With this slim, tightly argued volume, Volk and Zetzel have put Cicero’s De amicitia back on the map for college teachers and researchers alike. As often with a Ciceronian text, there are older commented editions kicking around – in this case, e.g., by Gould and Whiteley and the indefatigable Charles E. Bennett—but contemporaneity makes a difference even in the venerable genre of commentaries. I recently taught the De senectute to a group of Yale undergraduates using Bennett’s 1897 school edition. Written by an experienced Latin pedagogue, it is helpful on its own as a guide to Cicero’s grammar and style, and it offered the class a chance to think through the different questions asked 100+ years ago of a canonical author (if not any longer a canonical text). But neither the assumptions nor the points of interest around which Bennett’s readings revolve were recognizable to my students, who were thus left unsure of how to take the help provided to a next step that would help them with their own extra-grammatical questions (how does this rhetorical figure reinforce the meaning? Is Cato a reliable narrator? etc.)—or indeed, help them to shape such questions, or even to imagine their possibility. So too with the De amicitia: though the resources exist to teach and study the dialogue, the text was badly in need of a discursive English commentary that will lead readers into the scholarship on Cicero and friendship with a wide-ranging, up-to-date bibliography, while maintaining a firm grasp of the grammar, style, and structure of the literary work. (I deliberately exclude Jonathan Powell’s 1990 Aris & Phillips edition here, because of the intentions of that series: Powell’s work is valuable but aimed at a different audience.)
Acknowledging the continuing drift (often noted in reviews) toward more scholarly content in these editions, the “green and yellow” series advises its editors: “The commentaries in this series are intended primarily as textbooks for students, but they are also designed to answer the more general needs of scholars, and they are regularly used in the graduate schools of American universities as well as extensively at undergraduate level there” (current notes for editors; I thank Professor Whitton for this information). Volk/Zetzel stick closely to the well tested stylistic and content guidelines of the series. Modern foreign languages are not assumed, though plenty of non-Anglophone bibliography is used; basic historical context is given, but the focus remains on the text as literature; notes begin with grammatical/philological specifics and then range outward. Apart from illuminating the historiography of interpretation of De amicitia, reference to the work of earlier scholars anchors the discussion in important studies (e.g. Otto etc. on proverbial language, Kassel on consolation, Wilkinson on artistry), and simplifies discussion (e.g. on the text, pp. 36-7). Volk and Zetzel have each published recently and extensively on this period in Cicero’s life; that work is integrated here but does not overshadow the discussion of De amicitia itself. There is, appropriately, considerable attention paid both to Cicero’s intellectual background and to the integration of De amicitia with his other philosophical works. There is also a bonus commentary, on ad Familiares 11.27-8, two difficult letters to Caius Matius in which Cicero tries to negotiate friendship at a stressful time; in rounding off the volume with these, Volk/Zetzel offer us a glimpse into the pragmatics of friendship, of which the preceding dialogue offers the theory.
The generous Introduction covers historical context; the topic of friendship and its ancient theories; the structure, speakers, and core ideas of the dialogue; and its style. A short section on De amicitia’s reception and text concludes. Clarity is everywhere a priority, both in layout (e.g. the delineation of De amicitia’s structure on pp. 19-20) and decisions about what to include. The five pages on “Context and composition”—in particular the first two on the political climate of the time—are nothing short of miraculous in their focused effectiveness. I was particularly interested in the section on Style (pp. 28-34). In its first part, the editors mix generalities (e.g. on the closeness of De amicitia to De senectute) with specifics, working through illustrations of particular styles, the protreptic, the informal, and the ornately periodic. This is hard to do without excessive nerdiness, but Volk/Zetzel show well not only what elements mark the individual styles, but how that grammatical and rhetorical content shapes their different effects and meaning. Technicalities take over in the second part, on prose rhythm. The editors approach this as an opportunity to help us understand what for Cicero was avowedly a major path toward effective rhetoric: “for Cicero, in whatever form of prose he was writing, effect was of immense importance” (p. 32). Here again the topic is greatly aided by important recent work by Keeline and Kirby in JRS 109 (2019), which allows Volk/Zetzel to consign “Kolon und Satz,” “Noch einmal Kolon und Satz,” “Bride of Kolon und Satz,” and other light classics to that detailed discussion. They concentrate instead on showing us how clausulae work in De amicitia—as structural punctuation and as pleasure, the utile and the dulce—and on presenting, through diverting anecdotes from the Orator and Quintilian, how important this now often opaque stylistic technique was.
