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An Attack on the Hellespont in 84 b.c.

W. Warde Fowler

The Classical Review / Volume 29 / Issue 05 / August 1915, pp 136 - 137 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00048551, Published online: 27 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00048551

How to cite this article: W. Warde Fowler (1915). An Attack on the Hellespont in 84 b.c.. The Classical Review, 29, pp 136-137 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00048551

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Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 138.251.14.35 on 10 Apr 2015 136 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

AN ATTACK ON THE HELLESPONT IN 84 B.C. (Rhetorica ad Herenniutn iv. 68).

WHILE we are taking so much fresh as his ultimate objective the command interest in the geography of the Helles- of the Hellespont. And the words also pont, it maybe as well to try and elucidate strongly suggest that someone else is a corrupt passage which refers to opera- approaching along that coast of tions there and in that district. by the via Egnatia, for whom the naval The author of the Rhetorica, whoever commander is making his march safe. he was, at the end of his fourth book Now early in 84 Sulla was advancing gives two examples of breuitas in oratory, from Greece by the via Egnatia, and in both of which the text is more or less had commissioned Lucullus, who after corrupt. The first of the two I discussed various adventures had established him- at length so long ago as 1882 in the self with a fleet off the Troad* (say in Journal of Philology, arguing that the Besika Bay), to clear the Aegean and person referred to in it was Marius the Hellespont of the forces of Mithri- and not Sulla, and suggesting that the dates. The situation is thus exactly date of that work may probably be 82 or that which is reflected in the words just 83 B.C. The first of these suggestions quoted. Lucullus took Lemnos, we is now generally accepted. The second may guess, occupied Thasos, then did is also recognised as satisfactory, seeing two other things which the corruption that there is no mention in the Rhetorica of the text unluckily leaves obscure, and of the work done by Sulla in or after the finally, exactly as tells the story,2 year 82. In 1894 F. Marx published returned to the Hellespont, and seized his edition of the Rhetorica, and on on the Asiatic , so as to pre- p. 155 concludes that the work must vent Mithridates from establishing him- have been written between the years 86 self there. Abydos was just beyond and 82, taking as the terminus ex quo the what we now know so well as ' the Nar- date of the seventh consulship of Marius. rows,' and with that place in Roman So also Schanz, Gesch. der Rom. Litter- hands, the Hellespont was also theirs atur, Vol. ii. (ed. 3), p. 467. and Sulla's march was secured. But To this first example of breuitas I there are here two textual difficulties need not again refer. But I wish now about which I must now say a word. to examine the second accurately, for I The first of these lies in the word am inclined to think that it may enable Viminacium, or Viminachium, as it us to make a more exact guess as to the appears in the best group of MSS. (M, date of the work. I am strongly inclined for the value of which see Marx, Prole- to think that it refers to the movements gomena, p. 20 f.) Under the Empire of Lucullus and his fleet in the spring there was an important town of that of 84 B.C., co-operating with Sulla, and name on the Danube, some 300 miles providing for the safe conduct of his inland from the Hellespont or Thasos, army from Greece to the Hellespont. and this name must have suggested In Marx's edition the text of this itself to a copyist who could make passage stands thus : ' Lemnum prae- nothing of the one in his MS. But teriens cepit, inde Thasi praesidium Viminacium was unknown to the reliquit, post urbem Viminacium sus- Romans of Marius' time, if indeed such tulit, inde pulsus in Hellespontum statim a city existed then at all. ' Bithyniam ' potitur Abydi.' is the reading of three inferior MSS., but These few words, in spite of corrup- seems quite impossible. ' Lysimachiam' tion (of which more directly), clearly was suggested by Kayser (after Spengel) indicate that someone with a fleet is watching the coast of Thrace, trying to 1 Plutarch Lucullus, ch. iii. 2 Mithridatica, 56. Appian implies that guard it from a hostile fleet by securing Lucullus seized Abydos in advance of Sulla, in the two islands Lemnos and Thasos order to secure the passage of the Hellespont which lie immediately off it, and having for his chief. THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 137 in his edition of 1854—*-e-> *ne city on diately after the destruction of the town, the narrow neck of the Thracian Cher- whatever it was, and had been com- sonese, near the modern , and pelled to retreat to his base. But pulsus a key to the Hellespont. But this city, is not in the MSS.; those of the group M though the only one in those parts, so have sulsus, all except C, which seems to far as I can discover, whose name ends stand by itself, and to give us occasion- in ntachia or acia, can hardly be the one ally the true reading. (See Marx, Pro- we want; the name is hard to reconcile legomena, p. 15 f.). C has rursus, with the MSS., and the town was too which has suggested to me reversus, as I strong to be destroyed by a force land- find it did to Baiter and Kayser for ing from a fleet. Sustulit, in which all their edition of i860. If we accept MSS. agree, must have this meaning reversus, it will mean that Lucullus re- here : (cp.' Karthago tollenda' in iii. 2. 2 turned leisurely to the parts whence he of this work); and did not had started to prepare the way for Sulla, meet with this fate, for it is mentioned and immediately seized Abydos, as we by (vi. 54) without any reference have seen. When Sulla arrived shortly to such a disaster. Further, if the afterwards, Lucullus took him safely reader will look again at the passage we across the Narrows, and the interview are discussing, he will probably conclude with Mithridates followed which brought that the town we are looking for was a peace. So Plutarch tells us explicitly, not on the Hellespont, but near Thasos perhaps from the memoirs of Sulla, at —though not in the island, as is made the beginning of the fourth chapter of clear by the words praesidium reliquit. his life at Lucullus. I am disposed to think that the miss- These events happened in the spring ing town was some small one on or near of 84. If the author of the Rhetorica the via Egnatia, and therefore of import- alludes to them, he had probably heard ance at the moment; one which might of them from someone serving in the easily be destroyed, and of which the fleet, and put them in at the very end of name was afterwards forgotten. But if his work not long after they happened, any reader of this paper can make a perhaps the very next year. In any better suggestion, I shall be only too case we have here some ground for glad to hear of it. bringing down our terminus ex quo for The second difficulty lies in the word the date of the Rhetorica, to the year 84. pulsus, which might suggest that Lucul- lus had experienced a reverse imme- W. WARDE FOWLER.

NOTE ON CATULLUS, 84. MY attention has been called to the led to ridiculous mistakes, especially current interpretation of this epigram among the lower classes. by a note on a specimen page of a Arrius' pronunciation (Chommoda selection of Latin verse, edited by the dicebat) seems well worthy of a note; members of the Latin department of for to this tendency in Catullus' day is Williams' College. The note is as due not merely our usual spelling of the follows: Latin word pulcer, but the h in our Quintilian (I, 5, 20) tells us that the English word sepulchre. The passage on early Romans rarely employed the aspi- aspiration in Quintilian, on which the rate, but said aedos for haedos and ircos foregoing note is based, runs as follows : for hircos. By the time of Catullus, ' Quamquam per aspirationem, sive largely owing to the influence of the adicitur vitiose, sive detrahitur, apud Greek aspirated consonants, the use of nos potest quaeri, an in scripto sit aspirates was becoming common, so vitium ? si H litera est, non nota. that, for example, pulcros became pul- cuius quidem ratio mutata cum tem- chros, and triumpos, triumphos. Confu- poribus est saepius. Parcissime ea sion in the application of the principle veteres usi etiam in vocalibus, cum