This volume provides a critical text with introduction, translation and comment of De clementia : in the traditional manner of the Collection Budé, it starts with an introduction, in French, with sections on the general framework of the treatise (VII-XXXIV), on structure and dating (XXXIV-LII) and lastly on the constitution of the text (LII-LXVI). Nothing is said, however, on the style and Fortleben., whereas a single page (XXVII) is dedicated to Greek sources. A bibliography (LXVII-LXXXVII) precedes the Conspectus siglorum. and the Latin text, with critical apparatus and French translation on the left pages (53 double pages). Pp. 55-121 contain the commentary, with numerical references in the translation (but not in the Latin text). Convenient running headings facilitate finding particular notes. The volume ends with an index of proper names (123-124).
A valuable feature of this work by Chaumartin (henceforward Ch.), who has long and honourable experience in Seneca studies and a recent and more debatable record as a translator of Seneca’s tragedies,1 is that it finally replaces in this prestigious French collection the previous critical edition by F. Préchac (1921.1. 1925.2.), reprinted as recently as 1990 and highly questionable; it was criticized for its general layout, its heavy use of gratuitous conjectures and above all the arbitrary re-arrangement of the parts of the treatise, flaws that nonetheless did not prevent Préchac from becoming the “vulgate text”, the sole one on the market for seventy years because of the lack of more recent and better critical editions.2
However, my reviewer’s curiosity turned into growing unease as I progressed in evaluating a critical edition whose basis is the text I published in 2001,3 judged very generously by Ch. both in the edition and in a review.4 With respect to it, Ch. does not offer new proposed solutions to textual problems, does not base the apparatus on a direct recollation of the manuscripts, but often takes it from mine (with errors), and does not always present in critical fashion the themes treated in the commentary and in the introduction.
It is true that any work of analysis and comment on a classical text cannot be wholly original and depends on the previous exegetic tradition, and that providing an exact account of one’s debts to one’s predecessors means filling the pages with constant references (which is the solution I chose in my edition). Nevertheless, those who are familiar with the bibliography on De clementia and with my edition in particular cannot help but to feel, in this regard, a sense of “déjà vu” examining the introduction, apparatus and notes in Ch. I would rather not get into the systematic nature of this way of operating, but will merely review the elements of novelty in Ch., i.e. the different textual choices, the peculiar constitution of the apparatus, the translation and historical-literary section of the introduction. However, curious readers can judge for themselves Ch.’s debts (who expressly mentions them only in case of direct quotations or in rare interpretation differences) with respect to my edition (henceforward Malaspina) by collating a few pages of the two, starting for example from the wording of the description of some recentiores recentiores (Malaspina 43 = Ch. LX) or from the apparatus at 1.24.1 (Malaspina 177 = Ch. 39).5 TEXT
C. prints a different text from mine at the following places:6 1.3.1 +manumissionis+ ( +manu missionis+ Malaspina); secunda quae N2 ( secunda ea quae Gertz); 1.3.5 +voluntariam subsiluimus+ ( voluntariam subivimus mortem aut Malaspina); 1.5.6 vitam dat N ( vitam si dat edd.); 1.11.1 deduxerit Erasmus ( deduxerit eius Gertz deduxerit et N); 1.12.3 hostibus ignoscendum potius quam irascendum Mazzoli ( hostibus irascendum N); 1.12.5 aliena N ( ut aliena Haase); 1.16.4 Numquidnam Hosius ( Numquid enim Gertz numquid nae N); 1.17.1 homine add. Lipsius ( homine velle add. Gertz); 1.18.3 in minima aggerere Préchac ( in minima re congerere Malaspina minima argere N); 1.19.5 tutum est S ( tutum sit Gertz tutum sed N); 1.21.2 par sibi recc. ( sibi par Fickert sibi N); 1.21.4 minoris R ( minor res Gertz minores N); ab add. T ( in add. Lipsius);7 1.25.3 odia CQ ( +odiae+); 2.2.2 me morari hic CQ ( me inmorari huic voci Malaspina ex Madvig memorari huic N); 2.4.3 repellit longe iussam stare a se; cum Hosius ( conpellit longius stare a se: nam cum Malaspina ex Erasmus and Watt repellit longius stare a se nam N); 2.6.2 volo facere N ( volunt facere recc.).
