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PAPERS ON QUINTILIAN AND ANCIENT
DECLAMATION
Frontispiece. Professor Michael Winterbottom, Corpus Christi Professor of Latin
Emeritus, University of Oxford.
Photograph courtesy of the Oxford Geology Group.
Papers on
Quintilian and Ancient
Declamation

M I C HA E L WIN TE RBO TTO M


Edited by
ANTONIO STRAMAGLIA
with
F R A N C E S C A RO M A N A N O C C H I
and
GIUSEPPE RUSSO

1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Michael Winterbottom 2019
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018963938
ISBN 978 0 19 883605 6
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
Editor’s Introduction

In the late spring of 1954, a promising Oxford undergraduate was working


hard for the Hertford scholarship (the main prize then in Latin studies). He
needed some extra tuition for Latin composition, but his tutor at Pembroke
College was recovering from a serious illness and directed him to ‘a friend at
St John’s’. This latter
on one occasion . . . did what I gather his old tutor at Balliol (Roger Mynors) used
to do, and put before me, after discussing my compositions, a piece of unfamiliar
Latin: something from the Elder Seneca. I noted in my diary for 4 June: ‘In the
evening I read about Roman declamation.’¹
The Oxford student—tall and slim, with mild but piercing blue eyes—was
obviously M(ichael) W(interbottom). His tutor at St John’s College was, also
obviously, Donald Russell; and the spark he lit in his pupil was to revolutionize
a whole field of study.
MW’s doctoral thesis was a commentary on Quintilian, Book Two: a key
part of the Institutio in matters of rhetorical training. The work was success-
fully defended in 1962,² but remained unpublished for more than forty years:
MW was by now devoting his energies to a new OCT edition of Quintilian.
He produced it—with astonishing speed and skill, considering the bulk of his
task—in 1970, together with a companion volume of Problems in Quintilian,
and after a string of preliminary studies. This early set of publications imme-
diately commanded praise and respect. It fully illustrates MW’s ‘holistic’ view
of scholarship: research on the manuscript tradition (including its human
subjects, e.g. Almeloveen) is tightly intertwined not only with the editing of a
text, but also with a constant effort to elucidate and contextualize what that
text means. With his characteristic candour, MW has recently summarized
his creed:
Ever since childhood, I have always been concerned to understand the meaning of
what I read, and I am not much troubled when I am told by critics that the Author
is dead and his meaning a matter for the Reader to decide. I feel in my naïve way
that classical prose writers meant something definite by what they wrote, and
that, if I do not understand it, that is either my fault or that of the scribes.³

¹ Winterbottom per litteras (28 August 2017). ² See here p. 218 n. [3].
³ Winterbottom (2017c), 403 (my italics). For all abbreviations see the general bibliography
below, pp. 351 61; articles and chapters reprinted in this book are referred to as A.1, A.2 . . . ,
book reviews as R.1, R.2 . . . For full details of MW’s publications alluded to throughout these
pages, see the complete list below, pp.  .
viii Editor’s Introduction
Quintilian would never subsequently fade from MW’s horizon; nor would the
Latin texts of the Anglo-Saxon Middle Ages, the object—since MW’s early
years—not of a side interest but of a whole ‘parallel career’, deserving a survey
in its own right.⁴ By the early 1970s, however, MW (then Tutorial Fellow in
classics at Worcester College, Oxford [1967–92]) was working intensively in
the field that had aroused his interest since his undergraduate days: decla-
mation. The study of Roman declamation, in particular, was not so much
dormant as nearly non-existent in those years. The texts themselves were often
barely intelligible: some of the relevant editions (any explicit mention may
charitably be dispensed with) were among the most defective that classical
scholarship has ever produced; and only a few aids were available for the
interpretation of the genre (most notably Stanley Bonner’s evergreen Roman
Declamation (1949)). A drastic and beneficial change was effected by four
great scholars: Lennart Håkanson, Donald Russell, D. R. Shackleton Bailey,
and MW; by 1989, thanks to them, first-rate editions of all the main texts in
the field of Roman declamation, and a better understanding of the whole
genre, were at last at hand.
Unlike Håkanson and Shackleton Bailey, MW did not concentrate his work
in declamation ‘only’ on ecdotic tasks: his Elder Seneca for Loeb (1974), and
the massive commentary accompanying his edition of the ‘Quintilianic’
Minor Declamations (1984), splendidly showcase his gift for deep and clear
elucidation—even of the most difficult and corrupt texts. In the same years, in
a number of seminal papers he set out to shed fresh light on the relationship
between rhetorical precepts (Quintilian’s in primis) on the one hand,
declamatory theory and practice on the other; and in Russell’s footsteps he
investigated the interaction between Greek and Roman declamation—the book
on Sopatros (1988, with Doreen Innes) being the largest, but by no means the
only, product of this effort. What is really striking, throughout these researches,
is MW’s unprecedented breadth of view. He has written on declamation from
Gorgias up to Ennodius, singling out (mostly for the first time) constants and
variables over the centuries. This he has done thanks to his admirable learning,
but also to his being immune to all the stock assumptions which would have
hampered progress. See for instance his words on the ‘early stages’ of decla-
mation in Rome:
It was not that declamation somehow became more important in the course
of the first century . Our impression that it does is largely a delusion, re
sulting from the accidents of our evidence. Declamation will have come to Rome
with the Greek teachers who brought rhetoric there in the second century . . . .
[It] did not increase in importance in the first century: it merely remained

⁴ This will be given in a volume containing a selection of MW’s medieval papers, to be edited
by Roberto Gamberini and published by SISMEL (Florence).
Editor’s Introduction ix
important, and perhaps became, in schools less austere than Quintilian’s, more
extravagant in conception.⁵
Without MW’s work, our whole understanding of ancient declamation would
now be much more narrow and superficial.
Between the 1970s and the 1990s, the indefatigable scholar—in spite of his
ever growing teaching duties, to which we owe a valuable anthology of Roman
Declamation (1980)—found time for fundamental research in various other
domains. First of all, he consolidated his reputation as a specialist in manu-
script traditions and critical editions, with his OCT texts of Tacitus (Opera
minora, 1975) and Cicero (De officiis, 1994). This was ‘obviously’ accompa-
nied by a number of papers and book reviews (on which latter see below); but
special mention should be made of the many entries MW wrote for the
standard work on Texts and Transmission edited by Leighton Reynolds in
1983. For decades now, a student’s first approach to the textual tradition of
many a Roman author or work has—beneficially—been, more often than not,
one of the admirable surveys contributed by MW to this book.
Ancient literary criticism is another recurrent field of study for MW:
the anthologies he prepared with Donald Russell have fully deserved to be
standard since their publication (1972, 1989). More occasional—but no less
serious—interest has been lavished on a number of authors, mostly for textual
and exegetical issues: Virgil in primis, but also Lucretius, Ovid, Apuleius,
Cyprian, Ambrose . . . And the medieval favourites have always been there of
course, with William of Malmesbury in the front row.
Meanwhile MW was appointed Corpus Christi Professor of Latin at Oxford
(1992), a tribute to his rank among the leading living classicists. In 2000, one
year before his retirement, the present writer (very timidly) contacted him, to
involve him in the Cassino project of re-editing the 19 Major Declamations
ascribed to Quintilian in individual volumes, with translation and commen-
tary (1999–). MW declined taking on one or more declamations himself, but
generously accepted to comment on the single volumes. The amount and
quality of his contributions to each book in this collection (from 2005 on) call
for special emphasis. It is very often ‘Winterbottom per litteras’ who finally
heals or gives sense to a passage vexed for centuries, throughout these excep-
tionally difficult texts.
All the same, the Maiores remained for several years only a side interest for
MW; but in general, declamation and ancient rhetorical texts (with their
teaching procedures) came to the forefront of his scholarship as a classicist⁶
throughout the 2000s—an activity more intensive than ever since his

⁵ Winterbottom (1982), 254 6 (= A.5 below, pp. 78 9); my italics.


⁶ No idle qualification: in the same years, MW’s ‘medieval self ’ (Freud might have talked of
a Doppelgänger) publishes no less than five books and seventeen articles and an enormous
number of book reviews.
x Editor’s Introduction
retirement. In 2006 a revised version of his D.Phil. dissertation on Quintilian,
Book Two was finally published as a book (in collaboration with Tobias
Reinhardt); in 2008 his major contribution to the monumental commentary
on Cicero’s De oratore (begun by Leeman and Pinkster) appeared; and his
papers over these years display an increasingly wider range of issues and
approaches. More will be said on this presently; here I should point out
MW’s commitment to the recovery and publication of the Nachlass of his
friend, the great Swedish scholar Lennart Håkanson, who tragically died in his
prime in 1987.⁷
Nothing has been said so far of another hallmark of MW’s scholarship:
his countless book reviews. Over the decades, they all demonstrate an unpre-
judiced—and sometimes memorable⁸—candour in assessing the reviewed
author’s merits and shortcomings: something quite hard to come by, these
days. What is more, they always offer some acute new insight to the reader:
both on the specific subject of the book under review, and on broader—
ecdotic, most often—methodological issues. MW’s ‘collected reviews would
serve in themselves as a manual of editing’, Michael Reeve wrote some years
ago;⁹ few will disagree.
Vis à vis such a broad and varied array of publications, this book offers a
selection of papers from two especially representative and intrinsically con-
nected fields of interest. The choice is primarily based, of course, on the
scholarly ‘weight’ of the single items; but the place and circumstances of
publication have also played a role: many of MW’s most acute contributions
originally appeared in conference proceedings, Festschriften, and rare period-
icals—often hard to find even in leading libraries—or embedded in reviews
that even modern search tools may easily miss. It seemed appropriate to give
special consideration to such materials.
The author has obviously taken part in the selection process. He decided
that any items on Quintilian’s text and transmission prior to his edition
(1970) should not be included, for that edition took full account of them; and
he excluded any non-specialist pieces.¹⁰ What this book does include, as for
Quintilian, are papers on some key aspects of the Institutio oratoria—regarding
morals, style, structure, rhetorical technicalities, auctores (A.1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 13, 18);
and the more recent contributions on Quintilian’s text (A.15, 19; R.2–4, 7–8).

⁷ On this demanding enterprise, carried out en équipe, see the editors’ prefaces in Håkanson
(2014) and (2016). MW has provided a sensible appraisal of Håkanson’s scholarship (in
Håkanson (2016),  ), and has himself brought to publication the most complicated piece
of his Nachlass (Håkanson Winterbottom (2015)).
⁸ Cf. e.g. the opening words of Winterbottom (1978), 685 (= R.3 below, p. 322): ‘These two
volumes . . . follow closely upon the first, and they share the merits and demerits of their
predecessor. The text makes no pretension to novelty. The translation is fluent and generally
accurate. The notes are informative. The apparatus criticus is a disaster.’
⁹ Reeve (2000), 204 n. 51. ¹⁰ Such as Winterbottom (1985) and (1997).
Editor’s Introduction xi
In the field of Greek and Roman declamation, this book is more inclusive.
Only a few items have been left out, mostly long papers involving textual
(re-)editions.¹¹ All other relevant articles and reviews have been reprinted
here, on authors and topics ranging from classical Greece to the Latin Middle
Ages (A.2, 4, 6–8, 14, 16, 20–3; R.1, 5–6, 9–12); room has been made also for
the introduction to the 1988 book on Sopatros (A.10): this impressively
learned and wide-ranging piece makes indispensable reading for anyone
working on ancient declamation. Finally, the overall scope of the volume
suggested the inclusion of two important short papers on rhetorical terms
and concepts (A.11–12); and a brilliant survey of some striking novelties on
the ancient rhetorical curriculum (A.17).
Those who are familiar with MW’s scholarship may wonder if one of his
basic tenets has been given sufficient consideration in this book:
I have a few rigid principles in life, but one is never to speak or write on a Latin
subject without mentioning prose rhythm.¹²
No specific article or book review on prose rhythm is included here, but each
selected item does contain at least a case in point, and some papers feature
detailed discussions.¹³ Those crystal-clear pages make one regret that MW has
more frequently confined himself to brief mentions: his lucidity would have
been particularly welcome in this field, as important as it is difficult (and
nowadays neglected).
All items are here reprinted according to uniform editorial guidelines, and
in the process misprints have been removed, OLD has been referred to
throughout according to the second edition (2012), a few formal adjustments
(e.g. in cross-references) have been made, and occasional clarifications or
references to new standard editions have been entered (in square brackets).
The author has also worked in a number of addenda or corrigenda to some
papers, mostly at their end, when some crucial point had to be made or a
recent bibliographical item stood out for its relevance. In general, however, no
attempt has been made at systematic updating: this would have implied re-
writing the contributions, uprooting them from the historical and intellectual
context in which, and for which, they were conceived.
To conclude, something must be said about the last paper in the present
collection (A.24). This brilliant new assessment of the manuscript tradition of
the Major Declamations has been written expressly for this book, and it results
from MW’s current main commitment: a Loeb edition of the Maiores. He is
officially in charge of the translation and part of the notes (I am handling the

¹¹ Håkanson Winterbottom (2015); Winterbottom (2017d) and (2018).


¹² Winterbottom (2017c), 410.
¹³ See e.g. Winterbottom (1983a), 59 ff. (= A.7 below, pp. 105 ff.); (2017b), 151 (= A.22 below,
pp. 271 2).
xii Editor’s Introduction
Latin text, Biagio Santorelli the rest of the notes and the introduction(s)); but
his ‘holistic’ approach to scholarship has never changed, so his work on the
translation has soon given rise to repeated discussions of loci critici, dozens of
(always astute, often decisive) conjectures, and an unprejudiced approach to
the transmission of the text. Being involved in such a dialogue with such a
scholar—and man—is a unique experience, still ongoing. But there is some-
thing for which MW has to turn elsewhere: who might revise his translation of
these tricky and twisted Latin texts? Some special help is called for again, as in
1954 . . . Well, the old St John’s scholar is still there, as learned and acute as
ever, ready to vet his former pupil’s translations—and contribute some for-
midable conjectures of his own. All this is taking place over sixty years since
MW’s (b. 1934) and Donald Russell’s (b. 1920) first session on Roman dec-
lamation. Friendship may sometimes defy Nature’s laws.

* * *
This book would have never been produced without the unselfish and enthu-
siastic help constantly provided by Francesca Nocchi and Giuseppe Russo: my
deep gratitude goes to them both. Special thanks are also due to Stephen
Harrison, who facilitated and guided contacts with OUP, and was ever prompt
with advice and support; and to OUP itself, for accepting and felicitously
bringing to publication an anything but easy book. In recent years I have had
the privilege of meeting Donald Russell, enjoying his generosity, and profiting
from his advice also in relation to this book: it is a pleasure to thank him most
warmly for all this. Auctori amicoque carissimo Michaeli, qui semper mihi
praesto fuit in hoc opere absolvendo, postremas reddo easque maximas gratias:
sit hic libellus longae nostrae eximiaeque amicitiae pignus.
A. S.
Bari
June 2018
Publications of Michael Winterbottom

* = included in this volume. Periodicals are abbreviated according to L’Année


philologique, whenever applicable (add JML = Journal of Medieval Latin).

BOOKS
1. M. Fabi Quintiliani Institutionis oratoriae libri duodecim, 2 vols. (Oxford,
1970).
2. Problems in Quintilian (London, 1970).
3. & D. A. Russell, Ancient Literary Criticism (Oxford, 1972).
4. Three Lives of English Saints (Toronto, 1972).
5. The Elder Seneca. Declamations, 2 vols. (Cambridge [Mass.] and London,
1974).
6. & R. M. Ogilvie, Cornelii Taciti Opera minora (Oxford, 1975).
7. Gildas. The Ruin of Britain and Other Works (London and Chichester,
1978).¹
8. Roman Declamation. Extracts Edited with Commentary (Bristol, 1980).
9. The Minor Declamations Ascribed to Quintilian (Berlin and New York, 1984).
10. William of Malmesbury. On Lamentations (Turnhout, 2013).
11. & R. M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury. The Miracles of the Blessed
Virgin Mary (Woodbridge, 2015).²
*12. & D. Innes, Sopatros the Rhetor, with an introduction by
M. Winterbottom (London, 1988) (*pp. 1–20).
13. & D. A. Russell, Classical Literary Criticism (Oxford, 1989).
14. & M. Brett, C. N. L. Brooke, Hugh the Chanter. The History of the Church
of York 1066–1127 (Oxford, 1990).
15. & M. Lapidge, Wulfstan of Winchester. Life of St Æthelwold (Oxford, 1991).
16. M. Tulli Ciceronis De officiis (Oxford, 1994).
17. & R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury. Gesta regum
Anglorum, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1998).
18. & R. M. Thomson, William of Malmesbury. Saints’ Lives (Oxford,
2002).
19. & T. Reinhardt, Quintilian. Institutio oratoria. Book 2 (Oxford, 2006).

¹ Reissued in 2002 with a new bibliographical foreword.


² Reissued in 2017 (paperback).
xiv Publications of Michael Winterbottom

20. William of Malmesbury. Gesta pontificum Anglorum, vol. 1 (Oxford, 2007).³


21. & J. Wisse, E. Fantham, M. Tullius Cicero. De oratore libri III, vol. 5
(Heidelberg, 2008).
22. & R. M. Thomson, Willelmi Meldunensis monachi Liber super
explanationem Lamentationum Ieremiae prophetae (Turnhout, 2011).
23. & M. Lapidge, The Early Lives of St Dunstan (Oxford, 2012).

A R T I C LE S A N D CH A P T E R S IN
MISCELLANEOUS V OLUME S

1. ‘Almeloveen’s manuscript of Quintilian’, CR  12 (1962), 121–2.


