Abstract

In discussing the authorship of the first suasoria preserved in Cod. Vat. Lat. 3864 I said that an argument against its Sallustian origin had been found in the words ‘paulo ante hoc bellum’ of 4, 1. By this phrase the author marks an interval of twenty-seven years, and I suggested, as had been done before, that perhaps this is hardly the way ‘in which a man still under forty would refer to so long an interval which had ended only four years before he was writing.’ The elasticity of Latin words indicating number and magnitude is familiar, but by the kindness of Dr. Rice Holmes I have been reminded of a place where some of the more interesting examples have been collected. Dr. Postgate, on p. lxxiv of his edition of Lucan VIII., mentions among other Caesarian passages B.C. 3, 106, 1, where the few days concerned in ‘Caesar paucos dies in Asia moratus’ are something like three weeks; and B.G. 3, 20, 1, where ‘paucis ante annis’ dates an event which probably happened either twenty-one or twenty-two years before the time with which the narrative is concerned. To these Dr. Holmes would add Cic. in Cat. 3, 1, 3, and, by way of contrast, Caesar B.C. 3, 25, 1. In the former the ‘eruption’ of Catiline on the night of November 8–9 is described by Cicero on December 3, twenty-four days later, as having occurred ‘paucis ante diebus’: in the latter a period of scarcely three months is ‘multi menses.’