att. 13.8 (S.-B. 5.313, dated the Ides of June 45 B.C.) shows. There Cicero asks for Panaetius′ , which presumably he needed for the upcoming de divinatione. Then in the de divinatione, Cicero points ahead to the de fato at 127, when he promises to discuss in another work how everything happens by fate (but on his change of plans, see defato 1 and 4).

8 On this see Gilboa, A., ‘A further comment on the dating of the Cicero-Matius correspondence (Fam. xi.27/28)’, Historia 23 (1974), 217–228.Google Scholar

9 The idea is introduced at de finibus 2.82 with the words ‘Attulisti aliud humanius horum recentiorum...’