2. ‘The textual tradition of Quintilian 10.1.46 f.’, CQ  12 (1962), 169–75.
3. ‘Quintilian, v. 10. 91’, CR  14 (1964), 14.
4. ‘More about Almeloveen’, CR  14 (1964), 243.
*5. ‘Quintilian and the vir bonus’, JRS 54 (1964), 90–7.
6. ‘Some problems in Quintilian Book Two’, Philologus 108 (1964), 119–27.
7. ‘The beginning of Quintilian’s Institutio’, CQ  17 (1967), 123–7.
8. ‘Quintilian, . 1. 3’, CR  17 (1967), 264.
9. ‘Quintilian and Boethius’, BICS 14 (1967), 83.
10. ‘Fifteenth-century manuscripts of Quintilian’, CQ  17 (1967), 339–69.
11. ‘The style of Æthelweard’, MAev 36 (1967), 109–18.
12. ‘On the Hisperica famina’, Celtica 8 (1968), 126–39.
13. Revision of the Dialogus, in Tacitus, vol. 1 (London and Cambridge
[Mass.], 1970), 217–347.
14. Various contributions to N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard (eds.),
Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1970).
15. ‘Six conjectures’, CR  22 (1972), 11–12.
16. ‘The transmission of Tacitus’ Dialogus’, Philologus 116 (1972), 114–28.
17. ‘Three lives of Saint Ethelwold’, MAev 41 (1972), 191–201.
*18. ‘Problems in the Elder Seneca’, BICS 21 (1974), 20–42.
19. ‘The preface of Gildas’ De excidio’, Transactions of the Honourable Society
of Cymmrodorion. Sessions 1974 and 1975, 277–87.
20. ‘On epitrochasmos’, Glotta 53 (1975), 297–8.
*21. ‘Quintilian and rhetoric’, in T. A. Dorey (ed.), Empire and Aftermath.
Silver Latin II (London, 1975), 79–97.

³ ‘with the assistance of R. M. Thomson’. Vol. 2 (Introduction and Commentary) was also
published in 2007; the title page read: ‘by R. M. Thomson with the assistance of M. Winter
bottom’.
Publications of Michael Winterbottom xv

22. ‘The manuscript tradition of Tacitus’ Germania’, CPh 70 (1975), 1–7.


23. ‘Columbanus and Gildas’, VChr 30 (1976), 310–17.
24. ‘Fiery particles’, CQ  26 (1976), 317–18.
25. ‘Notes on the text of Gildas’, JThS  27 (1976), 132–40.
26. ‘Variations on a nautical theme’, Hermathena 120 (1976), 55–8.
27. ‘Virgil and the confiscations’, G&R  23 (1976), 55–9.
28. ‘A “Celtic” hyperbaton?’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 27 (1977),
207–12.
29. ‘Aldhelm’s prose style and its origins’, ASE 6 (1977), 39–76.
30. ‘The other Virgil’, BICS 25 (1978), 146–56.
*31. ‘The text of Sulpicius Victor’, BICS 26 (1979), 62–6.
*32. ‘Cicero and the Silver Age’, in W. Ludwig (ed.), Éloquence et rhétorique chez
Cicéron (Vandoeuvres and Geneva, 1982), 237–66 (‘Discussion’, 267–74).
33. ‘Literary criticism’, in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature,
vol. 2: Latin Literature (Cambridge, 1982), 33–50.
*34. ‘Schoolroom and courtroom’, in B. Vickers (ed.), Rhetoric Revalued.
Papers from the International Society for the History of Rhetoric
(Binghamton [NY], 1982), 59–70.
*35. ‘Declamation, Greek and Latin’, in A. Ceresa-Gastaldo (ed.), Ars
rhetorica antica e nuova (Genoa, 1983), 57–76.
*36. ‘Quintilian and declamation’, in Hommages à Jean Cousin (Paris, 1983),
225–35.
37. Various contributions to L. D. Reynolds (ed.), Texts and Transmission.
A Survey of the Latin Classics (Oxford, 1983; corr. repr. 1986).
38. ‘The Roman orator and his education’, Akroterion 30 (1985), 53–7.
39. ‘Mankind and other animals: the Georgics’, in R. A. Cardwell and
J. Hamilton (eds.), Virgil in a Cultural Tradition. Essays to Celebrate the
Bimillennium (Nottingham, 1986), 1–16.
40. ‘Tot incassum fusos patiere labores?’, CQ  36 (1986), 545–6.
41. ‘Notes on the Life of Edward the Confessor’, MAev 56 (1987), 82–4.
42. ‘Pelagiana’, JThS  38 (1987), 106–29.
43. ‘The Life of Christina of Markyate’, AB 105 (1987), 281–7.
*44. ‘Quintiliano (M. Fabius Quintilianus)’, in Enciclopedia Virgiliana, vol. 4
(Rome, 1988), 374–6.
*45. ‘Cicero and the Middle Style’, in J. Diggle, J. B. Hall, and H. D. Jocelyn
(eds.), Studies in Latin Literature and its Tradition in Honour of
C. O. Brink (Cambridge, 1989), 125–31.
46. ‘Speaking of the gods’, G&R  36 (1989), 33–41.
47. ‘New light on the X tradition of Cicero’s De officiis’, MD 24 (1990), 135–41.
48. ‘Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors’, PBA 80 (1991), 371–401.
49. ‘Aeneas and the idea of Troy’, PVS 21 (1993), 17–34.
50. ‘The transmission of Cicero’s De officiis’, CQ  43 (1993), 215–42.
xvi Publications of Michael Winterbottom

51. ‘Conjectures on some insular texts’, in D. Conso, N. Fick, and B. Poulle


(eds.), Mélanges François Kerlouégan (Paris, 1994), 667–72.
*52. ‘On impulse’, in D. Innes, H. Hine, and C. Pelling (eds.), Ethics and
Rhetoric. Classical Essays for Donald Russell on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday
(Oxford, 1995), 313–22.
53. ‘The Gesta regum of William of Malmesbury’, JML 5 (1995), 158–73.
54. ‘The O.C.T. De officiis: a postscript’, CQ  45 (1995), 265–6.
55. ‘The text of Ambrose’s De officiis’, JThS  46 (1995), 559–66.
56. & S. J. Harrison, ‘The new passage of Tiberius Claudius Donatus’, CQ 
45 (1995), 547–50.
57. ‘The integri of Cicero’s Topica’, CQ  46 (1996), 403–10.
58. ‘Introduzione’, in S. Corsi, Marco Fabio Quintiliano. La formazione
dell’oratore, vol. 1 (Milan, 1997), 5–26.
59. ‘De studiis Latinis Oxoniensibus’, VoxLat 33 (1997), 542–9.
*60. ‘Quintilian the moralist’, in T. Albaladejo, E. del Río, and J. A. Caballero
(eds.), Quintiliano: Historia y Actualidad de la Rétorica, vol. 1 (Logroño,
1998), 317–34.
61. ‘Tacitus, Dialogus 13.4’, CQ  49 (1999), 338.
*62. ‘An emendation in Calpurnius Flaccus’, CQ  49 (1999), 338–9.
63. ‘In praise of Raphael Regius’, in S. Döpp (ed.), Antike Rhetorik und ihre
Rezeption. Symposion zu Ehren von Professor Dr. Carl Joachim Classen
(Stuttgart, 1999), 99–116.
64. ‘Notes on William of Poitiers’, JML 9 (1999), 121–30.
65. & J. J. Murphy, ‘Raffaele Regio’s 1492 Quaestio doubting Cicero’s
authorship of the Rhetorica ad Herennium’, Rhetorica 17 (1999), 77–87.
66. ‘Three emendations in Columella’, CQ  49 (1999), 633–4.
67. ‘Lucretius 5.845–854’, Hermes 128 (2000), 505–6.
*68. ‘More problems in Quintilian’, BICS 44 (2000), 167–77.
69. ‘The earliest Life of St Dunstan’, SCI 19 (2000), 163–79.
70. ‘A new passage of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta pontificum’, JML 11
(2001), 50–9.
71. ‘Leighton Durham Reynolds’, PBA 111 (2001), 659–76.
72. ‘Returning to Tacitus’ Dialogus’, in C. W. Wooten (ed.), The Orator in
Action and Theory in Greece and Rome. Essays in Honor of George
A. Kennedy (Leiden, Boston, and Cologne, 2001), 137–55.
73. & S. J. Harrison, ‘The prologue to Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in
A. Kahane and A. Laird (eds.), A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius’
Metamorphoses (Oxford, 2001), 9–15.
74. ‘William of Malmesbury versificus’, in S. Echard and G. R. Wieland
(eds.), Anglo-Latin and its Heritage. Essays in Honour of A. G. Rigg on his
64th Birthday (Turnhout, 2001), 109–27.
75. ‘Believing the Pro Marcello’, in J. E. Miller, C. Damon, and K. S. Myers (eds.),
Vertis in usum. Studies in Honor of Edward Courtney (Munich, 2002), 24–38.
Publications of Michael Winterbottom xvii

76. & M. Deufert, J. F. Gaertner, ‘Critical notes on the Heroides’, Hermes 130
(2002), 502–6.
*77. ‘Ennodius, Dictio 21’, in B.-J. and J.-P. Schröder (eds.), Studium
declamatorium. Untersuchungen zu Schulübungen und Prunkreden von
der Antike bis zur Neuzeit (Munich and Leipzig, 2003), 275–88.
78. ‘The Language of William of Malmesbury’, in C. J. Mews,
C. J. Nederman, and R. M. Thomson (eds.), Rhetoric and Renewal in the
Latin West 1100–1540. Essays in Honour of John O. Ward (Turnhout,
2003), 129–47.
79. ‘Grillius on Cicero’s De inventione’, CQ  54 (2004), 592–605.
80. ‘Perorations’, in J. G. F. Powell and J. Paterson (eds.), Cicero the Advocate
(Oxford, 2004), 215–30.
*81. ‘Something new out of Armenia’, Letras clássicas 8 (2004), 111–28.
82. ‘An edition of Faricius, Vita S. Aldhelmi’, JML 15 (2005), 93–147.
*83. ‘Approaching the end: Quintilian 12.11’, AClass 48 (2005), 175–83.
84. ‘Faricius of Arezzo’s Life of St Aldhelm’, in K. O’Brien O’Keeffe and
A. Orchard (eds.), Latin Learning and English Lore. Studies in Anglo-
Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, vol. 1 (Toronto, Buffalo and
London, 2005), 109–31.
*85. ‘Declamation and philosophy’, Classica (Brasil) 19 (2006), 74–82.
*86. ‘Quintilian 12.11.11–12’, CQ  56 (2006), 324–5.
87. ‘Cyprian’s Ad Donatum’, in S. Swain, S. J. Harrison, and J. Elsner (eds.),
Severan Culture (Cambridge, 2007), 190–8.
88. ‘Bede’s castella’, Quaestio Insularis 10 (2009), 1–7.
89. ‘Conversations in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica’, in E. Dickey and
A. Chahoud (eds.), Colloquial and Literary Latin (Cambridge, 2010),
419–30.
90. ‘William of Malmesbury and the Normans’, JML 20 (2010), 70–7.
91. ‘Bede’s homily on Benedict Bishop (Hom. 1.13)’, JML 21 (2011),
35–51.
92. ‘On ancient prose rhythm: the story of the dichoreus’, in D. Obbink and
R. Rutherford (eds.), Culture in Pieces. Essays on Ancient Texts in Honour
of Peter Parsons (Oxford, 2011), 262–76.
93. ‘De vita patris’, in D. Damschen and A. Heil (eds.), Brill’s Companion to
Seneca (Leiden and Boston, 2014), 695.
94. ‘Moving the goal posts: the re-writing of medieval Latin prose texts’, Ars
edendi Lecture Series 3 (2014), 29–48.
*95. ‘William of Malmesbury’s work on the Declamationes maiores’, S&T 12
(2014), 261–76.
96. ‘The earliest passion of St Alban’, InvLuc 37 (2015), 113–27.
97. & †L. Håkanson, ‘Tribunus Marianus’, in L. Del Corso, F. De Vivo, and
A. Stramaglia (eds.), Nel segno del testo. Edizioni, materiali e studi per
Oronzo Pecere (Florence, 2015), 61–90.
xviii Publications of Michael Winterbottom

98. ‘Lennart Håkanson: der Mensch, der Gelehrte’, in L. Håkanson,


Unveröffentlichte Schriften, vol. 2: Kritischer Kommentar zu Seneca
Maior, Controversiae, Buch I, ed. by F. Citti, B. Santorelli, and
A. Stramaglia (Berlin and Boston, 2016), –.
99. ‘The style of Ælnoth’, in M. Münster-Swendsen, T. K. Heebøll-Holm,
and S. Olsen Sønnesyn (eds.), Historical and Intellectual Culture in the
Long Twelfth Century: The Scandinavian Connection (Durham and
Toronto, 2016), 119–30.
100. ‘Karsten Friis-Jensen’s preliminary findings towards a new edition of
Sven Aggesen’, ibid., 295–317.
101. ‘Text and transmission of some Bedan texts’, MLatJb 52 (2017), 445–59.
*102. ‘The editors of Calpurnius Flaccus’, in M. Dinter, C. Guérin, and
M. Martinho (eds.), Reading Roman Declamation. Calpurnius Flaccus
(Berlin and Boston, 2017), 141–60.
103. ‘The pleasures of editing’, RHT  12 (2017), 393–413.
104. ‘The Tribunus Marianus and the development of the cursus’, in
P. Chiesa, A. M. Fagnoni, and R. E. Guglielmetti (eds.), Ingenio facilis.
Per Giovanni Orlandi (1938–2007) (Florence, 2017), 231–47.
105. ‘The vocabulary of William of Malmesbury’, Aevum 91 (2017), 377–409.
106. ‘Words, words, words . . . ’, in R. M. Thomson, E. Dolmans, and
E. A. Winkler (eds.), Discovering William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge,
2017), 203–18.
107. ‘Cyrus, On the Differentiation of Issues’, S&T 16 (2018), 209–46.
*108. ‘The words of the master’, Maia 70 (2018), 73–83.
*109. ‘The manuscript tradition of [Quintilian]’s Major Declamations: a new
approach’, in this book.
110. ‘Beginning a history’, JML 29 (2019), 101–21.
111. ‘The manuscripts of Berengar of Poitiers’, MLatJb 54 (2019), 157–61.
112. ‘Pope Urban’s speech at Clermont. William of Malmesbury, Gesta
Regum Anglorum 347’, MLatJb 54 (2019), 162–7.
113. ‘Notes on the text of the Major Declamations’, MD 82 (2019)
[forthcoming].

SE LE C T ED R E V IEWS

1. A. E. Douglas, M. Tulli Ciceronis Brutus (Oxford, 1966), CR  17


(1967), 301–3.⁴
2. A. Campbell, Aethelwulf De abbatibus (Oxford, 1967), MAev 38 (1969),
60–4.

⁴ This is the first in a long series of reviews in CR, only a few of which are listed here.
Publications of Michael Winterbottom xix

3. G. Luck, Untersuchungen zur Textgeschichte Ovids (Heidelberg, 1969),


CR  21 (1971), 208–9.
4. J. W. Smit, Studies in the Language and Style of Columba the Younger
(Columbanus) (Amsterdam, 1971), MAev 41 (1972), 243–4.
5. H. Weiskopf, P. Corneli Taciti Annalium libri XI–XII (Vienna, Cologne,
and Graz, 1973), CPh 76 (1975), 283–4.
6. M. W. Herren, The Hisperica famina. : The A-Text (Toronto, 1974),
MAev 45 (1976), 105–9.
7. T. Janson, Prose Rhythm in Medieval Latin from the 9th to the 13th
Century (Stockholm, 1975), MAev 45 (1976), 298–300.
8. S. Usher, Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The Critical Essays, vol. 1
(Cambridge [Mass.] and London, 1974), CR  26 (1976), 173–4.
*9. L. Håkanson, Textkritische Studien zu den grösseren pseudoquintilianischen
Deklamationen (Lund, 1974), CR  26 (1976), 276.
*10. J. Cousin, Quintilien. Institution oratoire, Tome  (Paris, 1975) and
Recherches sur Quintilien (Paris, 1975), Gnomon 49 (1977), 574–9.
11. J. N. Hillgarth, Sancti Iuliani Toletanae sedis episcopi Opera, Pars 
(Turnhout, 1976), JThS  28 (1977), 571–4.⁵
*12. J. Cousin, Quintilien. Institution oratoire, Tomes – (Paris, 1976),
Gnomon 50 (1978), 685–7.
13. G. Pompella, Francisci Robortelli Utinensis De arte sive ratione corrigendi
antiquorum libros disputatio (Naples, 1975), CR  28 (1978), 197–8.
*14. J. Cousin, Quintilien. Institution oratoire, Tome  (Paris, 1977),
Gnomon 51 (1979), 388–9.
*15. S. F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome: From the Elder Cato to the
Younger Pliny (London, 1977), CR  29 (1979), 73–4.
*16. L. A. Sussman, The Elder Seneca (Leiden, 1978), CR  29 (1979), 231–2.
*17. J. Cousin, Quintilien. Institution oratoire, Tomes – (Paris, 1978;
1979), Gnomon 52 (1980), 785–6.
*18. J. Cousin, Quintilien. Institution oratoire, Tome  (Paris, 1980),
Gnomon 53 (1981), 197–9.
19. M. W. Herren, The Hisperica famina. : Related Poems (Toronto, 1987),
Peritia 6–7 (1987–8), 331–2.
20. G. Achard, Rhétorique à Herennius (Paris, 1989), Gnomon 63 (1991), 459–61.
*21. L. Håkanson, L. Annaeus Seneca Maior. Oratorum et rhetorum
sententiae, divisiones, colores (Leipzig, 1989), CR  41 (1991), 338–40.
22. J. B. Hall, Ioannis Saresberiensis Metalogicon (Turnhout, 1991), JEH 43
(1992), 470–1.⁶

⁵ This is the first in a long series of reviews of patristic texts in this journal, not listed here.
⁶ Other reviews of Christian texts appear in later issues of this journal.
xx Publications of Michael Winterbottom

