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Cicero, Laertes and Manure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Stephanie West
Stephanie West
Affiliation:
Herford College, Oxford
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Extract

Cicero's Cato, in a passage nicely illustrating that enthusiasm for Greek literature which is said to have come upon him in old age, offers some valuable observations about manure (Sen. 54): ‘quid de utilitate loquar stercorandi? dixi in eo libro quern de rebus rusticis scripsi; de qua doctus Hesiodus ne verbum quidem fecit, cum de cultura agri scriberet; at Homerus, qui multis ut mihi videtur ante saeclis fuit, Laertam lenientem desiderium quod capiebat e filio, colentem agrum et eum stercorantem facit.’

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , December 1989 , pp. 553 - 555
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1989

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References

1 ‘si eruditius videtur disputare quam consuevit ipse in suis libris, attribuito litteris Graecis, quarum constat eum perstudiosum fuisse in senectute’ (Sen. 3).

2 Thus e.g. Lamer, , RE s.v. Laertes (434)Google Scholar: ‘dass λιςτρε⋯ειν Od. xxiv 227 mit stercorari wiedergegeben ist, ist lediglich Irrtum Ciceros’; Helm, ibid. s.v. M. Porcius Cato Censorius (145): ‘das Missverstandnis des homerischen λιςτρε⋯οντα.’

3 J. G. F. Powell ad loc.; see further Boscherini, S., ‘Su di un “errore” di Cicerone (De senectute, 54)’, QUCC 7 (1969), 36–41Google Scholar.

4 cf. 22.414, 24.640.

5 κοπρ⋯ζοντα for λιςτρε⋯οντα would also do the trick, exemplifying the common replacement of an out-of-the-way word with something easier. Admittedly, κοπρ⋯ζω is only doubtfully Homeric; at Od. 17.299 the MSS are divided between κοπρ⋯ς(ς)οντες and κοπρ⋯ςοντες But though the verb itself is rare, its meaning is obvious.

6 διαςκεν⋯ is the scholiasts' term for deliberate alteration of the text, normally with reference to lines judged to be interpolated; see further Lehrs, K., De Aristarchi studiis Homericis3 (Leipzig, 1882), p. 330Google Scholar.

7 Thus, e.g. Od. 4.57–8 (= 1.141–2), absent from many of the mediaeval MSS and suspected by Athenaeus, belong to a formal meal with freshly roasted meat and are incongruous after 56 which refers to the production of left-overs for unexpected arrivals. Similarly, the repetition of Menelaus' presentation speech (4.613–19) to follow 15.112 produces, among other difficulties, a very awkward juxtaposition at 119–20, but is fortunately betrayed as an interpolation by its absence from some of the mediaeval MSS and from p 28 (Pack2 1106); see further Apthorp, M. J., The Manuscript Evidence for Interpolation in Homer (Heidelberg, 1980), pp. 200–16Google Scholar.

8 Such too seems to have been the sense of the line added after Il. 23.136 in the third-century B.C. p 12 (Pack2 979). On these additional lines see further West, S., The Ptolemaic Papyri of Homer (Cologne-Opladen, 1967), pp. 87f, 96f, 176CrossRefGoogle Scholar.