THE AUTHORITY OF ENNIUS AND THE ANNALES IN CICERO’S PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS A Thesis Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Classics By Damien Provis Classics Department University of Canterbury August 2012 – May 2014 1 Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ 3 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 4 CHAPTER 1: Authority .................................................................................................................. 11 What is a literary auctor? ............................................................................................................................ 13 Sources of authority in Cicero’s works .................................................................................................. 17 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................... 23 CHAPTER 2: Borrowed Authority: The importance of Cicero’s speakers .... 24 Direct involvement of the speaker: Cato and the De Senectute ................................................... 26 Attribution of quotations to figures from the poem: Pyrrhus and the De Officiis ................ 30 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................... 40 CHAPTER 3: The Authority of Knowledge: Ennius at De Re Publica. 1.25 .... 43 Implication ........................................................................................................................................................ 44 Association ........................................................................................................................................................ 48 Writing versus Speaking: Explaining Cicero’s use of scribo ......................................................... 56 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................... 63 CHAPTER 4: The Authority of Tradition: Ennius in Tusculanae 1.26-8 ........ 66 Antiquitas ........................................................................................................................................................... 66 Authority via word-order ............................................................................................................................ 67 Cultural Authority I: Representing Roman tradition ....................................................................... 69 Cultural Authority II: Transmitting Roman beliefs ........................................................................... 73 Cultural Authority III: A reliable source for Roman myth ............................................................. 76 One of the optimi auctores .......................................................................................................................... 79 Dico, and verbs of speaking ........................................................................................................................ 81 Aio and inquam ................................................................................................................................ 83 Loquor .................................................................................................................................................. 85 Dico ....................................................................................................................................................... 86 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................... 95 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 98 Appendix......................................................................................................................................... 102 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................. 103 2 Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Enrica Sciarrino, not only for overseeing this thesis, but also for bringing to my attention an area of scholarship with which I had little familiarity. Your recommendations and advice in the formative stages of this thesis directed me toward a subject that indulged my interest in Ennius while allowing me to consider the dynamic between Ennius and Cicero from a fresh point of view. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my secondary supervisor, Prof. Graham Zanker. Your well-intentioned skepticism and eye for detail ensured that I strove for consistency in both thought and presentation. I consider this contribution invaluable. I would also like to extend thanks to the University of Canterbury Classics Department, and in particular Associate Prof. Victor Parker, Dr. Gary Morrison, and Cindy Jones for their constant words of encouragement. During the course of this thesis I was blessed to have been in the presence of a post-graduate contingent comprised of Andrew Wong, Danielle Steyn, Hannah Frude, Hugh Williams, Steph Kaefer, and Thomas Köntges, who are as good-natured a bunch as I have ever met. Whether at our “Thesis Thursday” coffee sessions or a chance encounter on the fifth-floor hallway, your advice and good conversation was always appreciated. I have been humbled by the level of support I have received not just from my peers at Canterbury, but also from family, friends, and work colleagues. Special thanks must go first to my parents, who have always been steadfast in their support and believed in me during the times when I barely believed in myself. I would also like to acknowledge my work colleagues Donald Tait, Andrew Beaufort, and Graham from Draytons Cartage, whose constant enquiries and support were both touching and encouraging. My final acknowledgement is reserved for my dear fiancée, Amy White. You shared my highest highs and lowest lows, and your love and unconditional support provided an immeasurable contribution to this thesis. You are an inspiration and a constant reminder of what hard-work can achieve. 3 Introduction1 Ennius, the father of Latin hexameter, is the best known of the early Latin epicists. He composed epigrams, comedies, tragedies, and even introduced satire to Roman literature.2 It is, however, his epic poem, the Annales, that has come to be seen as his magnum opus. The Annales consisted of eighteen books and covered the history of Rome from its mythical beginnings to Ennius’ own day. He spurned the Saturnian meter used by his epic predecessors, Livius Andronicus and Gnaeus Naevius, instead becoming the first Latin poet to compose an epic with the Greek dactylic hexameter. A work that contained and celebrated the history of Rome, the Annales became the national epic and was a fixture in the Roman classroom, influencing generations of Latin poets.3 It held pride of place as the national epic from its composition in the early second century B.C. to the late first century B.C., when literary taste became more refined, and Virgil’s Aeneid all but supplanted the Annales in resonance and popularity. Only fragments of Ennius’ work survive, scattered among the works of philosophers, historians, poets, antiquarians, and grammarians of Latin literature. Of the authors who preserve these fragments, none has had more influence in shaping our understanding of Ennius than the orator and philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who made extensive use of the Annales throughout his corpus. Not only is he the sole source for twenty-one fragments, which accounts for roughly eleven percent of the extant lines, but he has also greatly influenced modern perceptions of the Annales as a reliable historical text.4 This thesis will focus on the way that Cicero cites Ennius within his philosophical works. There are twenty-eight Annales quotations in Cicero’s philosophical works, of which nineteen are introduced as belonging to Ennius, while the remaining nine are cited without any authorial acknowledgement. It is tempting to attribute this lack of authorial acknowledgement simply to an expectation on Cicero’s behalf that his readers would be familiar enough with the poem that it would be unnecessary to remind them from which text the quotations had come; however, when one considers 1 All translations are my own. 2 For a short discussion of Ennius’ corpus, see Skutsch (1985) 1-7. When referring to verses from the Annales (e.g. Ann. 110), I am following the arrangement in Skutsch’s edition. 3 On Ennius’ influence, see p. 12 n. 13 and p. 16 n. 32. 4 Elliott (2013) 152ff. 4 the context in which the acknowledged quotations appear, it becomes apparent that the simplest answer is, in this case, not the best. Of the verses that are not acknowledged as belonging to Ennius, only two are cited as evidence intended to persuade the reader; the rest either provide examples or add poetic imagery to the text. They can be neatly worked into Cicero’s own prose,5 or used to set the tone of a work or book, such as in the De Senectute and Book 5 of the De Re Publica. Having taken into account the relative