There are also some orthographical variants: 1.1.6 recidunt recc. ( reccidunt N); 1.3.3 cottidie Hosius ( cotidie N); 1.5.2 adparet Fickert ( apparet N); 1.15.2 parricidii erroneously attributed to Madvig ( parricidi Madvig parcidio N, see infra about the apparatus); 1.15.4 and 1.18.1 his N ( îs Malaspina: in the review mentioned above in n. 4 Ch. instead was in favour of the correction îs); 1.15.4 se Tarii R3 ( se Tari Préchac sedari N); 1.15.5 filii CQ ( fili N); 1.19.9 proximum R ( proxumum Gertz; p(ro)xum N, see infra about the apparatus); 2.2.1 inmane Faider ( immane Rossbach imne N).
Arguably, the choices made by Ch., who merely exercises his iudicium on the existing material, already very abundant in itself, are generally very conservative, with the least possible use of supplements, with the exception of 1.12.3. At times (1.1.6; 1.3.3; 1.5.2; 1.15.4; 1.15.5) Ch.’s orthographic preferences do not take into account N’s text, which is clearly and wholly correct. In my view, the Senecan hapax numquidnam of 1.16.4, must be rejected out of hand for the reasons set out in Malaspina 342-343, which Ch. 94 n. 8 appears to know, but does not confront or discuss. To the veritable mishap at 1.19.5 I shall return in the review of the apparatus.
The aspect of Malaspina most criticized by Ch. in his review mentioned above is the punctuation, and in fact in Ch. it appears quite heavily rearranged, almost always legitimately, in the “breath” between the Senecan sententiae and in the consequent positioning of semicolons, commas and parentheses, which Ch. tries to use as little as possible. In one case, Ch. corrects a mistake by Malaspina (the comma between enim and quantum at 1.8.5), but usually maintains the strong pauses, especially when the punctuation determines the meaning, as in 1.9.1 (which we shall discuss again in the review of the Introduction); 1.19.8; 1.21.2. At 1.1.2 the interpunction of Ch. arbiter ( arbiter? Fickert Malaspina) is highly plausible and I know it is favoured, among others, also by Giancarlo Mazzoli (see also 1.19.8 abundat?, following Fickert).
APPARATUS
The apparatus, which is the most sensitive and significant aspect of a critical edition, in Ch. is by far the weakest part, characterized both by serious omissions and by the simultaneous presence of two seemingly irreconcilable elements, i.e. the very strong dependence on others’ work coupled with a questionable personal approach.
From my edition, Ch. derives his information about the readings and all the paleographical material, which is understandable on the part of an editor who, by his own admission (LIII), has limited his contact with the MSS to recollating the two main ones on a “reproduction photographique”. Equally understandable and also right and proper was for Ch. to deviate from its format, in which the readings are contained in an ample “Critical List”, as well as in the apparatus. Having only an apparatus available, Ch. should have concentrated the essential information in it in a clear, correct manner, but this task was not fully executed, for four main reasons.
In the first place, in Ch.’s apparatus, which is positive, one would expect to find all N’s readings, because of its nature as a prime source of our tradition, possibly with the exclusion of the orthographical ones, which would be discussed in a dedicated Appendix in the introduction. While Ch. does in fact add some orthographic peculiarities or mechanical corruptions of N (among those in the “List” in Malaspina), at the same time he excludes other, more significant ones, especially from the second half of book I.8 The criteria on which these choices are based escape me and the indubitable result is that Ch. readers will never be able to get a clear notion of the state of N.
In the second place, in the introduction (LIII-LX) Ch., explicitly expanding on considerations by Bernhard Bischoff, Giancarlo Mazzoli, Paola Busonero and myself, recognizes in R (Città del Vaticano, Reg. Lat. 1529, which with N is the sole manuscript of the IX Century), a descriptus of N, albeit with some uncertainty in the formulation: the statement “N est bien l’unique base textuelle pour l’édition”, at the end of the examination of the relationships between the two mss. is preceded by an initial “N et R sont donc les deux codices fondamentaux pour établir le texte” (LIII).9 A simple and commonly applied text-critical principle would make it redundant in a case like this to indicate R’s readings, as descriptus, when they do not correct N. Except for a few cases where he seems to forget to do so,10 Ch. instead invariably indicates R’s reading, both when it coincides with N and when it constitutes a lectio singularis. If Ch. had wanted to provide proof of the direct N-R filiation, instead of needlessly burdening the apparatus, he could have provided a one-page list in the introduction: as he followed (LXV-LXVI) Malaspina 31-32 for a list of the orthographical peculiarities of N (but attributing them both to N and to R!), he could have done the same with pp. 64-69 for the N-R relationship.
