Kraus, 'Suetonius Tranquillus De grammaticis et rhetoribus', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9512
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9512-kraus-suetonius
@@@@95.12.12, Kaster, ed./trans., Suetonius de gramm. et rhet.
R. A. Kaster (ed. and trans.), C. Suetonius Tranquillus De
grammaticis et rhetoribus. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp.
lx + 370. $72.00. ISBN 0-19-814091-6.
Reviewed by Christina S. Kraus, Greek and Latin
-- University College London
c.s.kraus@ucl.ac.uk
Ancient discussions of literary theory and history relied heavily
on descriptive adjectives, many of which spring to mind in response
to K's new edition with translation, introduction, and commentary
of the DGR: foremost among them elegans, copiosus,
laboriosus, and above all, doctus. It is long since
time that this Suetonian text, one of very few sources of
information about our ancient counterparts, the grammarians, and a
chief witness to the lives of the republican and early imperial
rhetoricians, received detailed treatment. K's edition combines
three separate but related aims: to provide an introduction,
suitable for the general reader but with detailed technical
information made available in footnotes, to Suetonius' life,
working methods, and the character of the DGR; a new text
and translation[[1]]; and a full commentary, intended for the
specialized reader, and focusing primarily on the careers and
scholarship of the individuals whose lives Suetonius reports, as
well as on Suetonius' own scholarly habits. As he did in his 1988
Guardians of language, K has taken an apparently unrewarding
topic ('grammar,' after all, as one reviewer remarked recently in
these pages, 'is--grammar': and grammarians are grammarians[[2]])
and shown it to be full of riches.
The very project of writing about teacher-scholars was novel, and
K shows that as a consequence the DGR was primarily a
product of original research. Suetonius was himself a
scholasticus and a man of public standing, secretary a
studiis, a bibliothecis and ab epistulis; it was
in his lifetime that professional grammatici and
rhetores 'acquired a clearly articulated and acknowledged
place at the centre of the elite culture more generally' (xxix).
Like Nepos before him, Suetonius had an eye for a gap in the
market, and included in his De uiris illustribus memorable
past exponents of these newly respectable, even influential,
professions. K's interest in the socio-cultural milieu of
Suetonius' subjects and their patrons informs both the introduction
and the commentary, where he combines the techniques of
prosopography and historical analysis to provide a mine of useful
information, including valuable notes throughout on
cognomina, the patronage system, and the treatment,
education, and manumission of slaves; specific topics include
historiographical works written by freedmen (300-1),
praecones (74-5), the relationships of the late-republican
Claudii Pulchri (143-5), the relative value of ancient sums of
money (84, 127-8), gout (79-80), apparitores (130), and the
corniculum (131). A second focus is on Suetonius' own
working methods: K examines his critical and scholarly language
(illustrated with abundant parallels from the Lives of the
emperors), methods of reasoning and deduction, and sources of
information. There being no earlier biographies of these figures to
draw on, Suetonius gathered his information by excerpting primary
sources, often accumulating data on the grammatici while
reading through biographies of poets, orators, etc. for his lives
of other categories of uiri illustres (for the
rhetores there were some sources--though K argues, plausibly
[App. 4], that Suetonius used the Elder Seneca's collection of
reminiscences only at second hand). The third major strand of the
commentary focuses on the works of scholarship produced by the
subjects of the DGR and on the general history of ancient
grammatical and rhetorical education and practice. These K
documents with comprehensive expertise; again, I single out only a
few of my favorite notes: on the spuria attributed to Probus
(247-8), on Orbilius' interest in synonyms (129), on authors
considered 'ancient' in the late first century CE (256-9), on Greek
titles for Latin prose works (133), and on the different types of
controuersiae (289-90). Though K claims not to treat
stylistic matters as a general rule (vii), he makes very sharp
remarks concerning the poems that Suetonius quotes (e.g. 153 on
legit and facit in FLP Furius Bibaculus fr. 6,
and 189-90 on nutricula in FLP Domitius Marsus fr.
3).
There are a very few times when K's care and precision defeat
themselves: for instance, the commentary style being less well
adapted to extended discussion, I found his long note (86-93) on
the terms grammaticus, litteratus, litterator (etc.) quite
hard to follow--footnotes would have made the technical information
easier to separate from the main text. In general, however, the
commentary provokes questions rather than invites corrections.
