Bailey, 'M. Tulli Ciceronis: De Officiis', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9505
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9505-bailey-m

@@@@95.5.11, Winterbottom, ed., Cicero de Officiis

Winterbottom, M. (ed.), <i>M. Tulli Ciceronis: De Officiis</i>.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pp. 172. $22.00. ISBN
0-19-814673-6.
     Reviewed by David Roy Shackleton Bailey -- Harvard
University

     This edition is sure to become standard. It is more
attractive to read than Atzert's fourth Teubner (1963), more
accurate (extremely accurate in fact), and on a comparison
between the two texts comes out best. Some of its improvements
are found already in the intervening editions of Fedeli
(Mondadori, 1965) and Testard (Bude, 1965-1970), which, however,
are not of sufficient importance to have a place in the list of
editors 'qui infra laudantur' (actually, a reading in Fedeli
<i>is</i> mentioned in the apparatus on p. 7).

     The text depends on two families, called by W. (<i>secundum
artem</i>) Z and C instead of Z and X as hitherto. The first has
a purer tradition, but the second 'vix levis est momenti' (not
intended to mean 'has hardly even slight importance'!). So, with
Fedeli in 1973 (<i>ANRW</i> 1.4.384f.), W. rates C higher than
his predecessors and has provided new help in reconstructing it.
The impact on the texts is not momentous.

     The <i>De officiis</i> was composed in a hurry and probably
lacked its author's final revision. For editors the most
difficult problem is how much of its redundances and
incongruities to bracket as interpolative: 'Multa damnavit W.J.
Brueser, multa defendit K.B. Thomas.' Between these two W.'s
position is intermediate, as he claims, but compared with Atzert
or even Fedeli he is decidedly conservative, much alive to the
risk of correcting the author. Otherwise their differences are
quite numerous but mostly of little or no semantic importance.
Again, W. tends to be conservative, but not mindlessly so. 'Fort.
recte' is not seldom to be met with in his clear and elegant
apparatus, which also harbours some ten original conjectures.

     A few points of detail:

1.109 in sermonibus ... quamvis praepotens sit, efficere ut unus
de multis esse videatur, quod in Catulo, et patre et filio,
idemque in Q. Mucio Mancia vidimus.

     W. obelizes <i>Q. Mucio Mancia</i>, but Q. Mucius Scaevola
the Augur, <i>ioculator senex</i> of <i>Att</i>. 4.16.3, is
totally in place, only he needs to be distinguished from his
namesake and contemporary the Pontifex. Mancia on the other hand
('nomen ignoti sed vix praepotentis') is impossible in this
company, perhaps a dittography of <i>mucio</i>. So <i>Q. Mucio
[mancia] <Q.f.></i>?

1.135 habentur autem plerumque sermones aut de domesticis
negotiis aut de re publica aut de artium studiis atque doctrina.
danda igitur opera est ut etiamsi aberrare ad alia coeperit, ad
haec revocetur oratio, sed utcumque aderunt; neque enim isdem de
rebus nec omni tempore nec similiter delectamur.

     <i>utcumque aderunt</i>, obelized by W., has been variously
misunderstood. Conversation has certain staple topics. It may
diverge to others, but must come back to these, 'but in whatever
way they crop up.' They will not always present themselves
(<i>aderunt</i>) in the same form.

2.25 quid Alexandrum Pheraeum quo animo vixisse arbitramur?

     Solecistic, so punctuated. Read <i>quid? Alexandrum</i>.

In 3.109 note the substitution of Minucius for the vulgate
Numicius, which has hardly any manuscript support.

     The <i>De officiis</i> is hard going for readers with minds
operating on logical progression, not, as Cicero's sometimes did,
free association. But W.'s many new paragraphs, judiciously
placed, are a real help.