In the third place, some serious inaccuracies cannot be justified as misprints. I will point out, above all, three omissions in the final part: 1.18.1 Ch. prints sed ut his, the reading of A ( sed his N sed ut îs with apex Malaspina), without any remark, either in the apparatus or in the commentary; 1.19.5 Ch. prints, as stated, tutum est; securitas, once again without pointing it out, when the reading of N is tutum sed securitas. But here, the textual choice in itself is highly questionable, as it follows the manuscript testimony only of the severely discredited collected MS S (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 16592), when the reading of N is corrected in paleographically acceptable fashion in tutum sit. Securitas (Gertz Malaspina). If Ch. wished to innovate, tutum securitas by some recentiores offered a dignified solution, with sed athetized as an imperfect dittography. The whole question is not discussed by Ch., even in the commentary. A last omission : at 2.4.3 Ch. prints longe iussam stare a se, a conjecture by Hosius ( longius stare a se N Malaspina), yet again without remark and translating “la clémence presse celle ci de se tenir loin d’elle”, an expression that cannot be understood.
Through the first half of book I or so, the apparatus appears to be quite carefully thought out, albeit with the aforementioned flaws, but at 1.1.4 peperci is attributed by Ch. to the manus prior se ipsa corrigens (N1c), while in my autopsy of N, I did not go beyond an emendatio incertae manus (Nc), as it is an erasure (how can Ch. attribute an erasure to a hand?). A review, conducted with a “reproduction photographique” as by Ch., confirms my attribution of the hands also in other cases of disagreement.11 A factual error also seems to me to be 1.17.1 pessima autem condicione R : pessima au condicione Nc pessimam au conditionem N1, to be corrected in pessima autem condicione NcR : pessimam autem conditionem N1: au with titulus is in fact the usual compendium for autem in N (see Malaspina 28 n. 66) and there is no reason to point out the diplomatic peculiarity as if it were a textual variant.
In the fourth place, to complete a picture that can, legitimately in my view, be considered not worthy of a highly prestigious collection like Budé, I must point out frequent misprints, the most curious of which is found in 2.6.3, where Malaspina’s et in (deest membrana) noxam N becomes in o noxam in Ch. I call it a misprint, because I cannot believe that Ch. here intentionally mistook for a letter “o” the empty eyelet of the parchment, which appears on the “reproduction photographique” to have this shape.
To this misprint and to the others mentioned above at notes 10 and 11 must be added the following: 1.1.3 tranqullissimi NR (corrige tranquilissimi N1 tranquilissimis N3 tranquillissimi R); 1.3.3 viris N1 (corrige viri N1); 1.6.2 quodtuquisque N1 (corrige quodtuquisquae N1); 1.7.3 lententibus N1 (corrige letentibus N1); 1.9.3 dictarat recc ex castigationibus Pinciani 1536 (corrige dictarat Pincianus, cf. G. Kiekebusch, Gryphiae 1912, 62); 1.11.2 ciuillem N1 (corrige ciullem N1); 1.12.3 habet NR : habet et N1 (corrige habet NcR : habet et N1); 1.14.3 tardis ibi NR (corrige tradis ibi NR); 1.15.2 parricidii Madvig 1873 (corrige parricidi Madvig 1873, see above about the text); 1.18.1 quanto iustius Mar.268 : quanto iustius iubet quanto iustius NR Gertz (corrige quanto iustius Mar.268 Gertz : quanto iustius iubet quanto iustius NR); 1.19.9 prxum N (corrige p(ro)xum N); 2.2.1 imne impejii N (corrige imne imperjii N); 2.4.4 misericordiam N1cR : om. N1 (corrige misericordiam N1cR : msericordiam N1; the incongruous “om.” probably refers to the previous supplement by Gertz); 2.6.1 miseretur TQ : miseret NR (to be deleted: N abbreviates miseretur in miseret’, cf. Malaspina 28 n. 63).12