E.g., on poor teachers: though K mentions 'the topos of poverty'
(158), is it not possible that the very fact there was such a topos
accounts for the contradiction between Orbilius' poverty (9.2) and
the reports of his apparent wealth (132)? Are teachers
conventionally poor? Similarly, the food that Valerius Cato eats in
his poverty (11.3)--part of a 'ludicrous series' of items 'in which
the numbers are chosen with farcical precision' (157)--must be
conventional of poverty, like Horace's satirical leeks. On Verrius
Flaccus (190-1) K does not mention his possible involvement with a
possible Augustan compilation of the Annales maximi; on
Bibaculus' description of Orbilius as litterarum obliuio
(9.6), K is surely right to see a reversal of the proper teacher's
job, i.e. to preserve the memoria litterarum (136): but I
wonder if there is any mileage in connecting it with the nickname
given to the Augustan scholar at Alexandria, Didymus
Bibliolathas, who wrote so many books that he forgot what he
himself had said (perhaps not--it is rejected by Courtney,
FLP p.194--but the similarity is striking). Suetonius'
description of the late arrival of grammar and rhetoric (2.1
studium grammaticae in urbem intulit Crates Mallotes
... 25.1 rhetorica quoque ... sero recepta est), which uses
the language of immigration and assimilation, reminds me of Livy's
descriptions of the arrival of foreigners and foreign influences
into Rome--beginning, of course, in the Preface, with auaritia
luxuriaque, which came serae in ciuitatem (11). Not all
the immigrants were unwelcome, of course, and the story of
assimilation is the story of Rome's growth, but it is interesting
that ancient Roman scholarship, too, saw itself as taking in
foreign influences. Some things I would like to know more about:
the game of writing replies to famous speeches of the past (328);
Suetonius' habits when recording variants, e.g. at 4.3 sunt
qui (where I do not see the inconsistency that K does; some
formulae are listed in Intro. n.18); Pompey's intellectual
background and connections (276, 298); and ancient jokebooks
(220-1: isn't one ascribed to Tacitus [Teuffel5 339.2]?).
The fluid, literate translation manages to be both idiomatic and
to follow the word order of the Latin; very occasionally I thought
K was too expansive (e.g. 1.1 grammatica, 18.1
pergola), and in the famous anecdote about Porcellus and
Tiberius, mentitur Capito would be better translated
'Capito's flattering you' than 'Capito's lying' (cf. OLD
mentior 2, TLL I.B.5: I owe this point to Roland
Mayer). The index is the only part of the book in which I was
disappointed: though full (and full of surprises--who would expect
oral sex to figure in a treatise on Latin grammar? but see p. 242),
it could be much fuller (and more accurate). Worse, it has some
annoying quirks and inconsistencies. Gaul is found s.v. ' Gallia,'
but Spain under 'Spain'; we are referred from 'Cicero' to 'Tullius
Cicero, M.'--but no quarter is given to those of us who cannot
remember Cinna's nomen (Helvius), or that of C. Melissus,
Maecenas' freedman; and heaven help the non-expert who is looking
for Alexander Polyhistor (s.v. 'Cornelius'). Many items from the
rich commentary have been left out, (especially, it seems, topics
of ancient research: e.g., myotacism, 216; naturalization of words,
227; paradoxography, 191 and 210), and it would be helpful to have
some entries further analysed (esp. 'Suetonius--method of' and
'nomenclature'). Finally, of the handful (literally) of
typographical errors outside the Index, only one might affect the
reader adversely: for 'cf. 23.3n.' on p.186 sed ita ...
nemini read 'cf. 24.3n.'
But these really are quibbles. This is, quite simply, a
marvellous book.
NOTES
[[1]] K's 1992 monograph, Studies on the text of Suetonius 'De
grammaticis et rhetoribus', discusses his text: I will not
treat that area in this review, though I will mention--because they
are buried in an appendix--two convincing proposals in the text of
a scholium to Juv. 1.20 (341) and Macrobius 1.15.21-2 (343).
[[2]] J.E.G. Zetzel on V. Law, BMCR 95.10.23