23. K. M. Coleman, J. Diggle, J. B. Hall, and H. D. Jocelyn (eds.),


F. R. D. Goodyear, Papers on Latin Literature (London, 1992), CR  44
(1994), 196–8.
24. R. Granatelli, Apollodori Pergameni ac Theodori Gadarei testimonia et
fragmenta (Rome, 1991), CR  44 (1994), 203–4.
25. M. Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: Grammatica and Literary
Theory, 350–1000 (Cambridge, 1994), JML 5 (1995), 273–6.
26. D. Lassandro, XII Panegyrici Latini (Turin, 1992), Gnomon 67 (1995), 560–1.
27. O. Prinz, Die Kosmographie des Aethicus (Munich, 1993), Peritia 9
(1995), 430–2.
*28. L. A. Sussman, The Declamations of Calpurnius Flaccus. Text,
Translation, and Commentary (Leiden, New York, and Cologne, 1994),
CR  45 (1995), 40–2.
29. J. Stevenson, The Laterculus Malalianus and the School of Archbishop
Theodore (Cambridge, 1995), Notes and Queries  43 (1996), 457–9.
30. G. Di Maria, Marci Tulli Ciceronis Topica (Palermo, 1994), Gnomon 69
(1997), 647–8.
31. R. Wardy, The Birth of Rhetoric (London and New York, 1996)—
W. J. Dominik (ed.), Roman Eloquence (London and New York, 1997)—
C. Lévy and L. Pernot (eds.), Dire l’évidence (Paris and Montreal, 1997),
SCI 17 (1998), 238–42.
32. H. M. Hine, L. Annaei Senecae Naturalium quaestionum libri (Stuttgart
and Leipzig, 1996) and Studies in the Text of Seneca’s Naturales
quaestiones (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1996), SCI 17 (1998), 242–5.
33. J. Briscoe, Valeri Maximi Facta et dicta memorabilia (Stuttgart and
Leipzig, 1998), SCI 18 (1999), 191–4.
34. G. W. Most (ed.), Editing Texts—Texte edieren (Göttingen, 1998), SCI 19
(2000), 328–30.
*35. A. Stramaglia, [Quintiliano]. I gemelli malati: un caso di vivisezione
(Declamazioni maggiori, 8) (Cassino, 1999), CR  50 (2000), 305–6.
36. S. Gwara, Aldhelmi Malmesbiriensis Prosa de virginitate cum glosa Latina
atque Anglosaxonica (Turnhout, 2001), Speculum 79 (2004), 1017–18.
37. B. Löfstedt, Virgilius Maro Grammaticus. Opera omnia (Munich and
Leipzig, 2003), Gnomon 77 (2005), 362–4.
38. J. C. Yardley, Justin and Pompeius Trogus: A Study of the Language of
Justin’s Epitome of Trogus (Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 2003), IJCT 12
(2005–6), 463–5.
*39. M. Weissenberger, Sopatri Quaestionum divisio—Sopatros: Streitfälle.
Gliederung und Ausarbeitung kontroverser Reden (Würzburg, 2010),
Gnomon 83 (2011), 394–6.
40. F. Wendling, Hugonis de Miromari De hominis miseria, mundi et inferni
contemptu (Turnhout, 2010), JML 21 (2011), 333–8.
Acknowledgements

We should like to thank the following publishers or institutions for kindly


granting permission to reprint Michael Winterbottom’s papers listed below:

BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY— CENTER FOR


MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE STUDIES

Articles and chapters

‘Schoolroom and courtroom’, in B. Vickers (ed.), Rhetoric Revalued. Papers


from the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (Binghamton [NY]:
Center for Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies, 1982), 59–70. (A.6)

CAMBRIDGE P HILOLOGICA L SOCIETY

Articles and chapters

‘Cicero and the middle style’, in J. Diggle, J. B. Hall, and H. D. Jocelyn (eds.),
Studies in Latin Literature and its Tradition in Honour of C. O. Brink (Cam-
bridge, 1989) [= Cambridge Philological Society, Supplementary Volume 15],
125–31. (A.11)

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY P RESS

Articles and chapters

‘Quintilian and the vir bonus’, Journal of Roman Studies 54 (1964), 90–7.
© Michael Winterbottom, 1964. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society
for the Promotion of Roman Studies. Reprinted with the permission of
Cambridge University Press:
http://www.cambridge.org/rights/permissions/authors.htm. (A.1)
‘An emendation in Calpurnius Flaccus’, Classical Quarterly  49 (1999),
338–9. © The Classical Association, 1999. Reprinted with the permission of
Cambridge University Press:
http://www.cambridge.org/rights/permissions/authors.htm. (A.14)
xxii Acknowledgements
‘Quintilian 12.11.11–12’, Classical Quarterly  56 (2006), 324–5. © The
Classical Association, 2006. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge Uni-
versity Press:
http://www.cambridge.org/rights/permissions/authors.htm. (A.19)

Reviews

L. Håkanson, Textkritische Studien zu den grösseren pseudoquintilianischen


Deklamationen (Lund, 1974), Classical Review  26 (1976), 276. © The Classical
Association, 1976. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press:
http://www.cambridge.org/rights/permissions/authors.htm. (R.1)
S. F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome: From the Elder Cato to the Younger
Pliny (London, 1977), Classical Review  29 (1979), 73–4. © The Classical
Association, 1979. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press:
http://www.cambridge.org/rights/permissions/authors.htm. (R.5)
L. A. Sussman, The Elder Seneca (Leiden, 1978), Classical Review  29
(1979), 231–2. © The Classical Association, 1979. Reprinted with the permis-
sion of Cambridge University Press:
http://www.cambridge.org/rights/permissions/authors.htm. (R.6)
L. Håkanson, L. Annaeus Seneca Maior. Oratorum et rhetorum sententiae,
divisiones, colores (Leipzig, 1989), Classical Review  41 (1991), 338–40. © The
Classical Association, 1991. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge Univer-
sity Press:
http://www.cambridge.org/rights/permissions/authors.htm. (R.9)
L. A. Sussman, The Declamations of Calpurnius Flaccus. Text, Translation,
and Commentary (Leiden, New York, and Cologne, 1994), Classical Review 
45 (1995), 40–2. © The Classical Association, 1995. Reprinted with the per-
mission of Cambridge University Press:
http://www.cambridge.org/rights/permissions/authors.htm. (R.10)
A. Stramaglia, [Quintiliano]. I gemelli malati: un caso di vivisezione (Decla-
mazioni maggiori, 8) (Cassino, 1999), Classical Review  50 (2000), 305–6.
© The Classical Association, 2000. Reprinted with the permission of Cam-
bridge University Press:
http://www.cambridge.org/rights/permissions/authors.htm. (R.11)

C. H. BECK

Reviews

J. Cousin, Quintilien. Institution oratoire, Tome  (Paris, 1975) and Recherches


sur Quintilien (Paris, 1975), Gnomon 49 (1977), 574–9. (R.2)
Acknowledgements xxiii
J. Cousin, Quintilien. Institution oratoire, Tomes – (Paris, 1976),
Gnomon 50 (1978), 685–7. (R.3)
J. Cousin, Quintilien. Institution oratoire, Tome  (Paris, 1977), Gnomon
51 (1979), 388–9. (R.4)
J. Cousin, Quintilien. Institution oratoire, Tomes – (Paris, 1978; 1979),
Gnomon 52 (1980), 785–6. (R.7)
J. Cousin, Quintilien. Institution oratoire, Tome  (Paris, 1980), Gnomon
53 (1981), 197–9. (R.8)
M. Weissenberger, Sopatri Quaestionum divisio—Sopatros: Streitfälle. Glie-
derung und Ausarbeitung kontroverser Reden (Würzburg, 2010), Gnomon 83
(2011), 394–6. (R.12)

EDITRICE MORC ELLIANA

Articles and chapters

‘The words of the master’, Maia 70 (2018), 73–83. (A.23)

FONDA TION HARDT POUR L ’ ÉTU DE


DE L ’ ANTIQUITÉ CLASSIQUE

Articles and chapters

‘Cicero and the Silver Age’, in W. Ludwig (ed.), Éloquence et rhétorique


chez Cicéron (Vandoeuvres and Geneva: Fondation Hardt pour l’étude de
l’Antiquité classique, Entretiens sur l’Antiquité classique Tome XXVIII,
1982), 237–66 (‘Discussion’, 267–74). (A.5)

I NSTITUTO DE E STU DIOS RI OJ ANOS

Articles and chapters

‘Quintilian the moralist’, in T. Albaladejo, E. del Río, and J. A. Caballero (eds.),


Quintiliano: Historia y Actualidad de la Rétorica, vol. 1 (Logroño, 1998),
317–34. (A.13)
xxiv Acknowledgements

ISTITUTO DELLA ENCICLOPEDIA ITALIANA

Articles and chapters

‘Quintiliano (M. Fabius Quintilianus)’, in Enciclopedia Virgiliana, vol. 4


(Rome, 1988), 374–6. By courtesy of the Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
Treccani. Any use in addition to or beyond the inclusion in this volume
will be subject to request from and approval by the Istituto della Enciclopedia
Italiana. (A.9)

JOHN WILEY & SONS

Articles and chapters

‘Problems in the Elder Seneca’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 21


(1974), 20–42. © Institute of Classical Studies. School of Advanced Studies,
University of London, 1974. Reproduced by permission of John Wiley & Sons.
(A.2)
‘The text of Sulpicius Victor’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 26
(1979), 62–6. © Institute of Classical Studies. School of Advanced Studies, Uni-
versity of London, 1979. Reproduced by permission of John Wiley & Sons. (A.4)
Introduction to D. Innes & M. Winterbottom, Sopatros the Rhetor (London,
1988), 1–20. © Institute of Classical Studies. School of Advanced Studies,
University of London, 1988. Reproduced by permission of John Wiley &
Sons. (A.10)
‘More problems in Quintilian’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
44 (2000), 167–77. © Institute of Classical Studies. School of Advanced
Studies, University of London, 2000. Reproduced by permission of John
Wiley & Sons. (A.15)

L E S BE L L E S LE T T R E S

Articles and chapters

‘Quintilian and declamation’, in Hommages à Jean Cousin (Paris, 1983),


225–35. © Les Belles Lettres, 1983. (A.8)
Acknowledgements xxv

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Articles and chapters

‘On impulse’, in D. Innes, H. Hine, and C. Pelling (eds.), Ethics and Rhetoric.
Classical Essays for Donald Russell on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday (Oxford,
1995), 313–22. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press:
https://global.oup.com/. (A.12)

SO CIE DAD E BR A SILE IR A DE E STUDO S CL Á SSIC O S

Articles and chapters

‘Declamation and philosophy’, Classica. Revista Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos


19 (2006), 74–82. DOI: http://doi.org/10.24277/classica.v19i1.105. (A.20)

TAYLOR & F RANCIS GROUP

Articles and chapters

‘Quintilian and rhetoric’, in T. A. Dorey (ed.), Empire and Aftermath. Silver


Latin II (London, 1975), 79–97. (A.3)

THE CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF S OUTH AFRICA

Articles and chapters

‘Approaching the end: Quintilian 12.11’, Acta Classica 48 (2005), 175–83.


Reprinted with the permission of the Classical Association of South Africa.
(A.18)
xxvi Acknowledgements

UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PA ULO

Articles and chapters

‘Something new out of Armenia’, Letras clássicas 8 (2004), 111–28. (A.17)

UN IVERSITÀ DEGLI STU DI D I CASSINO


E DE L L A Z I O ME R I D I O N A L E

Articles and chapters

‘William of Malmesbury’s work on the Declamationes maiores’, Segno e Testo


12 (2014), 261–76. (A.21)

UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUD I DI


GENOVA—DIPARTIMENTO DI ANTICHITÀ,
FILOSOFIA, STORIA

Articles and chapters

‘Declamation, Greek and Latin’, in A. Ceresa-Gastaldo (ed.), Ars rhetorica


antica e nuova (Genoa, 1983), 57–76. (A.7)

W A LTE R D E G R U Y T E R GM B H

Articles and chapters

‘Ennodius, Dictio 21’, in B.-J. and J.-P. Schröder (eds.), Studium declamato-
rium. Untersuchungen zu Schulübungen und Prunkreden von der Antike bis
zur Neuzeit (Munich and Leipzig, 2003), 275–88. © 2003 by K. G. Saur Verlag
GmbH, Munich and Leipzig (now De Gruyter). (A.16)
‘The editors of Calpurnius Flaccus’, in M. Dinter, C. Guérin, and M. Martinho
(eds.), Reading Roman Declamation. Calpurnius Flaccus (Berlin and Boston,
2017), 141–60. © Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2017. (A.22)

The publisher and editors apologize for any errors or omissions in the above list.
If contacted they will be pleased to rectify these at the earliest opportunity.
1

Quintilian and the vir bonus*

Sit ergo nobis orator quem constituimus is qui a M. Catone finitur, vir bonus
dicendi peritus, verum, id quod et ille posuit prius et ipsa natura potius ac maius
est, utique vir bonus.¹ Why did Quintilian insist so strongly on the moral
qualities of the orator? The question has not been persistently enough asked.
Austin, for example, thinks that it is only ‘a steadfast sincerity of purpose
throughout’ that redeems the first chapter of Book 12 from ‘mere moralizing’.²
And it only takes the problem a stage further back to say that this is a matter of
Stoic influence.³ Even if Posidonius did formulate in connection with rhetoric
a maxim on the lines of Strabo’s οὐχ οἷόν τε ἀγαθὸν γενέσθαι ποιητὴν μὴ
πρότερον γενηθέντα ἄνδρα ἀγαθόν,⁴ we must still ask why Quintilian troubled
to give this Stoic view such new prominence. After all, oratori . . . nihil est
necesse in cuiusquam iurare leges.⁵ And it is clear that Quintilian realized that
he was innovating. Cicero, he writes, despite the width of his conception,
thought it enough to discuss merely the type of oratory that should be used by
the perfect orator: at nostra temeritas etiam mores ei conabitur dare et
adsignabit officia.⁶ This is perhaps to schematize the contrast a little over-
dramatically. Cicero had certainly written in the De oratore: quarum virtutum
expertibus si dicendi copiam tradiderimus, non eos quidem oratores effeceri-
mus, sed furentibus quaedam arma dederimus.⁷ But there is no doubt that
Cicero was not primarily concerned with the moral aspect. As the leading
orator of his day, he may have thought it indelicate or superfluous to stress
that the perfect orator must be a good man. Moreover, it was not clear that
the troubles of Cicero’s day were the result of morally bad orators: one had to

[Journal of Roman Studies 54 (1964), 90 7]


* An earlier draft of this paper has been read to the Oxford Branch of the Classical Asso
ciation and to the London Classical Society.
¹ Quint. 12.1.1. ² Austin (1954²),  (Austin’s italics).
³ Ibid.,  . See also the notes on 12.1.1. Austin is rightly cautious.
⁴ Strab. 1.2.5; Morr (1926 7), 47. ⁵ Quint. 12.2.26. ⁶ Quint. 12.pr.4.
⁷ Cic. De orat. 3.55.
4 Papers on Quintilian and Ancient Declamation
look back to Saturninus and Glaucia for examples of the evils caused by un-
scrupulous use of words.⁸
This paper will suggest that there was a very good reason for Quintilian’s
newly moralistic approach: and that this was a matter of historical fact, not of
rhetorical theory.
Tacitus in the Dialogus set himself to explain why nostra potissimum aetas
deserta et laude eloquentiae orbata vix nomen ipsum oratoris retineat.⁹ Aper
denies that oratorical glory is, in fact, dead. His main examples are Eprius
Marcellus and Vibius Crispus.¹⁰ The choice is significant. For the outstanding
fact about first-century oratory is that the only orators to achieve any prom-
inence or influence by means of their oratory are the delatores.¹¹ The rest were
decorative but impotent: the Dialogus tells us why—education lacked touch
with reality, and political conditions took away all scope. Hence one delator,
Publius Suillius Rufus, who had been terribilis ac venalis under Claudius, could
contrast himself tellingly with Seneca.¹² Seneca was used to academic inertia
and the callowness of youth; he was jealous of those such as Suillius who used
in the defence of their fellow-citizens an eloquence that was bright, alive, and
untarnished—vividam et incorruptam eloquentiam tuendis civibus exercerent.
Tacitus’ archetypal delator, as we read in his Annals,¹³ dedit exemplum quod
secuti ex pauperibus divites, ex contemptis metuendi, perniciem aliis ac pos-
tremum sibi invenere. The history of delation in the first century shows that
this summary remained true; but the delator gradually added to these qualities
something approaching an official position, and (in some cases) something
approaching a theory of oratory.
We may start with an Augustan orator, who was not a delator in the strict
sense at all: Cassius Severus.¹⁴ Quintilian’s key-word for him is acerbitas.¹⁵ He
was finally banished for the libido with which viros feminasque inlustris
procacibus scriptis diffamaverat.¹⁶ He was a professional satirist rather than a
professional accuser. All the same, Quintilian reproves him for a remark that
betrayed quaedam accusandi voluptas.¹⁷ And we are told by Seneca the Elder
that he specialized in accusation.¹⁸ In view of this, and because of interesting
parallels between Cassius and some later delatores, he deserves discussion
here. The evidence does not lie in the Institutio, where, though Cassius is

⁸ Cic. Brut. 224. The Gracchi are also mentioned. Quintilian takes over these examples
(2.16.5).
⁹ Tac. Dial. 1.1. ¹⁰ Tac. Dial. 8.1.
¹¹ The eloquence of the delatores is discussed by Froment (1880), 35.
¹² Tac. Ann. 13.42. If Tacitus invents, his invention is of archetypal significance. See also Syme
(1958), 331 2. It will be obvious how much I owe to this book.
¹³ Tac. Ann. 1.74.2; Syme (1958), 326 n. 5.
¹⁴ Sources for him are gathered in Meyer (1842²), 545 61 [= Balbo (2007²), .223 43]; Schanz
Hosius (1935⁴), .345 ff.
¹⁵ Quint. 10.1.117; 12.10.11. ¹⁶ Tac. Ann. 1.72.3. ¹⁷ Quint. 11.1.57.
¹⁸ Sen. Con. 3.pr.5.
Quintilian and the vir bonus 5
often mentioned, it is almost always to stress his biting wit and his hatred of
pomposity. Turn, however, to the Dialogus: here, in the big speech of Aper, an
attack is developed on those who habitually reckon Cicero, Caesar, and other
Republican orators superior to the orators of Aper’s own day.¹⁹ Aper quibbles
about the exact meaning of antiqui in this context, and then asserts that new
circumstances breed new styles of oratory. It was all very well for the ‘admirers
of antiquity’ to draw a sharp line and to proclaim that with Cassius came the
deluge.²⁰ They might say that Cassius was the one who had first diverged from
the straight and narrow path; but in fact Cassius knew very well what he was
doing. Times had changed. Under the Republic audiences were still impressed
by a smattering of philosophy and by rhetorical subtleties prescribed in the
dry-as-dust handbooks of Hermagoras and Apollodorus. Once this excitement
wore off, there was need for new methods, a vigorous attempt to stave off
boredom and monotony. It was on purpose—and for cogent reasons—that
Cassius had taken a new course.
What exactly had Cassius put in the place of the old techniques? Messalla’s
reply to Aper in the Dialogus is significant here. Messalla doesn’t deny that
Cassius was a notable orator, though his speeches had plus bilis . . . quam
sanguinis. This is much what Quintilian said in his brief notice of Cassius.²¹
But, Messalla goes on, Cassius was the first to despise organization, and cast
aside modesty of language;²² he was so eager to strike that he often fell over in
the process: a brawler, no true fighter. We may add the evidence of the Elder
Seneca. Everything in Cassius’ oratory had a direct purpose—omnia intenta,
aliquid petentia.²³ It was strong stuff, elegant, ingentibus plena sententiis.
Cassius relied rather on his native wit than on his education.²⁴ He declaimed
occasionally, but he was under no illusions about the value of declamation.
In scholastica quid non supervacuum est, cum ipsa supervacua sit?²⁵
It is not impossible that in the Dialogus Tacitus is replying to Quintilian on
the topic of Cassius Severus.²⁶ Admittedly, Quintilian did not, in the Institutio,
assert that Cassius started the decline of Roman oratory. The orators men-
tioned in 10.1.113 ff. are treated atomically, analysed for the virtues they may
illustrate rather than fitted into trends and patterns. But there is a good chance
that in the earlier De causis corruptae eloquentiae Quintilian did take a more
historical line. From 2.4.41–2 we know that he discussed there whether or not