To all this must also be added that Ch.’s constant preoccupation seems to have been to deproblematize the text: the apparatus merely indicates the passages at which Ch. deviates from N, while in many other cases, where the expert reader should be informed of the weakness of the text and of the presence of noteworthy readings or conjectures, nothing is said. Some examples:13 1.5.5 ad terram is a highly doubtful reading, although it is accepted by all modern editors: read instead Ch. 68 n. 14 (cf. Malaspina 273-274). Ch. fails to point out, even in the apparatus, at 1.5.6 the supplement si (accepted by editors without exception from 1492 to 1914), legitimately rejected in the text. At 1.6.1 the words theatris viae postulantur have given rise to a considerable series of conjectures: but there is nothing in the apparatus ad loc., nothing p. 69 nn. 2-3. The same holds true for 1.8.2 nullus sit domi; 1.13.3 distinctio between miserabilem and qui; 1.13.4 adprobare et by Gertz; 1.14.2 illis hoc tribuentes; 1.18.3 non nasci melius; 1.19.2 dilabitur; 1.21.2 distinctio between potens and optinuisse; 2.1.1 me memini FQ; 2.1.3 gentes quaeque by Gertz; dignam dignam by Gruter; 2.5.3 mutuo auxilio. At 1.13.4 qui alia magis, instead, the absence of indications in the apparatus is at least offset by 90 n. 8. At 1.17.1 the adoption of the supplement homine by Lipsius would have required a reply to the observations by Malaspina 344, but in Ch. there is no note ad loc. (note also how far the translation “voir l’homme sous le joug de l’homme être dans la plus mauvaise condition” is from the text printed at its side).
A final, hard to justify peculiarity has to do with the sequence in which variants and conjectures follow each other: more often than not, Ch. follows neither the logic nor the chronological order from the most recent to the most ancient reading (with the result that N’s readings are found after R’s and after modern conjectures), whereas in some cases the reverse order appears. Among the many examples, I will point out two from the same page (13): 1.6.3 delinquemus (Lips.1619 adnot. 58) : delinquaemus N1 delinquimus N2R; 1.7.1 expedit usque ad N2R : expedit usquae Nc expeditus quae N1; see also p. 15.
TRANSLATION
The translation is certain to be the most personal part of the volume: as far as a reader who is not a native French speaker can see, Ch.’s language is pleasant and flows well, but it is not always careful and successful in rendering the peculiarities of Seneca’s style, which Ch. has long confronted when translating the tragedies. E.g., I am not convinced at 1.3.5 by tantoque speciosius rendered as “et d’une apparence tellement plus belle” (the meaning is, rather, “garish”); 1.8.4 “tu ne connais le bonheur de demeurer caché” seems to me a gratuitous over-interpretation of latere contingit; 1,10,3 I find burdensome and redundant the sentence “Si nous croyons qu’il est un Dieu, ce n’est pas comme pour obéir à un ordre” to render Deum esse non tamquam iussi credimus; 1,10,3 between the two opposite interpretations of apparebat (“it appeared” and “it was readily apparent”) Ch. retains the ambiguity, printing “il paraissait manifestement”; 1.12.3 hoc quod dicebam is rendered as a parenthetic sentence following Gertz (“comme je le disais”), whereas it seems to me to be rather proleptic of ut…sit (see Malaspina 324: the comment by Ch. says nothing about it); 1.12.4 “proche du paroxisme” is an elegant way to avoid clarifying the meaning of the original extrema admovens; 1.14.2 “offre la plus heureuse harmonie” is an imprecise rendering of temperatissima (“disciplined”); 1.17.1 see above about the apparatus; 1.17.2 from the translation, it is not clear that cito also refers to mortifera signa pronuntiare; 1.19.6 multiplicibus in my opinion refers only to muris and not to turribus, in the sense of “tortuous”, not of “multiples”; 1.20.2 the sense and the grammar of admonere…sciat in the Gertz Malaspina text, followed by Ch., remain highly doubtful: in any case, Ch.’s translation follows too closely Gertz’s exegesis in reversing the position of periclitantis and iudicis (cf. Ch. 100 n. 6); 2.4.3 see above about the apparatus.
