681 the Second Parallel Is Found in Supplices 54. the Chorus Of
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MISCELLANEA 681 The second parallel is found in Supplices 54. The Chorus of Danaids, having just arrived in Argos, are reminded of their forebear Io and announce that they will soon produce 'trustworthy evidence' sc. of their being Argives (and hence deserving to be helped). The commentators Friis Johansen and Whittle write7): "The whole of 53- 7 refers to the way in which the Danaids eventually prove their descent to the king in 291-324; they use Io's tale as a 'tEXfL'Í¡PLOV"(my italics). 1012 GC AMSTERDAM,Klassiek Seminarium IRENEJ.F. DE JONG Oude Turfmarkt 129 1) G. Kaibel, SophoklesElektra (Leipzig-Berlin 1911); J.C. Kamerbeek, The Plays of Sophocles,Commentaries V, The Electra (Leiden 1974). 2) R.C. Jebb, SophoclesVI, The Electra (Cambridge 1894); J.H. Kells, Sophocles Electra (Cambridge 1973). 3) P. Groeneboom & J. van de Raa, SophoclesElectra II. Commentaar(Groningen 1961) seem to follow Jebb: "met zekere bewijzen van zijn dood" = 'with sure proofs of his death'. 4) F.W. Schneidewin, SophoklesV, Elektra (Leipzig 1853). Note that in the later edition by E. Bruhn (Leipzig 1912) this-in my opinion-apt comment has disap- peared. 5) I quote the OCT text by D. Page, Oxford 1972. Note that E. Fraenkel in his AeschylusAgamemnon (Oxford 1950) adopts the reading 6) Op. cit., 181-4. 7) H. Friis Johansen and E.W. Whittle, Aeschylus.The SuppliantsII, Commentary lines 1-629 (Copenhagen 1980). THE MEANING OF CONSULARIS AUCTORITAS IN CICERO Cicero spoke of consularium or consularis auctoritas on five occasions'). Two of the men to whom Cicero attributed 'consular authority', P. Cor- nelius Cethegus and C. Fannius, were never elected to the consulship. In treating the career of either man, scholars have often drawn inferences about rank from the phrase consularis auctoritas. The two careers have not been considered together previously. If we examine both cases at once, and pay careful attention to the context of Cicero's statement about each, it becomes clear that the phrase consularis auctoritas has nothing whatever to do with rank. In his survey of Roman orators, Cicero (Brut. 178) declared that P. Cethegus in senatu consularium auctoritatem adsequebatur. Sumner adduced this statement in confirmation of his view that "it appears highly probable that he reached praetorian rank"2). Though Sumner did not cite earlier scholarship, a glance at older commentaries on the Brutus shows that 682 Sumner was not the first to attribute a praetorship to P. Cethegus3). It should be understood that the sources do not attest any magistracies for Cethegus; Sumner knew this and accordingly qualified his statement with the words "highly probable' 14) . The issue, then, is not whether Cethegus was praetor, but whether he deserves a queried place in the praetorian fasti on the basis of the phrase consularium auctoritas5). It seems likely that a praetorship has been so often ascribed to Cethegus through the assumption that great influence in the senate required great rank. We cannot deny that Cethegus was influential in the senate, not only because his influence is explicitly attested by another source (Ps.- Ascon. 295St: Cethegi factione in senatu), but also because we must accept a historical statement Cicero makes about a man who was active in the 70s B.C., when he himself was a member of the senate. But we can deny what is usually tacitly assumed, that a man could not be influential in the senate unless he had reached high office. Influence in the senate bore no invariable relationship to rank. The younger Cato is perhaps the best known example of an influential junior senator, but he was no exception. Despite defeats in the comitia and in court, and in spite of his status as a new man, M. Favonius was quite prominent in senate debates of the mid-50s, when he was only a quaestorius6). It is not possible to judge the influence of Cethegus a sufficient ground for assigning him a praetorship. A brief consideration of the usage of Cicero casts further doubt on the view that praetorian rank may be inferred from the phrase consularium auc- toritas. Since Cicero never applied this phrase to any known praetorius, it is clear that tenure of the praetorship did not in itself confer consularium auctoritas. One might cling to the notion that tenure of the praetorship was a necessary but not sufficient condition for consularium auctoritas, but for this there is no evidence, since Cethegus is not attested as a praetor. We reach this impasse because the cursus of Cethegus is altogether unknown. To sum up: we have seen that his influence in the senate does not imply a praetorship, and that service in the praetorship did not automatically confer consularium auctoritas. But an investigation limited to Cethegus can- not exclude the possibility that the praetorship was a sine qua non of con- sularium auctoritas. If Cethegus were the only non-consular said to possess consularium auc- toritas, we would never be able to deny a connection between this phrase and the praetorship. Fortunately, the phrase is also applied to Fannius, whose earlier cursus can be fixed with certainty. He must have been quaestor by 61, since he was plebeian tribune in 59. In the year 56 Cicero (vat. 16) spoke of him as follows: scis ex illo obsessoatque adflicto tribunatu con- sularem auctoritatem hominem esse adulescentemconsecutum. Taylor believed that Fannius obtained his consularis auctoritas in 64-63, when he became a pon- tiff, and that this priesthood brought with it a locus praetorius in the senate'). Like Sumner, she failed to cite previous scholarship, and like Sumner, she was hardly the first to connect the consularis auctoritas of Fan- nius with his official rank8). The full context of Cicero's statement reveals .