¹⁹ Tac. Dial. 16.4. ²⁰ Tac. Dial. 19.1. ²¹ Quint. 10.1.116 17; cf. Tac. Dial. 26.4.
²² Tac. Dial. 26.5; cf. Quint. loc. cit.: Cassius lacked gravitas and consilium.
²³ Sen. Con. 3.pr.2.
²⁴ Sen. Con. 3.pr.4: maioris ingenii quam studii; cf. Quint. 10.1.117: ingenii plurimum.
²⁵ Sen. Con. 3.pr.12.
²⁶ I have no new arguments with which to rejuvenate the hoary topic of the date of the
Dialogus. This article proceeds on the assumption that it post dates Quintilian’s De causis.
Cf. Syme (1958), 112 ff.
6 Papers on Quintilian and Ancient Declamation
suasoriae and controversiae were invented by Demetrius of Phaleron. Now
Cicero²⁷ remarks on the agreeable but academic virtues of Demetrius. He it
was who primus inflexit orationem et eam mollem teneramque reddidit. Quin-
tilian himself recalls this:²⁸ Demetrius primus inclinasse eloquentiam dicitur.
It is not then impossible that Quintilian’s De causis gave a historical sketch of
both Greek and Roman oratory; in both there was a clear point where decay
started—the time of Demetrius and the time of Cassius: equally, in both, new
educational techniques, centred upon declamation, played a leading part in
causing this decay.²⁹
If this is correct, Aper’s speech in the Dialogus takes on a further signifi-
cance. Admirers of the ancients, such as Quintilian, he implies, are irrevocably
stuck in the past: they don’t see that Cassius Severus was not an end but a new
and hopeful start. They think you can get by, as in the old days, with a little
philosophy and a lot of rhetorical rules. They think that audiences will put up
with speakers who spend all day on their feet.³⁰ No more pertinent criticism of
Quintilian’s general position could be imagined. In reply, Messalla is allowed
to say, as Quintilian would have said, that Cassius fell below his predecessors
but excelled his successors.³¹ But even he cannot explain why the old days
should be thought relevant, even if they were indisputably better.
If Quintilian was one of those who attributed to Cassius Severus the drastic
change in the direction of oratory in the first century, it becomes necessary to
make it quite clear what Cassius was being blamed for. Messalla tells us at Dial.
26.5: Primus enim contempto ordine rerum, omissa modestia ac pudore ver-
borum . . . non pugnat sed rixatur. And we may recall Aper’s speech,³² where
the new style started by Cassius is connected with the abandonment of
rhetorical subtleties and pedantic rules, quidquid . . . aridissimis Hermagorae
et Apollodori libris praecipitur. Cassius relied on his ingenium rather than on
training, and he despised declamation. Quintilian’s De causis, it may be
conjectured, defended training, asserted that declamation, properly carried
out, was advantageous,³³ and demanded a return to the Ciceronian virtues of
respect for education and for rhetorical dogma. The De causis, in this light,
paved the way for the Institutio, where the despised longa principiorum
praeparatio et narrationis alte repetita series et multarum divisionum ostenta-
tio et mille argumentorum gradus were painstakingly recapitulated. It was a
plea too for the wider education that people such as Aper so scorned.

²⁷ Cic. Brut. 37 8. ²⁸ Quint. 10.1.80.


²⁹ This conclusion is approached in Norden (1898), 248; cf. also Reuter (1887), 8. But I vis
ualize a sketch of the history of oratory, not merely of declamation.
³⁰ Such as Quintilian’s pupil, Pliny: . . . perstitit . . . horis septem. Nam tam diu dixi (4.16.2 3).
³¹ Tac. Dial. 26.4. ³² Tac. Dial. 19.3.
³³ Cf. Quint. 2.10, and 5.12.17 23 where the De causis is actually referred to.
Quintilian and the vir bonus 7
We may next examine the case of Domitius Afer. The interest here lies in
the contrast between the impression given of this orator by Tacitus and by
Quintilian. If we relied on the Annals alone, we should be hard put to it to see
Afer as more than an earlier and more evil Suillius Rufus. He was a tool in the
campaigns against Agrippina in 26 and 27:³⁴ later, almost a victim of Caligula,
then consul under him.³⁵ Tacitus describes his motives as unsparingly as those
of any other delator. He was in a hurry to be famous, at any price: in defence
and prosecution alike he was more eloquent than principled—and in old age
not even eloquent. He had never been rich; he misspent the rewards of
delation, and was lured on to further crimes. Little of all this appears in the
pages of Quintilian; senility alone finds a place.³⁶ Instead, Afer is a summus
orator, as good as the old-timers, witty and ripe.³⁷ We hear of many of his
cases—but almost always of his defences: the only accusation mentioned is
that of a libertus of Claudius,³⁸ and that would be to his credit. Afer had been
Quintilian’s boyhood hero³⁹—but by then Afer was an old man, author of
books on the examination of witnesses,⁴⁰ respectable as never before. Quin-
tilian, then, was disposed to the most favourable judgement possible. Only
once does the Tacitean Afer peep out (by accident) in the Institutio. A clever
saying of his is quoted, for its cleverness: Ego accusavi, vos damnastis.⁴¹ One
can imagine a context, imagine too the cynical smile that this would have
aroused in Tacitus. Suillius used his eloquence to defend citizens. Afer was
accuser, not judge. How then could we blame either?
I now move on to Flavian delation, and examine the careers of a pair closely
linked in the Dialogus, Eprius Marcellus and Vibius Crispus (flourishing, it
may be remembered, during Quintilian’s professorship in Rome). Tacitus
describes them as potentissimi civitatis under Vespasian,⁴² and it is on their
public fame that I shall concentrate. For as long as it pleased them, they had
been foremost in the forum: now they were foremost in the friendship of
Caesar—and indeed the object of his respectful regard. Others might depend
on Vespasian’s goodwill: Marcellus and Crispus brought to their amicitia
something that they had not received from Vespasian. By this, Aper means
that the oratory of these two was their making; and we soon learn from
Maternus what sort of oratory it was, lucrosae huius et sanguinantis eloquen-
tiae usus . . . ex malis moribus natus atque . . . in locum teli repertus.⁴³ This
weapon had already under Nero been at the service of the emperor, when
Marcellus had been the accuser of Thrasea Paetus, torvus ac minax, voce vultu
oculis (ardescens).⁴⁴ The reward, five million sesterces.⁴⁵ For Thrasea, death.
Crispus had done nothing so spectacular, but by Nero’s death he was rich,

³⁴ Tac. Ann. 4.52 and 66. ³⁵ Dio Cass. 59.19. ³⁶ Quint. 12.11.3.
³⁷ Quint. 12.10.11; 10.1.118. ³⁸ Quint. 6.3.81. ³⁹ Quint. 5.7.7.
⁴⁰ Quint. 5.7.7. ⁴¹ Quint. 5.10.79. ⁴² Tac. Dial. 8.3. ⁴³ Tac. Dial. 12.2.
⁴⁴ Tac. Ann. 16.29.1. ⁴⁵ Tac. Ann. 16.33.2.
8 Papers on Quintilian and Ancient Declamation
powerful, inter claros magis quam inter bonos:⁴⁶ and men remembered that he
too had been a delator.
In the fourth book of the Histories⁴⁷ Tacitus gives a brilliant picture of the
attack on Marcellus and Crispus in the senate during the early days of
Vespasian’s reign. After a well-received speech by the fierce Curtius Montanus,
Helvidius Priscus took up the attack, the Senators approving: Quod ubi sensit
Marcellus, velut excedens curia, ‘Imus,’ inquit, ‘Prisce, et relinquimus tibi
senatum tuum. Regna praesente Caesare.’ Sequebatur Vibius Crispus, ambo
infensi, vultu diverso, Marcellus minacibus oculis, Crispus renidens . . . ⁴⁸ Crispus,
that agreeable man,⁴⁹ might well smile: perhaps he knew what was going to
happen: Mucianus’ long speech in favour of the delators next day, and the
sudden melting of senatorial free-speech.⁵⁰ It is clear that the new régime had
put its shield over Marcellus and Crispus. But, as Tacitus half-tells us in the
Dialogus,⁵¹ the deal was not merely one-sided. Rich, powerful, and eloquent
delatores were essential to the running of the new Flavian administration.
Vespasian could only trust a limited circle, especially if the senate proved
hostile. He could use his relations: appoint Titus to the Jewish command,
Domitian praetor,⁵² give military posts to Arrecinus Clemens, Caesennius
Paetus, and Petilius Cerealis.⁵³ But this was not enough. The delatores were
a ready-made answer. They could be thrown to their enemies in the senate if
they caused trouble. Meanwhile, they could work. Marcellus became procon-
sul of Asia, for three years, then, for a second time, consul, in 74. Vibius
Crispus governed Africa and Tarraconensis, besides his cura aquarum. An-
other proconsul of Africa was Paccius Africanus, accuser of the Scribonii
under Nero, who like Marcellus and Crispus had come under fire in the senate
in 70.⁵⁴ Silius Italicus passed on from Neronian delation to a Flavian procon-
sulship of Asia.⁵⁵ The delatores were now not merely powerful, they had long
been that. Now they were positively members of the Establishment. It was not
so much that they were ‘eager to repair their credit’:⁵⁶ rather that Vespasian
both needed them and had a hold over them.
This was not merely a passing phase of Vespasian’s reign. Admittedly, Eprius
Marcellus came to a sudden end in 79, after involvement, real or apparent, in a
conspiracy against the throne (significant, this, of the heights to which delatores
could by now aspire: and of the basic insecurity of their position). But Vibius
Crispus was still making his elegant jokes under Domitian,⁵⁷ and the emperor’s

⁴⁶ Tac. Hist. 2.10.2. ⁴⁷ Tac. Hist. 4.41 ff. ⁴⁸ Tac. Hist. 4.43.3.
⁴⁹ Quint. 10.1.119: delectationi natus. ⁵⁰ Tac. Hist. 4.44.1 2. ⁵¹ Tac. Dial. 8.3.
⁵² Tac. Hist. 4.3.7.
⁵³ Syme (1958), 594 5, where the references for Marcellus and Crispus, and for other dela
tores, also appear.
⁵⁴ Tac. Hist. 4.41.4. ⁵⁵ Plin. Ep. 3.7.3. ⁵⁶ Syme (1958), 594.
⁵⁷ Suet. Dom. 3.1.
Quintilian and the vir bonus 9
pronouncement, princeps qui delatores non castigat, irritat⁵⁸ affected petty
accusers rather than the mighty. A new generation of delatores flourished—
Fabricius Veiento, notably, and Catullus Messallinus, linked in Juvenal’s con-
cilium satire and again in Pliny, who witnesses that Veiento was favoured even
by Nerva—and that Catullus no doubt would have been had he lived.⁵⁹ It is not
surprising that Trajan’s ruthless stamping out of delatores was the subject of
some sections in Pliny’s Panegyricus.⁶⁰ Yet even under Trajan one of the most
important accusers of all lived on, and had influence—Marcus Aquillius
Regulus, spanning dynasties and generations, still factious, feared and courted
after the death of Domitian.⁶¹ He had ruined noble families under Nero, while
still unknown. Attacked in the unruly senate of early 70, he, like Marcellus and
Crispus, survived: perhaps for the same reason, perhaps thanks to the efforts of
his brother, the Messalla who appears in the Dialogus. ‘[H]is subsequent
conduct,’ writes Syme,⁶² ‘though highly objectionable, [did] not involv[e] him
in the prosecution of any notable members of the senatorial opposition.’ But he
launched savage attacks on the memories of Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius
Senecio, two Stoic victims of Domitian’s last years: and Regulus’ hand may
have been at work in their actual ruin. Periculum foverat, says Pliny⁶³ in
connection with Rusticus; and he remarks that Regulus’ crimes under Domi-
tian were no less heinous than those under Nero, merely better concealed.⁶⁴ We
do not have details of Regulus’ official career, though he was consul at some
time unknown; no doubt he was more prominent in the forum, less in the
palace, than Marcellus and Crispus. And, correspondingly, we hear far more of
his oratory. Martial, a diligent admirer, praises his eloquence, remarks on
his ingenium, and emphasizes his celebrity as a defender.⁶⁵ One remembers
Suillius’ claim to use his oratory tuendis civibus: and one is sceptical. More
illuminating are the letters of Pliny, which draw Regulus with bold impres-
sionistic strokes. He emerges as a new version of Cassius Severus. Let us recall
Severus, his anger, his enthusiasm for accusation and abuse, the oratory that
had omnia intenta, aliquid petentia, but lacked order, brawling instead of
fighting: a man who despised rhetorical doctrine, maioris ingenii quam studii.
Compare with him Regulus, as we see him through the eyes of Pliny (and Pliny,
we remember, was a pupil of Quintilian): imbecillum latus, os confusum,
haesitans lingua, tardissima inventio, memoria nulla,⁶⁶ nihil denique praeter
ingenium insanum . . . ⁶⁷ Relevant to Quintilian also the next words: et tamen eo
impudentia ipsoque illo furore pervenit ut orator habeatur. What would Quin-
tilian have thought of this prostitution of oratoris illud sacrum nomen?⁶⁸

⁵⁸ Suet. Dom. 9.3. ⁵⁹ Plin. Ep. 4.22; cf. Syme (1958), 4 6. ⁶⁰ Plin. Pan. 34 ff.
⁶¹ Plin. Ep. 1.5.15. ⁶² Syme (1958), 77. ⁶³ Plin. Ep. 1.5.2. ⁶⁴ Plin. Ep. 1.5.1.
⁶⁵ For his eloquence e.g. Mart. 5.28.6; his ingenium 5.63.4; his abilities in defence e.g. 4.16.6.
⁶⁶ Clear references to at least three of the rhetorical partes listed by Quint. 3.3.1: inventione,
dispositione, elocutione, memoria, pronuntiatione.
⁶⁷ Plin. Ep. 4.7.4. ⁶⁸ Quint. 12.1.24.
10 Papers on Quintilian and Ancient Declamation
We may add the violence of Regulus’ language: he called Rusticus ‘that Stoic
ape’, Vitelliana cicatrice stigmosum.⁶⁹ ‘You recognize the style of Regulus’,
commented Pliny wryly. And, what is more, Regulus himself knew what his
oratory was like. He enjoyed contrasting himself with Pliny: Tu omnia quae
sunt in causa putas exsequenda; ego iugulum statim video, hunc premo.⁷⁰ There,
uniquely and memorably, speaks the violent oratory of the delatores. On
another occasion Regulus contrasted Pliny with Satrius Rufus, cui non est
cum Cicerone aemulatio et qui contentus est eloquentia saeculi nostri.⁷¹ Regulus,
in fact, was not just a violent and unscrupulous orator. He could see himself in
a wide literary context, and recognize that he, and orators like him for nearly a
hundred years, were for good reasons quite unlike Cicero. It was not that
Cicero was a bad orator: but merely that times had changed. Pliny was going
the wrong way—towards a dead past.
All this of course reminds us irresistibly of the Dialogus. ‘To defend the
modern style in oratory, the author introduces, as it were, a purified and
sympathetic Regulus, namely Marcus Aper.’⁷² But there is no need to narrow
the case down so much. Aper stands for all the orators of his type that the
century produced. Aper, Tacitus tells us, had attained fame in eloquence
ingenio et vi naturae,⁷³ rather than by education (institutio is the word,
perhaps significantly). But he was learned enough in his way, he despised
literature rather than was ignorant of it.⁷⁴ Now this is almost exactly what
Aper later says of Cassius Severus, non infirmitate ingenii nec inscitia litte-
rarum transtulisse se ad aliud dicendi genus . . . sed iudicio et intellectu.⁷⁵ And
even Regulus habebat studiis honorem.⁷⁶ All were purposeful and intelligent
men: and it is impossible to be sure that Tacitus felt no sympathy for the case
they put up.⁷⁷
How did Quintilian react to all this? I have suggested above that the
Institutio in general is an answer to the Apers of the day who thought
rhetorical doctrine outdated: and it can now be seen that Regulus was one
important contemporary representative of this view. Regulus, however, as still
living is not mentioned by name in the Institutio. What must now be noticed is
that Quintilian equally omits to connect with any of the names he mentions
the characteristics common to Regulus and, it might seem, many of his delator
predecessors: contempt for rhetorical rules, violence of language, increasing
political influence, moral failings of the first order. When it is remembered
that the delatores were the most important oratorical phenomenon of the
century, it becomes clear that Quintilian is glossing over the extent to which he

⁶⁹ Plin. Ep. 1.5.2. ⁷⁰ Plin. Ep. 1.20.14. ⁷¹ Plin. Ep. 1.5.11.