INTRODUCTION
I will end with some observations on pp. VII-LII of the introduction. The first section has a captivating title (“Le De clementia dans la vie et l’oeuvre de Sénèque”), but the text supports it only to a minimal extent: instead of confronting the treatise directly, Ch. goes around it, with a necessarily cursory description of Seneca’s whole previous production, which supposedly had the common purpose of “guider le prince dans l’exercice d’un pouvoir devenu absolu” (VIII), a summary statement that is at least questionable. The discussion starts from the Consolatio ad Marciam, touches even on ekpyrosis, ends with the Ludus and it is a pleasant read, but highly generic.
Definitely more closely focused on the theme are the following pages on ” Clementia : le mot, la notion et son application des origines à l’avènement de Néron”, a rich collection of passages where the term clementia and similar ones appear from Plautus to Seneca. What is striking here is the absence of a critical approach to the theme: yet again, Ch. seems to want, as a matter of principle, to avoid confronting problems and merely provides a descriptive rendition, mentioning the ancient sources but without ever mentioning and making a stand on modern bibliography, which in fact is present, in part, in the bibliographical note14 and which is quite rich and varied.
The result is a diachronic picture of clementia, apparently harmonious but devoid of critical depth, in which the mentioned passages are only rarely placed in the original historic and political conditions. I will just ask a few questions, which would require articulated answers that Ch. does not offer. Starting the examination from De re publica provides a convenient key for interpretation, but it also constitute a cage that does not help research: is Cicero’s topos of clementia as an original political feature of the Romans historical or is it an a posteriori reconstruction of the I century B.C., which culminates in the famous verses of the sixth book of the Aeneid ? What are the exact relationships between clementia and mansuetudo, lenitas, humanitas, misericordia, liberalitas etc.? Are they well defined concepts or are the terms often synonyms, as I believe and Ch. partly recognizes (
Ch. lastly devotes 14 pages to the problem of dating, starting from the debated passage 1.9.1, presented according to the Malaspina text, but interpreted in a wholly different fashion: combining four sources15. Ch. comes to the conclusion, rightly presented as a non-demonstrable hypothesis, that Book I was the discourse of the nuncupatio votorum of January 55, published during the month, while Book II, which was started immediately afterwards, was supposedly interrupted because of the murder of Britannicus in mid-February. Personally, I distrust attempts to “save” Seneca and De clementia from all involvement in the murder of Neros’ half-brother. But the point here is that the hypothesis on the different function of the two books, which Ch. presents as his own, is instead exactly the one that P. Grimal had proposed in his well known monograph on Seneca,16 just brought forward one year, from the nuncupatio votorum of 56 to that of 55. Grimal’s name is not even mentioned once in the pages dedicated to the subject (XXXVIII-LII): yet another, culpable, omission, and perhaps the clumsiest of all because one cannot see how readers can possibly fail to notice it, as Grimal’s monograph is very well known (unlike the other, more sectorial contribution Ch. uses), not only in the French-speaking world and not only among specialists of De clementia.
CONCLUSION
The edition does not meet the needs of scholars interested in furthering their study of textual, tradition and exegesis questions, but it can be useful for its translation. Its main flaws are the excessive and not always stated dependence on others’ work and the frequency of errors of form and substance, which I have dwelled upon more closely. If the intention of the Collection was to replace the Préchac edition with a better one, it can be said to have succeeded. But if the intention was to offer the publiç and especially French speakers, an edition of a high scholarly level, I am afraid the opportunity has not been exploited.
Notes
1. I recall, among the works on De beneficiis, Le De beneficiis de Sénèque. Sa signification philosophique, politique et sociale, Paris 1985, and Les désillusions de Sénèque devant l’évolution de la politique néronienne et l’aspiration à la retraite: le “De vita beata” et le “De beneficiis”, ANRW 2,36,3, 1989, 1686-1723. Then the valuable bibliography (Quarante ans de recherche sur les oeuvres philosophiques de Sénèque. Bibliographie 1945-1985), published in ANRW 2,36,3, 1989, 1545-1605, and lastly the French translation of the Tragedies in the same Collection Budé, prepared by some text-critical articles (RPh LXVIII, 1994, 87-99; LXIX, 1995, 95-109): vols.
