Abstract

In Plutarch's account of the younger Cato's mission to Cyprus a fairly prominent place is given to one Canidius, described as one of Cato's friends. He is also twice mentioned in connection with the same events in Brut. 3. 2–3, but here the great majority of our MSS. read κανίνΉον, while only one family , and perhaps a later hand in the early MS. L, have κανί΄ων. Canidius is a very rare gentilicium—a fact obscured perhaps by scholars' familiarity with Horace's witch—and besides the subject of the present investigation there is only one known bearer of the name in Republican times, namely P. Canidius Crassus cos. stiff. 40. He served with Lepidus in Gaul and then became a partisan of Antony, whom he accompanied to the East after earning a suffect consulship