⁷² Syme (1958), 109 with n. 4. ⁷³ Tac. Dial. 2.1. ⁷⁴ Tac. Dial. 2.2.
⁷⁵ Tac. Dial. 19.1. ⁷⁶ Plin. Ep. 6.2.2.
⁷⁷ Note also how Aper spoke: acrius, ut solebat (Dial. 2.1) the pale reflexion of Regulus’ sav
age style?
Quintilian and the vir bonus 11
himself is swimming against the tide in proclaiming a new Ciceronianism. Of
the Flavian orators, for instance, Eprius Marcellus does not appear at all, even
to be criticized. Perhaps he was better left out, in view of the ambiguities of his
end.⁷⁸ His rival Vibius Crispus is given a whitewashed picture, much like that
of Domitius Afer. For Quintilian,⁷⁹ Crispus was iocundus: so too for Juvenal.⁸⁰
He was only recently dead, and Domitian was still alive. Quintilian might have
said much more, but he could hardly have said less. Crispus, he noted, was
better⁸¹ in private than in public cases: we could if we liked see this as the
faintest of hints that Vibius Crispus was not exactly the most fitting example of
the vir bonus dicendi peritus. Other first-century orators mentioned by Quin-
tilian are not delatores.
But we should be wrong to say that Quintilian ignores the tendencies he
found flourishing around him, even if he did not name their most notorious
exponents, or, naming them, did not connect them with those tendencies. We
may first remark on his criticism of ‘naturalists’ (my word), people who relied
on their ingenium alone. In the second book, before starting on the Ars as
such, Quintilian pauses to observe that quosdam in ipso statim limine obsta-
turos mihi, qui nihil egere eius modi praeceptis eloquentiam putent, sed natura
sua et vulgari modo scholarum exercitatione contenti rideant etiam diligentiam
nostram.⁸² Quintilian immediately makes it appear as though these objectors
are merely professional declaimers who feel that one could declaim without
any detailed technical instruction. They rely on their ingenium alone, and
boast that they speak impetu, by inspiration,⁸³ claiming that there is no need
for dispositio or proof in cases that in any case are imaginary: what is wanted is
rather grandes sententiae.⁸⁴ All this is uncannily reminiscent of what we know
of Cassius Severus;⁸⁵ and it could be that Quintilian wants us to recognize
more important figures behind those foolish declaimers; at any rate, these
declaimers have much in common with the attitudes of Regulus.

⁷⁸ Syme (1958), 109 n. 1. ⁷⁹ Quint. 10.1.119; cf. 12.10.11; 5.13.48. ⁸⁰ Juv. 4.81.
⁸¹ Quint. 10.1.119: melior. ⁸² Quint. 2.11.1. Cf. Winterbottom (1964c), 120 ff.
⁸³ Quintilian is never loath to use insanity to explain or abuse the excesses of contemporary
rhetoric, cf. 2.12.9: iactatione gestus, motu capitis furentes, and often elsewhere. So even the sage
Chilon, according to Diogenes Laertius 1.70, λέγοντα μὴ κινεῖν τὴν χεῖρα· μανικὸν γάρ. We have
seen Pliny, echoing his master, talk of Regulus’ furor. Madness, now as always, was connected
closely with inspiration, and if the ‘naturalists’ boasted that they were speaking impetu, they were
perhaps taking up the criticism of their opponents and making a virtue of it (for impetus of
inspiration cf. e.g. Ov. Pont. 4.2.25: Impetus ille sacer qui vatum pectora nutrit. See too Quint.
10.7.14, where Cicero is quoted as saying that according to old orators a god is present in
successful extemporary effusion). [This issue is much expanded in A.12 below.] Behind Quinti
lian’s use of ratio to mean method at 2.2.4 (cf. 7) may lurk the implication that the Institutio
offered reason in place of the madness that now prevailed (Ov. Met. 14.701: postquam ratione
furorem / vincere non potuit).
⁸⁴ Quint. 2.11.2 3.
⁸⁵ Sen. Con. 3.pr.4 and 2: maioris ingenii quam studii . . . ingentibus plena sententiis (sc.
oratio); Tac. Dial. 26.5: contempto ordine rerum.
12 Papers on Quintilian and Ancient Declamation
In the next chapter, however, Quintilian moves away from the declamation
school. The transition is imperceptible, but the change is clear: there is
mention of the litigant,⁸⁶ and of audience reaction in court.⁸⁷ We now have,
parallel with the naturalist declaimer, the naturalist orator. He is compared
with a gladiator rushing without training in rixam.⁸⁸ We shall remember that
Messalla in the Dialogus⁸⁹ makes exactly the same criticism of Cassius Severus.
Moreover, the naturalist orator, ineruditus as he is, is overprone to abusive-
ness:⁹⁰ so too Cassius Severus (plus bilis . . . quam sanguinis), so too Regulus
(Agnoscis eloquentiam Reguli). ‘And so’, says Quintilian, ‘let them be called
ingeniosi so long as it is understood that this is not a word we could use in
praise of anyone who was truly eloquent.’⁹¹ Here then Quintilian comes to
grips with his real adversaries: those who thought there was no point in
rhetorical rules. ‘Let us congratulate them’, he concludes ironically. ‘They
are eloquent without work, without method and without discipline.’ These
three qualities were what Quintilian proposed to put into the Institutio, and
they constituted a good deal of what he recommended in it. We can now see
whom he is criticizing, the spiritual descendants of Cassius Severus: and
among these, at least by implication, may be numbered the delatores, and in
particular Regulus himself.⁹²
But more generally than this, the whole background of delator eloquence
that has been sketched above throws light on much that might seem irrelevant
or academic in the Institutio. Half of the second book, for example, consists of
quaestiones about the status of rhetoric. Is it an art? (c. 17). If so, what kind of
art—a good one, or merely a neutral one: is it a virtus? (c. 20). Is it utilis?
(c. 16). Does nature or education contribute more to the great speaker? (c. 19).
All these questions, of course, had for long been discussed by writers on
rhetoric. But Quintilian goes over them again, and at length, because they
were topics of the moment. People were actually saying, and had for years
been saying, that rhetoric was a mere knack, to be picked up by experience in
the courts, a matter of ingenium schooled only by practice. Quintilian had at

⁸⁶ Quint. 2.12.4. ⁸⁷ Quint. 2.12.6.


⁸⁸ No need to search, as Spalding searched, for cases of rixa used of gladiatorial combat:
Quintilian is saying that a contest between untrained gladiators is a brawl, not a fight (not
dissimilarly, Sen. Dial. 10.12.2 talks of puerorum rixantium: they were wrestling, Seneca was
being scornful).
⁸⁹ Tac. Dial. 26.5: non pugnat sed rixatur. ⁹⁰ Quint. 2.12.4.
⁹¹ So at much the same time Mart. 7.9: Cum sexaginta numeret Cascellius annos, / ingeniosus
homo est: quando disertus erit?
⁹² For naturalists of a rather different kind see Quint. 12.10.40 ff. More relevantly, 9.4.3:
Neque ignoro quosdam esse, qui curam omnem compositionis excludant, atque illum horridum
sermonem, ut forte fluxerit, modo magis naturalem modo etiam magis virilem esse contendant.
Cf. Suillius on his vividam et incorruptam eloquentiam (Tac. Ann. 13.42.3). See also 11.3.10 11,
whose tone can instructively be compared with that of 2.12.12.
Quintilian and the vir bonus 13
least to make a show of disproving these contentions: because otherwise the
whole mass of his doctrine fell to the ground.
But there is more to it than that. It is my contention that the same
background answers my opening question also: why did Quintilian insist
that the orator should be a good man? Orators are still famous, says Aper:⁹³
quos saepius vulgus . . . transeuntis nomine vocat et digito demonstrat? His
examples are delatores, Marcellus and Crispus, representatives of a class who
in this century agerent verterent cuncta odio et terrore.⁹⁴ Thus, as Maternus
rejoins, this fame was bought at a price; it, like the eloquence that produced it,
was ex malis moribus natus.⁹⁵ In the light of this, I suggest, we do not need to
look further for the reason for Quintilian’s emphasis on the moral qualities of
the perfect orator.
There could be no question, of course, of open condemnation of the
malpractices of the day. Domitian was still alive; so, no less importantly, was
the dangerous Regulus. What is more, Quintilian was in all probability writing
during the final Domitianic reign of terror, when Carus Mettius’ victoriae were
increasing in number, and sententia Messallini strepebat beyond the four walls
of the Alban villa.⁹⁶ Moreover, there was a matter of propriety. Quintilian was
a Flavian office-holder, appointed by Vespasian, and, under Domitian, tutor
for a while of royal children. Along with kind words about Domitian’s poetic
prowess had to go a discreet silence about the less agreeable aspects of Flavian
power. Indeed it is striking that Quintilian says as much as he does. In Book 2
he says that he thinks et fuisse multos et esse nonnullos . . . qui facultatem
dicendi ad hominum perniciem converterint.⁹⁷ Later, nam et minari et deferre
etiam non orator (even a non-orator) potest.⁹⁸ In Book 12, most openly of all,
accusatoriam vitam vivere et ad deferendos reos praemio duci proximum
latrocinio est.⁹⁹ Indeed, it is surprising that this should have been written, or
at least published, under Domitian at all.¹⁰⁰ We find the same tone of voice
under Trajan: Pliny in the Panegyric calls delators latrones.¹⁰¹
I suggest then that Quintilian was, like Plato, led to a moralistic view of the
function of rhetoric by what he saw going on around him. He found himself
disgusted by the way rhetoric was being misapplied: and we should not forget
that this was a matter of emotion to the academic Quintilian. Eloquence for
him was honesta ac rerum pulcherrima.¹⁰² Nature non parens sed noverca

⁹³ Tac. Dial. 7.4. ⁹⁴ Tac. Hist. 1.2.3. ⁹⁵ Tac. Dial. 12.2. ⁹⁶ Tac. Ag. 45.1.
⁹⁷ Quint. 2.20.2. ⁹⁸ Quint. 4.1.22.
⁹⁹ Quint. 12.7.3. Also in Book 12, note the emphasis on pecuniariae quaestiones in which
veritas had to be defended against calumnia by the good orator.
¹⁰⁰ The Institutio was ‘presumably published before Domitian’s death in 96. At least it seems
unlikely that if the murder had taken place before publication the complimentary passages would
have been allowed to remain’ (Colson (1924),  n. 5).
¹⁰¹ Plin. Pan. 34.1. So, it is true, did Columella (1.pr.9). ¹⁰² Quint. 1.12.16.
14 Papers on Quintilian and Ancient Declamation
fuerit si facultatem dicendi sociam scelerum, adversam innocentiae, hostem
veritatis invenit.¹⁰³ It was on these convictions that Quintilian based his
assertions that the orator must be a good man, skilled in speaking. And it
will be no coincidence that Herennius Senecio drew the moral when he
described a contemporary orator as vir malus dicendi imperitus.¹⁰⁴ That con-
temporary was Marcus Aquillius Regulus.
A postscript may be added. Quintilian thought his age rich in rhetorical
talent;¹⁰⁵ there could be great orators once again, if the lessons of the Institutio
were thoroughly learnt. In a way he was wrong; ironically, with the crushing of
the delatores, Trajan seemed to kill oratory also. When Regulus died Pliny
found himself writing with a conscious paradox that he missed the man,
despite everything.¹⁰⁶ In the same mood, Tacitus wrote in the Agricola¹⁰⁷ of
stagnation under the first years of Trajan—the numbness and inertia of the
new peace. There was room only for panegyric now, and the driest of legal
advocacy: only occasionally the spice of a trial for misdemeanours in the
provinces.¹⁰⁸ There was, basically, nothing to do in the senate: Sunt quidem
cuncta sub unius arbitrio, qui pro utilitate communi solus omnium curas
laboresque suscepit.¹⁰⁹ And this is exactly the wistful note of Maternus’ last
speech in the Dialogus: Quid enim opus est longis in senatu sententiis, cum
optimi cito consentiant? Quid multis apud populum contionibus, cum de
republica non imperiti et multi deliberent, sed sapientissimus et unus?¹¹⁰ In
these circumstances Quintilian’s view of the orator as one whose primary task
it was to ‘guide the counsels of the senate and bring the errant people back to
better courses’¹¹¹ was absurdly out-of-date. Oratory could no longer have its
traditional¹¹² political justification.

¹⁰³ Quint. 12.1.2. ¹⁰⁴ Plin. Ep. 4.7.5.


¹⁰⁵ Quint. 10.1.122. Quintilian is less defensive here than at 2.5.23 4 ( . . . novos, quibus et ipsis
multa virtus adest. Neque enim nos tarditatis natura damnavit), with which compare Plin.
Ep. 6.21.1: Neque enim quasi lassa et effeta natura nihil iam laudabile parit. The period had
no great literary self confidence.
¹⁰⁶ Plin. Ep. 6.2.1. ¹⁰⁷ Tac. Ag. 3.1.
¹⁰⁸ Note especially Pliny on his lack of subjects for letters (Ep. 9.2); contrast the long letter
about the Priscus trial (2.11).
¹⁰⁹ Plin. Ep. 3.20.12.
¹¹⁰ Tac. Dial. 41.4. This suggests a clue to the varying tones of the Dialogus. Aper’s bright and
brash optimism reflects Tacitus’ youth under Vespasian, when the visitor from, say, the north of
Italy would look out for Eprius Marcellus in the streets of Rome. Messalla speaks for the
Quintilian view, formulated rather later in the century. Maternus’ final speech, filled with the
vague nostalgia of the early Trajanic period, dispels the different optimisms of Aper and
Messalla.
¹¹¹ Quint. 12.1.26.
¹¹² Cic. De orat. 2.55: Nemo enim studet eloquentiae nostrorum hominum nisi ut in causis et in
foro eluceat.
Quintilian and the vir bonus 15
But perhaps in the long run Quintilian was more successful. Cicero was
remembered, and Regulus forgotten.¹¹³ And the view of the orator as vir bonus
dicendi peritus echoes, at intervals, down the centuries.¹¹⁴
[This early piece, much influenced in style and content by R. Syme, should be
read in conjunction with Goldberg (1999). For Tacitus’ Dialogus de oratoribus,
see also Winterbottom (2001).]

¹¹³ Except, apparently, by Martianus Capella RLM p. 453.1 Halm [= 3.432 Willis].
¹¹⁴ So Fortunatianus RLM p. 81.5 Halm [= p. 65.5 Calboli Montefusco]; Cassiodorus RLM
p. 495.5 Halm; Isidore RLM p. 507.16 Halm.
2

Problems in the Elder Seneca

The text of the Controversiae and Suasoriae of the Elder Seneca is very corrupt.
For thirty years at the end of last century it was a happy hunting ground
of critical endeavour. Many wounds were healed; many remain. Others,
however, were inflicted by the very scholars who sought to heal. Where
declaimers so cunning and elusive as those excerpted by Seneca are at play,
and where, so often, one has to make up one’s own context for isolated
epigrams, the greatest care has to be taken in emendation. Is one curing—or
merely misunderstanding?
It is easy to be hypnotized by past emendations once they achieve the
sanctity of print. One of the principal tasks of a new editor¹ of the Elder
Seneca would be, with a clear head, to sift through the discoveries of the past,
and appraise their varying merits. To take a few examples at random. In
Con. 1.1 a son has been disinherited by his father and adopted by his uncle;
now his uncle too is disinheriting him. The declaimer sings the son’s virtues:
Quam multi patres optant similem filium! Bis abdicor.² ‘Any other father
would be glad to have me—yet I get disinherited, twice!’ No very distinguished
epigram, but a point. Yet Vahlen’s ab his abdicor was accepted by Müller and
continued into Bornecque; it is infinitely feebler. In Con. 1.2 a priesthood is

[Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 21 (1974), 20 42]


¹ That, on the basis of my recent Loeb (1974), I can hardly claim to be. This article does
not discuss all the conjectures of mine there printed (most of the others are trivial
variations on earlier efforts), nor does my Loeb print all the suggestions I make here. An
earlier version of this paper was read to the Oxford Philological Society on 30 October 1970.
The ensuing discussion produced some helpful comments, some of which are recorded in
my footnotes.
² Con. 1.1.9 (20.11 M.). References are by page and line to H. J. Müller’s edition (1887; repr.
Hildesheim 1963), on which I rely for all manuscript readings. Conjectures not mentioned by
Müller are given references. I have not assembled lists of emendations with which I disagree.
[The reference edition of the Elder Seneca’s declamations is now that of Håkanson (1989).
An unpublished commentary by Håkanson on Sen. Con. 1 has just been edited by F. Citti,
B. Santorelli, and A. Stramaglia: see Håkanson (2016).]
Problems in the Elder Seneca 17
sought by a woman who once was in a brothel and venientes ad se exorabat
stipem. The declaimer says in accusation of her: Ego illam dico prostitisse; illa
se dicit etiam mendicasse.³ ‘I say she was a prostitute; she says she was a beggar
too.’ She asked, that is, for alms; for her it is a defence,⁴ for her accuser it is an
aggravation of her guilt—she was on public sale, and she begged into the
bargain. A palpable hit. Yet editors have persisted with variations on Lipsius’
vindicasse. At Con. 7.7.18 (337.23 M.) we have Fuscus’ colour for the crucified
general who said Cavete proditionem from his cross: dixit alienatum iam
suppliciis animum et errantem has voces effudisse sine argumentis, sine reo.
Without, that is, naming a specific traitor and accusing him. What need of
Thomas’s sine ratione? Many such defences of the paradosis could be men-
tioned;⁵ the mark of success is that what is transmitted is, once the penny has
dropped, seen to be cleverer than what editors substitute.
All the same, no one would claim that the paradosis of the Elder Seneca is
faultless. This paper will be mainly concerned to tamper with it. I group my
suggestions under the heads, ‘The Manuscripts’, ‘Using the Excerpta’, ‘Clau-
sulae’, ‘Deletions’, ‘Additions’, ‘Other Conjectures’, and ‘The Greek’: though a
certain amount of overlap between these categories is unavoidable.

T H E MA N U S C R I P T S

One complication is the relationship of the three most important manuscripts


of the ‘main’, that is the non-excerpted, text of Seneca, A, B, and V. Müller
supposed that A and B descended from a hyparchetype x, while V descended
from a hyparchetype x¹. And I gather from Dr H. D. L. Vervliet, to whom I am
exceedingly grateful for much information on the manuscripts, that his further
researches on the tradition do not alter this basic picture of the top of the
stemma. Now, while AB give us a defective but uninterpolated text, V ‘ex alio
codice (x¹) descriptus est, quem ipsum homo doctus, multis locis haud dubie
suo tantum ingenio usus, non raro autem alium, ut opinor, eumque optimae
notae librum secutus, felicissime emendaverat, cui tamen idem vir doctus, cum

³ Con. 1.2.10 (36.2 M.).