2. Sénèque, De la clémence, Texte établi et traduit par F. Préchaç Paris Les Belles Lettres 1921.1 1925.2 [repr. 1967. 1990]. I have sufficiently dwelled on it in Una nuova collazione del codice Nazariano del De clementia, in P. Parroni (Ed.), Seneca e il suo tempo, Roma 2000, 339-375.
3. L. Annaei Senecae De clementia libri duo, Prolegomeni, testo critico e commento a cura di Ermanno Malaspina, Alessandria 2001.1. 2005.2.
4. See Ch. LII-LIII; the review in Latomus LXII, 2003, 685-688.
5. Even the choice of the quotations from the commentaries by Calvinus, Gronovius, and Lipsius, present in copious quantities in Malaspina, seem at time to betray in Ch. a sort of “intermediate source”. In some cases, Ch. uses, in the apparatus, less cryptic and longer abbreviations than Malaspina’s (with the result of swelling, often needlessly, an apparatus that in itself is already poorly framed, see infra); however, the edition by Erasmus of 1529, abbreviated as Eras2 in Malaspina, becomes Eras 1529 in Ch., except at 1.5.3, where it is strangely reported as Eras2. A correlated defect of the comment is that it deproblematized, intentionally in my view, every aspect of the exegesis; Ch. often seems not to grasp what is truly significant: whereas the previous commentaries provide two or three different interpretations, Ch. reports only one, nearly always, of course, the most plausible or at least the best supported one. Can all this be justified by space requirements? E.g. 80 n. 17 on quos tantum ausos pudet Ch. provides only one of the three possible exegeses, examined in Malaspina 304. In other cases (e.g. 57 n. 9; 58 n. 17 the reference to Octavia; 88 n. 14; 116 n. 6) the comment is simply out of order. At 1.19.8, Malaspina’s text is followed, just with fewer punctuation marks, O ne ille cui contingit ut sibi quoque vivere debeat, but the exegesis of the text is provided at 99 n. 16 with reference to the comment by Ammendola (Torino 1928), where, however, both the Latin text and the interpretation are quite different from Malaspina’s (Ch.’s bibliography is missing Erm. Malaspina, Due tracce delle “orazioni cesariane” nel De clementia di Seneca, RFIC CXXIX, 2001, 307-314).
6. In parentheses, Malaspina’s text and, when it does not match, the reading of N, the sole origin of the manuscript tradition, Città del Vaticano, Pal. Lat. 1547; the abbreviations of the manuscripts in Ch. are those in Malaspina.
7. In the aforementioned review, Ch. defined as “bien meilleure” the supplement by Lipsius at 1.21.4. I note yet another discrepancy and clash between review and edition: my lacuna at 1.1.1, considered “loin de s’imposer avec une totale évidence” in the review, is accepted in the text with the note in apparatus “recte ut mihi quidem videtur”, confirmed in the note ad loc., 56.
8. E.g. 1.15.2 integro N1c : intecro N1; effecit recc : efficit NR; 1.19.3 airacondissimae N1 : iracondissimae N2; 1.25.1 potius Nc : ti potius N1; 1.25.4 ballistis N1c : balliti N1; 1.25.5 manus recc : manibus NR; at R2 : ad N; 2.1.3 iuraent N1c; 2.4.3 clementia recc : clementiam NR; 2.5.1 accedit Q : accidit N; 2.5.5 facere R : facerem N; 2.7.2 acciti N1c : acsiti N1.
9. Equally, at 1.21.4 Ch. recognized, in the review quoted above in n. 4, that the conjecture minor res by Gertz “se justifie très bien paléographiquement et donne un sens satisfaisant”, whereas minoris supposedly had the “caution” of R. Clearly, the “caution” of descriptus must carry a great deal of weight for Ch., since minoris is, as stated, the reading chosen by Ch. (whose commentary fails to say anything at all in this regard).