The attention paid to structure in the Introduction is itself a dominant structuring device in the commentary proper, used not just to separate the prose into manageable parts, but also to elucidate the entanglements and progress of Cicero’s arguments. Volk/Zetzel pack a lot into a little. Cf., e.g., their three lemmata treating the end of chapter 37:
conciliatrix “motivator”; cf. 83 uirtutum amicitia adiutrix. The use of personified abstractions is typical of C.’s philosophical and rhetorical works, rare in speeches and letters (Fantham 1972: 146-7); he seems particularly fond of feminine nouns in –trix, of which twelve are found only in C., while of ten more there is only one other example in classical Latin. uirtutis opinio “a favorable opinion of [a would-be friend’s] virtue” (OLD opinio 5); cf. Laelius’ self-deprecating claim that Scipio might “perhaps” (fortasse) have had a “certain good opinion” (opinione … nonnulla) of Laelius’ character (30n. sed ego admiratione…me dilexit). C. elsewhere makes a strong distinction between uirtus and opinio uirtutis (cf. Top. 78), as does Laelius below (98). defeceris: The second person is generalizing, equivalent to English “one.” The metaphor is one of “revolting” or “defecting” (OLD 10), and thus (for Laelius) appropriate to Ti. Gracchus: as he revolted against the commonwealth, so the unworthy friend defects from virtue.
These 150-odd words give us (1a) a translation and parallel for a notable abstract noun which leads to analysis (1b) of Ciceronian generic style(s) and (1c) of how Cicero differs in one respect from the rest of classical Latin; (2a) translation instead of grammatical explanation, one of the series’ favored moves to avoid turgidity, offering (2b) a way of understanding an elliptical meaning of a common word that has some Ciceronian parallels, but whose use (2c) is strongly dependent on context (“self-deprecating”); (3a) a streamlined explanation of a common grammatical point, leading to (3b) unpacking of a metaphor which demonstrates its appropriateness in the speaker’s political and social analysis. (One of the great strengths of this commentary is that it takes Cicero’s metaphors, even “hackneyed” ones, seriously, showing how they strengthen his rhetorical and philosophical points.) One piece of secondary literature is cited; the OLD offers support for two semantic points; four Ciceronian parallels (three from De amicitia) are cited, including one cross-reference to an earlier note. Volk/Zetzel rely heavily on their own auctoritas as commentators: a less assured editor—or one more inclined to prolixity—might have offered the support of a grammar for the generalizing second person singular or told us where to find those 10 nouns in -trix. Following up on the cross-reference to their earlier note at De amicitia 30, we see that Volk/Zetzel do not there translate opinio as “good opinion,” a slight inconsistency which perhaps gives a glimpse into the commentary process, which inevitably involves developing and changing interpretation as one goes along. It certainly shows us one of the most important things not only about commentaries but about scholarship in general: that the never-ending work of writing and rewriting, with its inevitable contradictions and slippages, is a main generator of meaning, as it forcefully brings the reader into the process of interpretation.
It is a mark of the curiously aseptic tradition of academic writing that probably only those who are part of the professional world of Latin studies (or who work at Columbia) will know that the editors of this edition are a married couple. In the spirit of full disclosure of my own friendships, I should say that I have known both for many years. Though he may not have taught me everything I know, Zetzel shaped my intentions and interests as a classicist, when I was an undergraduate writing a senior thesis under his direction at Princeton. While not pretending to an unreasonable objectivity, I hope nevertheless to have taken account of the true virtues of this edition in preparing this review.