⁴ Professor Goold, to whom I am indebted for his helpful comments, objects that etiam must
imply that the woman admitted the charge of being a prostitute. But she would really have said:
‘Yes, I was in the brothel, but I only took alms.’ The accuser twists this to: ‘I was a prostitute, and
I begged as well.’
⁵ I name honoris causa e.g. Summers’s defence (1911), 19 20 and 20 1, of adoravit at
Con. 1.2.20 (41.5 M.) and of deprehensus at 1.4.2 (51.22 M.); Shackleton Bailey’s (1969), 323 of
petis at 2.1.4 (108.7 M.); and Otto’s (1888), 132 3 of reducere at 2.1.18 (116.10 M.).
18 Papers on Quintilian and Ancient Declamation
scripturam depravatam facili negotio sanare posse sibi videretur, multas et eas
manifestas interpolationes⁶ . . . inculcaverat.’⁷
It would, I think, be wrong to say that all the good readings in V that do not
appear in AB are due to conjecture, though I suspect that a very large number
are; I doubt if (looking at a sample fifteen pages of text) a medieval emender
could have achieved Con. 1.1.5 (17.17 M.) naturam mutare (AB have natura
militare), 1.1.7 (19.7 M.) essem scivisti cum (esse miscuisti eum), 1.1.23 (28.4 M.)
arbitrum (arbitriudi), though very many of the others are easily within the
grasp of anyone who knew Latin. It would be perverse, that is, to say that the
coincidence of AB should always be preferred, at least as a starting point, to
V. But so often do AB point towards, V away from the truth, that it is always
worth, in any doubtful case, pondering the possibility that V is interpolated
rather than transmitting inherited truth.⁸ x was, I take it, infinitely more like
the archetype than V. And how Müller distinguished cases where V was
drawing on a good outside source I do not know.
I do not wish to labour this point: though it accounts for my practice in many
of the passages I discuss of tacitly ignoring the phenomena of V. I point merely
to the matter of the words in V that are omitted by AB, not the common-or-
garden interpolations, but words that the editors accept with a will.
First, note an instructive case where V is caught out making an addition of
its own. At Con. 1.6.2 (64.7 M.) the text goes as follows: Artius nos fortuna
alligavit quam ut orba posset divellere. Vidisses tectum pannis corpus, omnia
membra vinculis pressa. So the manuscripts, except that (a) after alligavit ABV
all give <nisi corpus omnia vinculis>: and (b) when omnia . . . vinculis comes
round again only V gives the word membra, while AB omit it. The conclusion
is clear: when (in the archetype⁹ or behind it) (pan)nis corpus omnia vinculis
intruded into the previous sentence, membra was not present to be carried
along with the intruders. V or its ancestor x¹ will be responsible for the
addition—and, I should judge, acting suo Marte, though no doubt correctly.
Hagendahl gives an instructive list of words that appear in V but are lacking
in AB.¹⁰ He starts from a striking case, by him misinterpreted. The thema
of Con. 7.6 (318.15 M.) starts thus: Tyrannus permisit servis (servisi AB: servis
ut V) dominis interemptis—the E(xcerpta) omit the last two words, but no

⁶ A flagrant instance in the poem of Albinovanus Pedo (Suas. 1.15 (529.19 M.)): . . . audaces
ire . . . / †asperum† metas extremaque litora mundi. V gives hesperii (sic), Haupt, finely, ad
rerum.
⁷ Müller (1887),  .
⁸ I give a trivial but typical example. The quarrelsome Scaurus litiganti similior quam agenti
cupiebat evocare aliquam vocem adversariorum et in altercationem pervenire (Con. 10.pr.2
(447.10 M.)). Does not pervenire jar? It is V’s word; AB give vervenire. Did not the archetype
give that too, by corrupt reduplication for venire?
⁹ For those who see point, as I do not, in calculating the length of the line in the archetype this
passage will be of service. So will the anticipation of (carce)re vixerunt at Con. 9.2.1 (382.13 M.).
¹⁰ Hagendahl (1936), 312 13.
Problems in the Elder Seneca 19
matter. Then E continues the sentence dominas suas rapere: the right sense
(cf. below: Cum omnes servi dominas suas vitiassent and esp. 7.6.13 (325.12
M.): tyrannus permisit dominas rapere, non coegit), and with no linguistic
objection (for the infinitive see 7.6.13 (325.12 M.) again). But AB omit the
words, V has a stop-gap: dominabus suis nubant. These words are perversely
ignored by the editors, according to Hagendahl: ‘Quo rarior est forma illa
dominabus . . . eo minus est, quod putemus eam interpolatam esse.’ On the
contrary: the rarer the form, the more we require a Senecan parallel. None is
forthcoming. And why nubant?¹¹—it is clear from everything in the con-
troversia that the decree allowed rape, while the father who wanted his
daughter to marry the ex-slave was going beyond the decree: plus servo
dominus permisit quam tyrannus.¹² An interpolation, then, and one that
reeks of its later date: -abus was particularly affected in the fourth century
and later.¹³ The Thesaurus cites dominabus¹⁴ from Baudonivia’s life of
St Radegund (c.600).
Hagendahl appends a summary list, again instructive. a, ad, in, de, sub, per,
et, si, sed, ut, quae, quam, se, me, non are found in V when AB omit them: a
total of thirty instances,¹⁵ all the simplest and most necessary of additions,
often with parallelism nearby to show the way. Hagendahl can register only
seven more substantial items. They are worth examining individually.
Con. 2.1.28 (122.15 M.): Cestius illo colore: quos abdicatione non potuit
terrere, putat se castigaturum adoptione. ‘Non ille tuum filium concupiscit: suos
corrigit. Dum illos correctos (correptos V: om. AB) putaverit, te satis minatum
abdicabit.’ Cum (so C. F. W. Müller) will be right for dum. And if we give me
for te (so Bursian) we get the good sense that it is the son who has done the
threatening. But it is perfectly on the cards that Seneca wrote: cum illis
putaverit me satis minatum, abdicabit. And even if he did not, the fact remains
that correctos¹⁶ is the simplest and dullest addition: it picks up corrigit from the
sentence before. The interpolator may be at work; he may even be wrong.
At Con. 7.3.1 (298.10 M.) I am prepared to believe that V had reus vivet:
vivet transmitted to it, despite AB’s omission of one vivet. But the extreme ease
with which the word could be coincidentally omitted reduces the value of this
instance. The same is true of 9.1.11 (378.20–1 M.), where V gives beneficium
twice, correctly, AB only once, and of 9.2.9 (385.22 M.) atqui quid interest

¹¹ Quite apart from the fact that the word is properly used of women (as Mr M. D. Reeve re
minded me).
¹² Con. 7.5.2 (319.15 M.). ¹³ Kühner Holzweissig (1912), 419 21.
¹⁴ TLL s.v. domina 1935.22.
¹⁵ But delete Con. 1.1.3 (17.6 M.), where non sit is probably wrong. At 2.6.4 (178.12 M.)
coercet vitia qui provocat might stand as a question without non.
¹⁶ The interpolator may even have written correptos, as V gives it. Corrigo and corripio were
constantly confused, at least in certain forms, and medievals may not have sharply distinguished
between their meanings.
20 Papers on Quintilian and Ancient Declamation
convivium in forum an forum (an forum om. AB) in convivium attrahas,
though this might be within the range of the alert emender. The case at 9.5.3
(415.12 M.) is helpful here: filios quos perdidisti non quaeris, quem quaeris non
perdidisti. AB omit quem quaeris, understandably, but we know from 9.5.6
(421.6 M.) that Votienus said just this. V gives quaeris quem: the mark of the
interpolator, ignorant of the term homoeoteleuton but alert to sense.
Two final items. The gods, says one declaimer, have given their verdict in
favour of an ex-captive and ex-prostitute who wishes to be a priestess: inter tot
pericula non servassent illam dii nisi sibi (Con. 1.2.19 (40.15 M.)). All well. Yet
V tacks on servata fuisset; the Excerpta add servaturi fuissent. Both interpolate;
and, what convicts both, in different terms. Then at 7.2.3 (291.4 M.) we have
Non magis quisquam alius occidere Ciceronem potuit praeter Popillium praeter
Ciceronem defendere. The evident gap was filled by interpolation in V with the
ungrammatical quam nemo pupillium after Popillium. Thomas was right to
stress that V, or a forebear, is merely inventing, and right too, I think, to plug
the gap with quam quisquam alius Popillium.¹⁷
The matter does not quite end there, for Hagendahl’s list admits of expan-
sion. I can give a further twenty-two cases (there may be a few more).
Significantly the pattern is very similar. The majority are small words, that a
corrector could have added with ease. Thus ut (Con. 1.1.17 (25.9 M.); 2.4.1
(161.6 M.); 10.4.11 (486.1 M.): all essential to obvious constructions), an
(1.7.11 (77.10); 6.th. (558.7 M.): both ‘formulaic’), in (2.1.34 (126.6 M.)),
non (2.6.7 (180.11 M.); 10.1.7 (461.3 M.)), a(b) (2.7.9 (191.5 M.); 7.5.14
(318.4 M.)), de (7.6.2 (331.1 M.)), eo (9.pr.4 (371.20 M.), between usque and
ut), cum (9.2.24 (393.2 M.), to support a pluperfect subjunctive), and si (2.4.13
(160.13 M.); 10.3.11 (477.19 M.)). Of the others, 1.6.1 (63.16 M.) spei merely
completes an anaphora (perhaps unnecessarily, despite support from the
Excerpta); 2.5.19 (174.11 M.) publicis is dictated by the contrast with privatis;
while at 9.5.17 (421.18 M.) a sentence starting multa referam quae Montani-
ana Scaurus vocabat and proceeding uno hoc contentus ero cries out for a
negative (ne, C. F. W. Müller), which the interpolator fumbled with non. At
Suas. 1.1 (520.6 M.), the completion of post omnia oceanum nihil does call for
some critical sense (omnia <oceanus post> V), but this could be a case of
coincidental error in AB.
As to the three remaining cases: At Con. 1.5.7 (61.18 M.) the discussion is of
three possible choices. Both girls choose death, both marriage, or one mar-
riage, one death. Corruption has pruned this to aut nuptias optabunt aut
altera mortem altera nuptias. Proceeding, AB give¹⁸ optaverunt, non poterit
fieri quod utraque volet: uno modo poterit fieri quod utraque volet, si utraque
mortem optaverit. It was left to modern scholars to supplement the opening

¹⁷ Thomas (1899), 161 n. 6. ¹⁸ Here as elsewhere I ignore minor variations.


Problems in the Elder Seneca 21
statement: best Gertz, who inserted mortem utraque aut before the first
nuptias.¹⁹ In what follows it is clear that optaverint (so V²) is necessary, and
that the bulk of a conditional clause giving the other two eventualities apart
from si utraque mortem optaverit has fallen out: parallelism demands <si aut
nuptias utraque aut altera mortem, altera nuptias> optaverint, as Gertz gave it.
We cannot do without the first aut, and editors should not have been deceived
by the fact that V has <si nuptias> optaverint into omitting it. V’s addition is
an interpolator’s—and the interpolator had forgotten the possibility of the
girls making different choices.
At Suas. 2.14 (540.15 M.) Cestius, cum descripsisset quos habituri essent si
pro patria cecidissent, adiecit: per sepulchra nostra iurabitur, V has honores
before quos: in that context not a difficult addition, though maybe not made in
the right place (better before habituri?).
Finally Abdica, inquit. Hoc pater versus. Quid adoptavit sperare possum?
(Con. 2.1.3 (107.8 M.)). So, with much corruption, AB. V improves with quid
<ab eo qui>, surely rightly.²⁰ It is difficult to see an interpolator at work here.
Coincidental omission in AB? Or a proof of the independence of V from the
common source of AB? If it is a proof, it is, I suggest, the only case among the
fifty or so places where AB omits words given by V that is not attributable to
an interpolator.²¹ It is a meagre haul; I do not dwell on it further, except to
suggest that this is the sort of situation one would expect where three manu-
scripts, one highly interpolated, descend from an archetype with no lower
common links. It remains true that other types of error in AB against
V suggest that the traditional stemma is correct. It is odd that the evidence
of omissions is so indecisive.
Caution about ‘additions’ in V should be matched by caution about addi-
tions found in D, an agreed descendant of V.²² I note a cluster in Con. 10.4. At
10.4.8 (484.3 M.) we have A te (A patre Kiessling) fortasse aliquis acceptam
stipem ad deos. D adds portat after stipem: it may, or may not, be the right verb
in the right position (rhythmic considerations would place it at the end of the
clause). Just below Lupa expositis infantibus, oblita feritatis, placida velut
fetibus suis ubera praebuisse fertur. Sic lupa venit ad infantes.²³ Expositis in-
fantibus is the addition of Haase, the first lupa appears in D but not in the
primary manuscripts. Neither addition is necessary. The context, as almost

¹⁹ Though it is true that below utraque is followed, as is more proper, by a singular verb.
²⁰ The corrector of the Toledo manuscript rightly restored the sentence thus: Abdico, inquit.
Hoc pater verus! Quid ab eo qui adoptabit sperare possum?
²¹ Contrast the sort of omissions that mark off A from BV (Suas. 1.14 (529.9 11 M.) quis
mihi ponam), B from AV (Con. 1.8.8 (87.6 M.) patrem quia), V from AB (Con. 9.4.9 10
(407.14 16) possit patrem). Those gaps could not be filled by conjecture.
²² I do not enquire about the relationship between D and the corrector of T. That does not
affect the present argument. But see Hagendahl (1936), 313 14.
²³ Con. 10.4.9 (484.16 M.).
22 Papers on Quintilian and Ancient Declamation
always, is lost, but the declaimer has clearly been talking of Romulus and
Remus. The subject can be suppressed, and the dative be understood, till we
come to lupa and to ad infantes in the next sentence. That is certain. Less clear
10.4.12 (486.13 M.): Illi singulos exponunt, tu omnes debilitas: illi spem, tu
instrumenta vivendi detrahis. Here tu instrumenta vivendi is the contribution
of D; tu is right—for the rest we cannot know.²⁴

USIN G THE EXCERPTA

Clearly, the E(xcerpta), for all the adaptation which they have undergone,²⁵ are
vital to the constitution of the text of the corresponding Controversiae where
those are extant. And editors since Bursian have naturally made use of them
for this purpose. But they have not always resisted the temptation to assume
that words present in the excerpta must be inserted in the main text if they are
lacking there. At Con. 9.2.3 (383.11 M.) we have in the main text the excellent
epigram: Facilius est ut qui alia meretrici dederit homicidium neget quam ut
qui hoc quoque dederit quicquam. Müller adds negarit from E 9.2 (435.16 M.);
Bursian did better to add another neget. But E is making sure the reader
understands—and providing a proper clausula (hence the form?). We do not
need to follow.
Editors are not always careful in comparing the main text with E. In Con.
7.1.24 (285.23 M.) Hispanus’ colour is twice given, thus: Hispanus duro colore
usus est: Hoc, inquit, supplicium tamquam gravius elegi . . . et hoc colore per
totam declamationem usus est, ut diceret hoc se tamquam gravius elegisse. E,
summarizing this, gives: Hispanus, duro colore usus, hoc se tamquam gravius
elegisse dixit supplicii genus.²⁶ Müller uses this as a justification for adding
supplicii genus in the main text after elegisse:²⁷ speciously.
Other cases may be more disputable. Tyrannus suspicatus est nescio quid
istum de tyrannicidio cogitare, sive isti aliquid excidit, sive magna consilia non
bene voltus (benivolis ABV) exigunt (so AB: exibuit V). So the main text at
Con. 2.4.13 (161.16 M.). E gives: . . . sive non bene tegit vultus māgnă cōnsĭlĭă.²⁸
That may certainly stand in E—and Kiessling was wrong to suggest texit. What
of the main text? Should not the generalizing present appear there also?²⁹

²⁴ But we may guess: illi <vitam, tu> spem detrahis. For loss of hope as worse than loss of life
see Cic. Catil. 4.8: Eripit . . . spem, quae sola hominem in miseriis consolari solet etc. A verb may
have dropped out of the illi clause.
²⁵ Hagendahl (1936), 299 ff. ²⁶ E 7.1 (348.21 2 M.). ²⁷ Con. 7.1.24 (286.7 M.).
²⁸ E 2.5 (198.26 M.).
²⁹ So Castiglioni (1927), 117, suggesting vultus contegit. Cf. Sen. Thy. 330 1 multa sed trepidus
solet / detegere vultus.
Problems in the Elder Seneca 23
Perhaps then tegit; or, bearing in mind exigunt, tegunt (cf. Cic. De orat. 2.148
voltus . . . perspiciamus omnis, qui sensus animi plerumque indicant).
At Con. 10.4.6 (482.21 M.) Fuscus appeals to the judges to pity a group of
cripples in court just as they pitied them individually on the streets: Misere-
mini horum, iudices, [et] misereri etiam singulorum soletis. E has: Miseremini
omnium, iudices, quorum singulorum misereri soletis.³⁰ Müller compromises
in the main text with Miseremini horum omnium, iudices, quorum misereri
etiam singulorum soletis. We may well do without quorum—two parallel
clauses give a good bite. And I think we should do without horum as well;
it will be ABV’s corruption of omnium (which is itself, of course, essential to
the contrast).
At Con. 9.5.14 (420.6) Varius’ epigram for the grandfather who kidnapped
his grandson after two previous grandsons had died is thus given by the main
text: Quae est ista aut tam (aut tam AB: aucta V) praepostera? Quaerere tuos a
tertio incipis. Something is clearly missing, and E confirms: Quae ista est tam
sera pietas, tam praepostera? Quaerere tuos a tertio incipis.³¹ The logic of this is
right. The father’s desire to get his third son back shows affection that is both
late in the day and topsy-turvy, not ‘si tardive ou si intempestive’ (Bornecque).
We should therefore delete aut in the main text (dittography between -a and t-),
and supplement merely tam <sera pietas, tam>, not, keeping the aut, <sera
pietas aut tam> (so editors since Bursian).
As to the manuscript tradition of the Excerpta, I can only judge from the
information in Müller’s apparatus. Müller’s own judgement is that by far the
best manuscript is the Montepessulanus (M), because it alone ‘interpolationi-
bus, quibus reliqui scatent, prorsus liber sit . . . nec tamen reliquos neglexi, cum
et complura in M perierint et satis multa in M perperam scripta ex uno vel
altero recentiorum codicum medelam accipere viderem.’³² In a sense the
supremacy of M should, I think, be put more highly. But the impression that
it contains almost all the evidence of value is artificially heightened by the
activities of the ‘recent’ corrector called by Müller M³, who saves the manu-
script from many errors³³ not found in other manuscripts, and may, in part,
have been drawing on those other manuscripts. It would be wrong to suppose
that all the other manuscripts descend from M. But so much more reliable is
M in general that it is always worth pausing before rejecting its readings.
Thus at E 6.6 (262.17 M.), where the main text is not available, an advocate
is replying on behalf of a wife accused of poisoning and adultery, partly
because she had said of her daughter ‘She will die sooner than be married’:
exciderunt illi verba quae non minus quam pater filiam luget. This makes