10. 1.6.2 lege; 1.13.1 placito; 1.13.2 homine; 1.13.4 invidus; 1.19.9 adfectare; 2,7,1 sid veniam; sapiente; 2.7.4 tergantur. I will point out some misprints linked to R: 1.4.3 principis R (corrige principis N); 2.11.4 cum RN (corrige cum NR); 1.16.1 clementiam NR ante c. (corrige clementiam NR1); inscriptio lib. II INCIPIT LIBER SECUNDUS (corrige INCIPIT LIBER SECUNDUS R); 2.4.1 utusuris NR ante c. (corrige utusuris NR1: this is the second and last case where the ante c. abbreviation appears). At two points, Ch. corrects R reading errors in Malaspina: 2.5.1 mansuetudinemque; 2.5.2 datura.
11. Equally, 1.1.9 aequalis Nc (N2 Malaspina: the correction modes are the usual ones of N2); 1.7.4 vociferatio N2 (N1c Malaspina); 1.8.1 magnam N1c (N2 Malaspina); 1.25.5 ne edd. (T Malaspina); 2.4.2 qouod N1 ( couod N1 Malaspina). Legitimate, instead, is a different interpretation of the scriptio continua of N, which occurs in several points (e.g. 1.1.5 tibigratia N2 in Ch. : tibi gratia Malaspina and so on).
12. I did not point out merely graphic misprints, such as the frequent failure to use superscript characters for the numbers in the abbreviations of the manuscripts. The bibliography is also burdened by annoying misprints in its non-French parts: LXVIII: Antverziae; LXXII: Procope (corrige Procopé); Torino (corrige Alessandria); LXXIII: Balbo (corrige A. Balbo); LXXV: ambiguë (corrige ambigue); LXXVII: soverano (corrige sovrano); LXXXIII: L.S. Salmons (corrige L.J. Samons); Between Republic and Empire twice printed; LXXXVI: Wlater (corrige Walter); Wirzubski (corrige Wirszubski). Miscellaneous works are ordered alphabetically according to the editor’s name, but internal references are provided by title, which forces those who cannot connect author and title to scroll through the entire bibliography to find the miscellaneous work. In the introduction, XL n. 7, the text of 1.9.1 according to the interpunction by Lipsius is printed with the supplement clade, which originated with J.N. Madvig nearly 300 years after Lipsius (the correct attribution is found in the apparatus p. 16). Lastly, in the comment, p. 55, Learch (corrige Leach).
13. Nor can it be said that this reduction is caused by problems with space: the French translation in fact is, on average, longer than the corresponding Latin text by one third and there is almost no odd page without a vast blank space between the last word of the Latin text and the first one of the apparatus.
14. I refer above all to the contributions by T. Adam (Stuttgart 1970), A. Borgo (“Vichiana” XIV, 1985, 25-73), J. Hellegouarc’h (Paris 1963), H. Pétré (REL XII, 1934, 376-389), and S. Rochlitz (Frankfurt am Main 1993). Moreover, there is no mention of the Senatusconsultum de Cn. Pisone Patre (on which see AJPh CXX, 1999). Ch. seems not to know L. Bertelli, Per basileias : i trattati sulla regalit dal IV secolo a.C. agli apocrifi pitagorici, in P. Bettiolo-G. Filoramo (Eds.), Il dio mortale. Teologie politiche tra antico e contemporaneo, Brescia 2002, 17-61; M.B. Dowling, The development of clementia during the Roman principate, Diss., New York 1995; M. Griffin, Clementia after Caesar: from Politics to Philosophy, in F. Cairns-E. Fantham (Eds.), Caesar Against Liberty? Perspectives on his Autocracy, Liverpool 2003, 157-182. Even the bibliographies on clementia Caesaris and the Hellenistic specula principis are unsatisfactory and not up to date.
15. In addition to Malaspina, P. Schimmenti, GIF LIII, 2001, 37-68; P. Vallette, in Mélanges P. Thomas, Bruges 1930, 687-700; O. Zwierlein, RhM CXXXIX, 1996, 14-32. Ch. derives most of his arguments from these texts, but often deviating from their conclusions, which certainly misleads the uninformed.
16. Sénèque ou La conscience de l’empire, Paris 1991, 121-122.