³⁰ E 10.3 (513.15 M.). ³¹ E 9.5 (442.15 M.). ³² Müller (1887),  .
³³ Often trivial or orthographical. M³ also introduces errors (sometimes available in other
manuscripts): e.g. at random E 1.3 (95.18 M.) dubitari <non> (M³P); E 2.7 (203.5 M.) animus
(M³P); E 7.7 (356.15 M.) nec (M³P).
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secrets which are treasured in his breast, I come to proclaim myself
his slave, his apostle, his martyr.”
The divinity did not respond, but after a long silence, the same
voice asked:—“What does the partner of thy long wanderings
intend?”
“To obey and to serve,” answered Lorenza.
Simultaneously with her words, profound darkness succeeded the
glare of light, uproar followed on tranquillity, terror on trust, and a
sharp and menacing voice cried loudly:—“Woe to those who cannot
stand the tests!”
Husband and wife were immediately separated to undergo their
respective trials, which they endured with exemplary fortitude, and
which are detailed in the text of the memoirs. When the romantic
mummery was over, the two postulants were led back into the
temple, with the promise of admission to the divine mysteries. There
a man mysteriously draped in a long mantle cried out to them:
—“Know ye that the arcanum of our great art is the government of
mankind, and that the one means to rule them is never to tell them
the truth. Do not foolishly regulate your actions according to the rules
of common sense; rather outrage reason and courageously maintain
every unbelievable absurdity. Remember that reproduction is the
palmary active power in nature, politics, and society alike; that it is a
mania with mortals to be immortal, to know the future without
understanding the present, and to be spiritual while all that
surrounds them is material.”
After this harangue the orator genuflected devoutly before the
divinity of the temple and retired. At the same moment a man of
gigantic stature led the countess to the feet of the immortal Count de
Saint-German, who thus spoke:—
“Elected from my tenderest youth to the things of greatness, I
employed myself in ascertaining the nature of veritable glory. Politics
appeared to me nothing but the science of deception, tactics the art
of assassination, philosophy the ambitious imbecility of complete
irrationality; physics fine fancies about Nature and the continual
mistakes of persons suddenly transplanted into a country which is
utterly unknown to them; theology the science of the misery which
results from human pride; history the melancholy spectacle of
perpetual perfidy and blundering. Thence I concluded that the
statesman was a skilful liar, the hero an illustrious idiot, the
philosopher an eccentric creature, the physician a pitiable and blind
man, the theologian a fanatical pedagogue, and the historian a word-
monger. Then did I hear of the divinity of this temple. I cast my cares
upon him, with my incertitudes and aspirations. When he took
possession of my soul he caused me to perceive all objects in a new
light; I began to read futurity. This universe so limited, so narrow, so
desert, was now enlarged. I abode not only with those who are, but
with those who were. He united me to the loveliest women of
antiquity. I found it eminently delectable to know all without studying
anything, to dispose of the treasures of the earth without the
solicitation of monarchs, to rule the elements rather than men.
Heaven made me liberal; I have sufficient to satisfy my taste; all that
surrounds me is rich, loving, predestinated.”
When the service was finished the costume of ordinary life was
resumed. A superb repast terminated the ceremony. During the
course of the banquet the two guests were informed that the Elixir of
Immortality was merely Tokay coloured green or red according to the
necessities of the case. Several essential precepts were enjoined
upon them, among others that they must detest, avoid, and
calumniate men of understanding, but flatter, foster, and blind fools,
that they must spread abroad with much mystery the intelligence that
the Count de Saint-Germain was five hundred years old, that they
must make gold, but dupes before all.
The truth of this singular episode is not attested by any sober
biographer. If it occurred as narrated, it doubtless served to confirm
Cagliostro in his ambitious projects. The change which had taken
place in the adventurer since his second visit to England is well
described by Figuier. “His language, his mien, his manners, all are
transformed. His conversation turns only on his travels in Egypt, to
Mecca, and in other remote places, on the sciences into which he
was initiated at the foot of the Pyramids, on the arcana of Nature
which his ingenuity has discovered. At the same time, he talks little,
more often enveloping himself in mysterious silence. When
interrogated with reiterated entreaties, he deigns at the most to draw
his symbol—a serpent with an apple in its mouth and pierced by a
dart, meaning that human wisdom should be silent on the mysteries
which it has unravelled.... Lorenza was transfigured at the same time
with her husband. Her ambitions and deportment became worthy of
the new projects of Cagliostro. She aimed, like himself, at the glory
of colossal successes.”
The initiates of the Count de Saint-Germain passed into Courland,
where they established Masonic lodges, according to the sublime rite
of Egyptian Freemasonry. The countess was an excellent preacher
to captivate hearts and enchant imaginations, her beauty fascinated
a large number of Courlandaise nobility. At Mittau, Cagliostro
attracted the attention of persons of high rank, who were led by his
reputation to regard him as an extraordinary person. By means of his
Freemasonry he began to obtain an ascendency over the minds of
the nobles, some of whom, discontented with the reigning duke, are
actually said to have offered him the sovereignty of the country, as to
a divine man and messenger from above. The Italian biography
represents him plotting with this end in view. “He pretends,” say the
documents of the Holy Inquisition, “that he had virtue enough to
resist the temptation, and that he refused the proffered boon from
the respect due to sovereigns. His wife has assured us that his
refusal was produced by the reflection that his impostures would
soon be discovered.” He collected, however, a prodigious number of
presents in gold, silver, and money, and repaired to St Petersburg,
provided with regular passports. But the prophet soon found that a
sufficiently brilliant reputation had not preceded him, and he,
therefore, simply announced himself as a physician and chemist, by
his retired life and air of mystery soon attracting attention.
His assumption of the rôle of physician leads to a brief
consideration of the miraculous cures which have been attributed to
him. They are generally referred to a broad application of the
principles and methods of Mesmer, his contemporary. They were
performed without passes, iron rods, or any of the cumbrous
paraphernalia of his rival in the healing art; he trusted simply to the
laying on of hands. Moreover, he did not despoil his patients, but
rather dispensed his wealth, which now appeared unlimited, among
the poor, who flocked to him in great numbers as his reputation
increased. The source of this wealth is not accurately known, but it is
supposed to have been derived from the Masonic initiates, whose
apostle and propagandist he was.
Many of the miraculous cures which Cagliostro performed in
Germany spread widely, and in Russia he was soon surrounded by
the curious. Lorenza played her own part admirably; she answered
discreetly and naturally, making the most outrageous statements
with apparently complete unconsciousness. The physician-chemist,
besides his healing powers, had his reputation as an alchemist and
adept of the arcane sciences. The supposed restoration in a
miraculous manner of the infant child of an illustrious nobleman to
health exalted him to the pinnacle of celebrity, and his extravagant
pretensions, assisted, as they powerfully were, by the naïve beauty
of his wife, were beginning to be taken seriously, but the combined
result of an amour between Lorenza and Prince Poternki, Prime
Minister and favourite of the Czarina, Catherine, and the discovery
that the nobleman’s child had been apparently changed, caused
them to depart hastily with immense spoils towards the German
frontier.
They tarried at Warsaw for a time, and there the Italian biographer
tells us that Cagliostro made use of all his artifices to deceive a
prince to whom he was introduced, and who was exceedingly
anxious to obtain, with the help of the pretended magician, the
permanent command of a devil. Cagliostro puffed him up for a long
time with the expectation of gratifying this preposterous ambition,
and actually procured presents from him to the amount of several
thousand crowns. The prince at length perceiving that there was no
hope of retaining one of the infernal spirits in his service, wished to
make himself master of the earthly affections of the countess, but in
this too he was disappointed, the lady positively refusing to comply
with his desires. Finding himself thus balked in both his attempts, he
abandoned every sentiment but revenge, and intimidated our
adventurer and his wife so much by his menaces that they were
obliged to restore his presents.
The veracity of this account is not, however, beyond suspicion,
and other of his biographers represent Cagliostro proceeding directly
to Francfurt and thence to Strasbourg, into which, more wealthy and
successful than ever, he made a triumphal entry. The distinguished
visitor, the Rosicrucian, the alchemist, the physician, the sublime
count, had been expected since early morning by the bourgeois of
the old town, and the following extraordinary account in the
Dictionnaire des Sciences Occultes has been given by an
anonymous biographer.
“On the 19th of September 1780, in a public-house just outside
Strasburg, surrounded by a group of humble tipplers, who stared
from the little window at the vast crowd collected below them, there
might have been remarked the countenance of a bald and wrinkled
man, some eighty years of age, and evidently of southern origin; this
was the goldsmith Marano. Successive failures, and debts which he
did not see fit to liquidate, had forced him to leave Palermo, and he
had established himself in his former trade at Strasbourg. Like the
rest of the townsfolk he had come out to behold the phenomenal
personage whose arrival was expected, and who made a greater
sensation than many a powerful monarch. He had come by way of
Germany from Varsovia, where he had amassed immense riches,
said popular rumour, by the transmutation of base metals into gold,
for he was possessed of the secret of the philosophic stone, and had
all the incalculable talents of an alchemist.”
“By my faith,” said a hatter, “I am indeed happy since I am
destined to behold this illustrious mortal, if indeed he be a mortal.”
“’Tis asserted,” added a druggist, “that he is a son of the Princess
of Trebizond, and that he has withal the fine eyes of his mother.”
“Also that he is a lineal descendant of Charles Martel,” said a town
clerk.
“He dates still further back,” put in a rope-maker, “for he took part
in the marriage feast of Cana.”
“Beyond doubt then, he is the wandering Jew!” exclaimed Marano.
“Still better, some credible persons assert that he was born before
the deluge.”
“What hardihood! Yet suppose he is the devil.”
These notions here reproduced with fidelity, and which were
adorned by the most extravagant commentaries, were actually at
that period in general circulation among the crowd. Some regarded
the mysterious Count Cagliostro as an inspired saint, a performer of
miracles, a phenomenal personage outside the order of Nature. The
cures attributed to him were equally innumerable and unexplainable.
Others regarded him merely as an adroit charlatan. Cagliostro
himself boldly asserted that all his prodigies were performed under
the special favour and help of heaven. He added that the Supreme
Being had deigned to accord him the beatific vision, that it was his
mission to convert unbelievers and reinstate catholicism, but in spite
of this exalted vocation he told fortunes, taught the art of winning at
lotteries, interpreted dreams, and held séances of transcendental
phantasmagoria.
“But,” contended the rope-maker with much animation, “a man
who converses with angels is never the devil.”
“Is he in communication with angels?” cried Marano, struck by the
circumstances. “In that case I must see him at all costs. How old is
he?”
“Bah!” said the druggist, “as if such a being could have an age! He
looks about thirty-six.”
“Oh!” muttered the goldsmith. “What if he were my rascal? My
rascal should now be thirty-seven.”
As the hoary Sicilian ruminated over his lamentable past, he was
roused by a tumult of voices. The supernal being had arrived, and he
passed presently in the road, surrounded by a numerous cortege of
couriers, lacqueys, valets, &c., all in magnificent liveries. By his side,
in the open carriage, sat Lorenza or Seraphina Feliciani, his wife,
who seconded with all her ability the intrigues of her husband, whom
reasonable people regarded as a wandering member and emissary
of the masonic templars, his opulence insured by contributions from
the different lodges of the order.
A great shout rose up when Count Cagliostro passed before the
inn. Marano had recognised his man, and flying out had contrived to
stop the carriage, shouting as he did so—“Joseph Balsamo! It is
Joseph! Coquin, where are my sixty ounces of gold?”
Cagliostro scarcely deigned to glance at the furious goldsmith; but
in the middle of the profound silence which the incident occasioned
among the crowd, a voice, apparently in the clouds, uttered with
great distinctness the following words: “Remove this lunatic, who is
possessed by infernal spirits!”
Some of the spectators fell on their knees, others seized the
unfortunate goldsmith, and the brilliant cortege passed on.
Entering Strasburg in triumph, Cagliostro paused in front of a large
hall, where the equerries who had preceded him had already
collected a considerable concourse of the sick. The famous empiric
entered and cured them all, some simply by touch, others apparently
by words or by a gratuity in money, the rest by his universal
panacea; but the historian who records these things asserts that the
sick persons thus variously treated had been carefully selected, the
physician preferring to treat the more serious cases at the homes of
the patients.
Cagliostro issued from the hall amidst universal acclamations, and
was accompanied by the immense crowd to the doors of the
magificent lodging which had been prepared against his arrival. The
élite of Strasburg society was invited to a sumptuous repast, which
was followed by a séance of transcendental magnetism, when he
produced some extraordinary manifestations by the mediation of
clairvoyant children of either sex, and whom he denominated his
doves or pupils. The unspotted virginity and innocence of these
children were an indispensable condition of success. They were
chosen by himself, and received a mystical consecration at his
hands. Then he pronounced over a crystal vessel, filled with water,
the magical formulæ for the evocation of angelic intelligences as
they are written in the celestial rituals. Supernal spirits became
visible in the depths of the water, and responded to questions
occasionally in an intelligible voice, but more often in characters
which appeared on the surface of the water, and were visible to the
pupils alone, who interpreted them to the public.
Contemporary testimony establishes that these manifestations, as
a whole, were genuine, and there is little doubt of the mesmeric
abilities of Cagliostro, who had probably become acquainted in the
East with the phenomena of virginal lucidity, especially in boys, and
had supplemented the oriental methods by the discoveries of
Puséygur, which were at that time sufficiently notorious.
For three years Cagliostro remained at Strasburg and was fêted
continually. Here he obtained a complete ascendency over the mind
of the famous cardinal-archbishop, the Prince de Rohan. His first
care, on taking up his abode in the town, was to prove his respect for
the clergy by his generosity and zeal. He visited the sick in the
hospitals, deferentially participated in the duties of the regular
doctors, proposed his new remedies with prudence, did not condemn
the old methods, but sought to unite new science with the science
which was based on experience. He obtained the reputation of a
bold experimenter in chemistry, of a sagacious physician, and a
really enlightened innovator. The inhabitants of the crowded quarters
regarded him as a man sent from God, operating miraculous cures,
and dispensing riches from an inexhaustible source with which he
was alone acquainted. Unheard-of cures were cited, and alchemical
operations which surpassed even the supposed possibilities of the
transmutatory art.
Anything which savoured of the marvellous was an attraction for
the cardinal-archbishop, and he longed to see Cagliostro. An
anonymous writer states that he sought an interview with him again
and again unsuccessfully; for the cardinal-prince of trickery divined
even at a distance the character of the prince-cardinal, and
enveloped himself in a reserve which, to the imagination of his dupe,
was like the loadstone to the magnet. Others represent him,
however, courting the favour of the great ecclesiastic’s secretary, and
so obtaining an introduction. At the first interview he showed some
reserve, but permitted certain dazzling ideas to be glimpsed through
the more ordinary tenour of his discourse. After a judicious period he
admitted that he possessed a receipt for the manufacture of gold and
diamonds. A supposed transmutation completed his conquest of the
cardinal, and the Italian historian confesses that he accordingly
lavished immense sums upon the virtuous pair, and to complete his
folly, agreed to erect a small edifice, in which he was to experience a
physical regeneration by means of the supernal and auriferous elixir
of Cagliostro. The sum of twenty thousand francs was actually paid
the adept to accomplish this operation.
Doubtless during his sojourn at Strasburg he propagated with zeal
the mysteries of his Egyptian Freemasonry, and at length, laden with
spoils, he repaired to Bordeaux, where he continued his healing in
public, and then proceeded to Lyons, where for the space of three
months he occupied himself with the foundation of a mother-lodge,
and, according to the Italian biographer, here as elsewhere, in less
creditable pursuits. At length he arrived at Paris, where, says the
same authority, he soon became the object of general conversation,
regard, and esteem. His curative powers were now but little
exercised, for Paris abounded with mesmerists and healers, and the
prodigies of simple magnetism were stale and unprofitable in
consequence. He assumed now the rôle of a practical magician, and
astonished the city by the evocation of phantoms, which he caused
to appear, at the wish of the inquirer, either in a mirror or in a vase of
clear water. These phantoms equally represented dead and living
beings, and as occasionally collusion appears to have been well-
nigh impossible, and as the theory of coincidence is preposterous,
there is reason to suppose that he produced results which must
sometimes have astonished himself. All Paris at any rate was set
wondering at his enchantments and prodigies, and it is seriously
stated that Louis XVI. was so infatuated with le divin Cagliostro, that
he declared anyone who injured him should be considered guilty of
treason. At Versailles, and in the presence of several distinguished
nobles, he is said to have caused the apparition in mirrors, vases,
&c., not merely of the spectra of absent or deceased persons, but
animated and moving beings of a phantasmal description, including
many dead men and women selected by the astonished spectators.
The mystery which surrounded him abroad was deepened even
when he received visitors at home. He had lived in the Rue Saint
Claude, an isolated house surrounded by gardens and sheltered
from the inconvenient curiosity of neighbours. There he established
his laboratory, which no one might enter. He received in a vast and
sumptuous apartment on the first floor. Lorenza lived a retired life,
only being visible at certain hours before a select company, and in a
diaphanous and glamourous costume. The report of her beauty
spread through the city; she passed for a paragon of perfection, and
duels took place on her account. Cagliostro was now no longer
young, and Lorenza was in the flower of her charms. He is said for
the first time to have experienced the pangs of jealousy on account
of a certain Chevalier d’Oisemont, with whom she had several
assignations. Private vexations did not, however, interfere with
professional thaumaturgy, and the evocation of the illustrious dead
was a common occurrence at certain magical suppers which
became celebrated through all Paris. These were undoubtedly
exaggerated by report, but as they all occurred within the doubtful
precincts of his own house of mystery, they were in all probability
fraudulent, for it must be distinctly remembered that in his normal
character he was an unparalleled trickster, that the genuine
phenomena which he occasionally produced were simply
supplements to charlatanry, and not that his deceptions were aids to
normally genuine phenomena.
On one occasion, according to the Mémoires authentiques pour
servir à l’histoire du Comte de Cagliostro, the distinguished
thaumaturgist announced that at a private supper, given to six
guests, he would evoke the spirits of any dead persons whom they
named to him, and that the phantoms, apparently substantial, should
seat themselves at the banquet. The repast took place with the
knowledge and, it may be supposed, with the connivance of
Lorenza. At midnight the guests were assembled; a round table, laid
for twelve, was spread, with unheard-of luxury, in a dining-room,
where all was in harmony with the approaching Kabbalistic
operation. The six guests, with Cagliostro, took their seats, and thus
the ominous number thirteen were designed to be present at table.
The supper was served, the servants were dismissed with threats
of immediate death if they dared to open the doors before they were
summoned. Each guest demanded the deceased person whom he
desired to see. Cagliostro took the names, placed them in the pocket
of his gold-embroidered vest, and announced that with no further
preparation than a simple invocation on his part the evoked spirits
would appear in flesh and blood, for, according to the Egyptian
dogma, there were in reality no dead. These guests of the other
world, asked for and expected with trembling anxiety, were the Duc
de Choiseul, Voltaire, d’Alembert, Diderot, the Abbé de Voisenon,
and Montesquieu. Their names were pronounced slowly in a loud
voice, and with all the concentrated determination of the adept’s will;
and after a moment of intolerable doubt, the evoked guests
appeared very unobtrusively, and took their seats with the quiet
courtesy which had characterised them in life.
The first question put to them when the awe of their presence had
somewhat worn off was as to their situation in the world beyond.
“There is no world beyond,” replied d’Alembert. “Death is simply
the cessation of the evils which have tortured us. No pleasure is
experienced, but, on the other hand, there is no suffering. I have not
met with Mademoiselle Lespinasse, but I have not seen Lorignet.
There is marked sincerity, moreover. Some deceased persons who
have recently joined us inform me that I am almost forgotten. I am,
however, consoled. Men are unworthy of the trouble we take about
them. I never loved them, now I despise them.”
“What has become of your learning?” said M. de —— to Diderot.
“I was not learned, as people commonly supposed. My ready wit
adapted all that I read, and in writing I borrowed on every side.
Thence comes the desultory character of my books, which will be
unheard of in half a century. The Encyclopædia, with the merit of
which I am honoured, does not belong to me. The duty of an editor is
simply to set in order the choice of subjects. The man who showed
most talent in the whole of the work was the compiler of its index, yet
no one has dreamed of recognising his merits.”
“I praised the enterprise,” said Voltaire, “for it seemed well fitted to
further my philosophical opinions. Talking of philosophy, I am none
too certain that I was in the right. I have learned strange things since
my death, and have conversed with half a dozen Popes. Clement
XIV. and Benedict, above all, are men of infinite intelligence and
good sense.”
“What most vexes me,” said the Duc de Choiseul, “is the absence
of sex where we dwell. Whatever may be said of this fleshly
envelope, ’twas by no means so bad an invention.”
“What is truly a pleasure to me,” said the Abbé Voisenon, “is that
amongst us one is perfectly cured of the folly of intelligence. You
cannot conceive how I have been bantered about my ridiculous little
romances. I had almost confessed that I appreciated these puerilities
at their true value, but whether the modesty of an academician is
disbelieved in, or whether such frivolity is out of character with my
age and profession, I expiate almost daily the mistakes of my mortal
existence.”

Amid these marvels, Cagliostro proceeded with the dearest of all


his projects, namely, the spread of his Egypto-masonic rite,[AN] into
which ladies were subsequently admitted, a course of magic being
opened for the purpose by Madame Cagliostro. The postulants
admitted to this course were thirty-six in number, and all males were
excluded. Thus Lorenza figured as the Grand Mistress of Egyptian
Masonry, as her husband was himself the grand and sublime Copt.
The fair neophytes were required to contribute each of them the sum
of one hundred louis to abstain from all carnal connection with
mankind, and to submit to everything which might be imposed on
them. A vast mansion was hired in the Rue Verte, Faubourg Saint
Honoré, at that period a lonely part of the city. The building was
surrounded with gardens and magnificent trees. The séance for
initiation took place shortly before midnight on the 7th of August
1785.
On entering the first apartment, says Figuier, the ladies were
obliged to disrobe and assume a white garment, with a girdle of
various colours. They were divided into six groups, distinguished by
the tint of their cinctures. A large veil was also provided, and they
were caused to enter a temple lighted from the roof, and furnished
with thirty-six arm-chairs covered with black satin. Lorenza, clothed
in white, was seated on a species of throne, supported by two tall
figures, so habited that their sex could not be determined. The light
was lowered by degrees till surrounding objects could scarcely be
distinguished, when the Grand Mistress commanded the ladies to
uncover their left legs as far as the thigh, and raising the right arm to
rest it on a neighbouring pillar. Two young women then entered
sword in hand, and with silk ropes bound all the ladies together by
the arms and legs. Then after a period of impressive silence,
Lorenza pronounced an oration, which is given at length, but on
doubtful authority, by several biographers, and which preached
fervidly the emancipation of womankind from the shameful bonds
imposed on them by the lords of creation.
These bonds were symbolised by the silken ropes from which the
fair initiates were released at the end of the harangue, when they
were conducted into separate apartments, each opening on the
Garden, where they made the most unheard-of experiences. Some
were pursued by men who unmercifully persecuted them with
barbarous solicitations; others encountered less dreadful admirers,
who sighed in the most languishing postures at their feet. More than
one discovered the counterpart of her own lover, but the oath they
had all taken necessitated the most inexorable inhumanity, and all
faithfully fulfilled what was required of them. The new spirit infused
into regenerated woman triumphed along the whole line of the six
and thirty initiates, who with intact and immaculate symbols re-
entered triumphant and palpitating the twilight of the vaulted temple
to receive the congratulations of the sovereign priestess.
When they had breathed a little after their trials, the vaulted roof
opened suddenly, and, on a vast sphere of gold, there descended a
man, naked as the unfallen Adam, holding a serpent in his hand, and
having a burning star upon his head.
The Grand Mistress announced that this was the genius of Truth,
the immortal, the divine Cagliostro, issued without procreation from
the bosom of our father Abraham, and the depositary of all that hath
been, is, or shall be known on the universal earth. He was there to
initiate them into the secrets of which they had been fraudulently
deprived. The Grand Copt thereupon commanded them to dispense
with the profanity of clothing, for if they would receive truth they must
be as naked as itself. The sovereign priestess setting the example
unbound her girdle and permitted her drapery to fall to the ground,
and the fair initiates following her example exposed themselves in all
the nudity of their charms to the magnetic glances of the celestial
genius, who then commenced his revelations.
He informed his daughters that the much abused magical art was
the secret of doing good to humanity. It was initiation into the
mysteries of Nature, and the power to make use of her occult forces.
The visions which they had beheld in the Garden where so many
had seen and recognised those who were dearest to their hearts,
proved the reality of hermetic operations. They had shewn
themselves worthy to know the truth; he undertook to instruct them
by gradations therein. It was enough at the outset to inform them that
the sublime end of that Egyptian Freemasonry which he had brought
from the very heart of the Orient was the happiness of mankind. This
happiness was illimitable in its nature, including material enjoyments
as much as spiritual peace, and the pleasures of the understanding.
The Marquis de Luchet, to whom we are indebted for this account,
concludes the nebulous harangue of Cagliostro by the adept bidding
his hearers abjure a deceiving sex, and to let the kiss of friendship
symbolise what was passing in their hearts. The sovereign priestess
instructed them in the nature of this friendly embrace.
Thereupon the Genius of Truth seated himself again upon the
sphere of gold, and was borne away through the roof. At the same
time the floor opened, the light blazed up, and a table splendidly
adorned and luxuriously spread rose up from the ground. The ladies
were joined by their lovers in propria persona; the supper was
followed by dancing and various diversions till three o’clock in the
morning.
About this time the Count Cagliostro was unwillingly compelled to
concede to the continual solicitations of the poor and to resume his
medical rôle. In a short time he was raised to the height of celebrity
by a miraculous cure of the Prince de Soubise, the brother of the
Cardinal de Rohan, who was suffering from a virulent attack of
scarlet fever. From this moment the portrait of the adept was to be
seen everywhere in Paris.
In the meantime, the cloud in his domestic felicity, to which a brief
reference has been made already, began to spread. A certain
adventuress, by name Madame de la Motte, surprised Lorenza one
day in a tête-à-tête with the Chevalier d’Oisemont. The count at the
time was far away from Paris, and the adventuress promised to keep
the secret on condition that Lorenza should in turn do all in her
power to establish her as an intimate friend in the house, having free
entrance therein, and should persuade Cagliostro to place his
knowledge and skill at her disposal, if ever she required it. The result
of this arrangement was the complicity of Cagliostro in the
extraordinary and scandalous affair of the Diamond Necklace. When
the plot was exposed, Cagliostro was arrested with the other alleged
conspirators, including the principal victim, the Cardinal de Rohan.
He was exonerated, not indeed without honour, from the charge of
which he was undoubtedly guilty, but his wife had fled to Rome at his
arrest, and had rejoined her family. He himself began to tremble at
his own notoriety, and grew anxious to leave France. He postponed
till a more favourable period his grand project concerning the
metropolitan lodge of the Egyptian rite.[AO] A personage, calling
himself Thomas Ximenes, and claiming descent from the cardinal of
that name, sought to reanimate his former masonic enthusiasm; but
the vision of the Bastile seemed to be ever before his eyes, and
neither this person, nor the great dignitaries of the Parisian lodges,
could prevail with him. In spite of his acquittal he nourished
vengeance against the Court of France, and more than once he
confided to his private friends that he should make his voice heard
when he had passed the frontier. He prepared to depart, and one
day his disconsolate adepts learned that he was on the road to
England.
Once in London he recovered his energy. He was received with
great honour; many of his disciples from Lyons and Paris followed
him. The English masons invited him to the metropolitan lodge, and
gave him the first place, that of grand orient. He was entreated to
convene a masonic lodge of the Egyptian rite, and consented with
some sadness, for the memory of the brilliant Paris lodge which he
had been on the point of founding was incessantly before him. He
could not console himself for the fall of that beautiful and long-
cherished plan, which had cost him so much study, pains, and
preaching.
It was from this discreet distance that Cagliostro addressed his
famous Letter to the People of France, which was translated into a
number of languages, and circulated widely through Europe. It
predicted the French Revolution, the demolishment of the Bastile,
and the rise of a great prince who would abolish the infamous lettres
de cachet, convoke the States-General, and re-establish the true
religion.
The publication was intemperate in its language and revolutionary
in its sentiments, and close upon its heels followed his well-known
quarrel with the Courrier de l’Europe, which resulted in the exposure
of the real life of Cagliostro from beginning to end.
Dreading the rage of his innumerable dupes, and extreme
measures on the part of his creditors, he hastened to quit London,
disembarked in Holland, crossed Germany, took refuge in Basle,
where the patriarchal hospitality of the Swiss cantons to some extent
reassured the unmasked adept. From the moment, however, of this
exposure, the descent of Cagliostro was simply headlong in its
rapidity. Nevertheless, he was followed by some of his initiates, who
pressed him to return to France, assuring him of the powerful
protection of exalted masonic dignitaries. In his hesitation he wrote
to the Baron de Breteuil, the king’s minister of the house, but, as it
chanced, a personal enemy of the Cardinal de Rohan. Considering
Cagliostro as a protégé of the prince, he replied that if he had
sufficient effrontery to set foot within the limits of the kingdom, he
should be arrested and transferred to a prison in Paris, there to await
prosecution as a common swindler, who should answer to the royal
justice for his criminal life.
From this moment Cagliostro saw that he was a perpetual exile
from France, and feeling in no sense assured of his safety even in
Switzerland, he left Basle for Aix, in Savoy. He was ordered to quit
that town in eight and forty hours. At Roveredo, a dependency of
Austria, the same treatment awaited him. He migrated to Trent, and
announced himself as a practitioner of lawful medicine, but the
prince-bishop who was sovereign of the country discerned the
cloven hoof of the sorcerer beneath the doctor’s sober dress, and
showed him in no long space of time his hostility to magical
practices. The wandering hierophant of Egyptian masonry,
somewhat sorely pressed, took post to Rome, and reached the
Eternal City after many vicissitudes. Here, according to Saint-Félix
and Figuier, he was rejoined by his wife; according to the Italian
biographer, Lorenza had accompanied him in his wanderings, and
persuaded him to seek refuge in Rome, being sick unto death of her
miserable course of life. The former statement is, on the whole, the
most probable, as it is difficult to suppose that she left Italy to rejoin
Cagliostro at Passy, and she appears to have returned to him with
marked repugnance. She endeavoured to lead him back to religion,
which had never been eradicated from her heart. He lived for some
time with extraordinary circumspection, and consented at last to see
a Benedictine monk, to whom he made his confession. The Holy
Inquisition, which doubtless had scrutinised all his movements, is
said to have been deceived for a time, and he was favourably
received by several cardinals. He lived for a year in perfect liberty,
occupied with the private study of medicine. During this time he
endeavoured to obtain loans from the initiates of his Egyptian rite
who were scattered over France and Germany, but they did not
arrive, and the sublime Copt, the illuminated proprietor of the stone
philosophical and the medicine yclept metallic, came once more, to
the eternal disgrace of Osiris, Isis, and Anubis, on the very verge of
want.
His extremity prompted him to renew his relations with the
masonic societies within the area of the Papal States. A penalty of
death hung over the initiates of the superior grades, and their lodges
were in consequence surrounded with great mystery, and were
convened in subterranean places. He was persuaded to found a
lodge of Egyptian Freemasonry in Rome itself, from which moment
Lorenza reasonably regarded him as lost. One of his own adepts
betrayed him; he was arrested on the 27th of September 1789, by
order of the Holy Office, and imprisoned in the Castle of St Angelo.
An inventory of his papers was taken, and all his effects were sealed
up. The process against him was drawn up with the nicest
inquisitorial care during the long period of eighteen months. When
the trial came on he was defended by the Count Gætano Bernardini,
advocate of the accused before the sacred and august tribunal, and
to this pleader in ordinary the impartial and benign office, of its free
grace and pleasure, did add generously, as counsel, one Monsignor
Louis Constantini, “whose knowledge and probity,” saith an unbought
and unbuyable witness (inquisitorially inspired), “were generally
recognised.” They did not conceal from him the gravity of his
position, advised him to refrain from basing his defence on a series
of denials, promising to save him from the capital forfeit, and so he
was persuaded to confess everything, was again reconciled to the
church; and being almost odoriferous with genuine sanctity, on the
21st of March 1791 he was carried before the general assembly of
the purgers of souls by fire, before the Pope on the 7th of the
following April, when the advocates pleaded with so much eloquence
that they retired in the agonies of incipient strangulation, Cagliostro
repeated his avowal, and as a natural consequence of the unbought
eloquence and the purchased confession, the penalty of death was
pronounced.
When, however, the shattered energies of the advocates were a
little recruited, a recommendation of mercy was addressed to the
Pope, the sentence was commuted to perpetual imprisonment, and
the condemned man was consigned to the Castle of St Angelo. After
an imprisonment of two years, he died, God knows how, still in the
prime of life, at the age of fifty.
Lorenza, whose admissions had contributed largely towards the
condemnation of her husband, was doomed to perpetual seclusion in
a penitentiary. The papers of Cagliostro were burned by the Holy
Office, and the phantom of that institution keeps to the present day
the secret of the exact date of its victim’s death. It carefully circulated
the report that on one occasion he attempted to strangle a priest
whom he had sent for on the pretence of confessing, hoping to
escape in his clothes; and then it made public the statement that he
had subsequently strangled himself. When the battalions of the
French Revolution entered Rome, the commanding officers,
hammering at the doors of Saint-Angelo, determined to release the
entombed adept, but they were informed that Cagliostro was dead,
“at which intelligence,” says Figuier, “they perceived plainly that the
former Parlement de France was not to be compared with the
Roman Inquisition, and without regretting the demolished Bastile,
they could not but acknowledge that it disgorged its prey more easily
than the Castle of Saint Angelo.”

The personal attractions of Cagliostro appear to have been


exaggerated by some of his biographers. “His splendid stature and
high bearing, increased by a dress of the most bizarre magnificence,
the extensive suite which invariably accompanied him in his
wanderings, turned all eyes upon him, and disposed the minds of the
vulgar towards an almost idolatrous admiration.”
With this opinion of Figuier may be compared the counter-
statement of the Italian biographer:—“He was of a brown
complexion, a bloated countenance, and a severe aspect; he was
destitute of any of those graces so common in the world of gallantry,
without knowledge and without abilities.” But the Italian biographer
was a false witness, for Cagliostro was beyond all question and
controversy a man of consummate ability, tact, and talent. The truth
would appear to lie between these opposite extremes. “The Count
de Cagliostro,” says the English life, published in 1787, “is below the
middle stature, inclined to corpulency; his face is a round oval, his
complexion and eyes dark, the latter uncommonly penetrating. In his
address we are not sensible of that indescribable grace which
engages the affections before we consult the understanding. On the
contrary, there is in his manner a self-importance which at first sight
rather disgusts than allures, and obliges us to withhold our regards,
till, on a more intimate acquaintance, we yield it the tribute to our
reason. Though naturally studious and contemplative, his
conversation is sprightly, abounding with judicious remarks and
pleasant anecdotes, yet with an understanding in the highest degree
perspicuous and enlarged, he is ever rendered the dupe of the
sycophant and the flatterer.”
The persuasive and occasionally overpowering eloquence of
Cagliostro is also dwelt upon by the majority of his biographers, but,
according to the testimony of his wife, as extracted under the terror
of the Inquisition and adduced in the Italian life:—“His discourse,
instead of being eloquent, was composed in a style of the most
wearisome perplexity, and abounded with the most incoherent ideas.
Previous to his ascending the rostrum he was always careful to
prepare himself for his labours by means of some bottles of wine,
and he was so ignorant as to the subject on which he was about to
hold forth, that he generally applied to his wife for the text on which
he was to preach to his disciples. If to these circumstances are
added a Sicilian dialect, mingled with a jargon of French and Italian,
we cannot hesitate a single moment as to the degree of credibility
which we are to give to the assertions that have been made
concerning the wonder-working effects of his eloquence.”
But the Inquisition was in possession of documents which bore
irrefutable testimony to the extraordinary hold which Cagliostro
exercised over the minds of his numerous followers, and it is
preposterous to suppose it could have been possessed by a man
who was ignorant, unpresentable, and ill-spoken. Moreover, the
testimony of Lorenza, given under circumstances of, at any rate, the
strongest moral intimidation is completely worthless on all points
whatsoever, and the biassed views of our inquisitorial apologists are
of no appreciable value.
I have given an almost disproportionate space to the history of
Joseph Balsamo, because it is thoroughly representative of the
charlatanic side of alchemy, which during two centuries of curiosity

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