van den Berg, Christopher S.

English

College of the Holy Cross: CrossWorks

New England Classical Journal Volume 40 Issue 3 Pages 226-228 10-2013 Alessandro Garcea, Caesar's De Analogia. Edition, Translation, and Commentary. Christopher S. van den Berg Amherst College Follow this and additional works at: https://crossworks.holycross.edu/necj Recommended Citation van den Berg, Christopher S. (2013) "Alessandro Garcea, Caesar's De Analogia. Edition, Translation, and Commentary.," New England Classical Journal: Vol. 40 : Iss. 3 , 226-228. Available at: https://crossworks.holycross.edu/necj/vol40/iss3/10 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by CrossWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in New England Classical Journal by an authorized editor of CrossWorks. Stewart presents and her attention to the silences that conceal the slaves' perspective will make her book immensely useful to any scholar of early Latin literature. NECJ 40.3 (2013) Dorota Dutsch University of California, Santa Barbara Alessandro Garcea, Caesar's De Analogia. Edition, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xiii + 304. Cloth (ISBN 978-0-19-960397-8) $150.00. Alessandro Garcea's monograph on Caesar's De Analogia assembles and analyzes the disparate sources which testify to the quondam importance of a text now largely lost to modern observers of ancient grammar and rhetoric. This volume is a revised English version of the author's 2007 French these d'habilitation a diriger des recherches (similar to the German Habilitation). The collection includes testimonia and the known, or proposed, fragments with translation and extensive commentary, a lengthy discussion of various contexts billed as an introduction, detailed bibliography, a conspectus gauged to the editions of Funaioli and Klotz, and indices. Garcea adds further material to the growing list of studies which seek to put together the role of Caesar as a preeminent cultural authority of the late republic, as opposed to the more narrowly political aspects which have tended to find greater popularity in the scholarship. Although the total number of fragments is not large (35 in Garcea' s numbering, but some contain multiple fragments), later grammarians and rhetoricians eagerly cited Caesar on questions such as derivation (fr. 8), gender (fr. 10), and number (fr. llA-B), as well as case endings or verbal and pronominal forms. Garcea includes considerable material on attitudes to grammar in the later tradition and among Caesar's contemporaries, often directing the reader, for example, to similar discussions in Varro' s De Lingua Latina; see, e.g., the excurses for fragments 10 and llA-B. The emphasis likely reflects the interest of the original these in the vibrant intellectual, especially grammatical and philosophical, culture of the late republic. The translations of the fragments into English are often taken or adapted (successfully) from other English translators. Scholars with an interest in the details preserved by the grammarians and the capacious range of seemingly minor aspects which 226 Caesar took into consideration will be well equipped by Garcea's generous accounts. Fullness may not prove beneficial in all cases. Take the example of fragment 9. The placement of the translation relative to the Latin could prove frustrating to readers hoping to locate quickly both fragment and translation together. (One thinks of the scholar consulting an authoritative edition in the service of another project.) Pompeius' brief quotation, nisi omnia consentiunt inter se, non potest fieri ut nominis similitudo sit, is listed at the top of page 168 with apparatus, its translation at the bottom of page 169 separated by other Latin and Greek texts some of which also have their own apparatuses. The intervening details of this fragment's apparatus note the change of consentiant to consentiunt: "corr. Holford-Strevens (per litteras ): consentiant codd." The subsequent ten-page discussion of the analogy of nouns valuably elucidates the larger contexts and the passage which precedes the citation of Caesar, but why is there no discussion of the textual correction or the reasons for it? The fragments are generally easy to locate in their different sources, even if, as is so often the case for such collections, interpretation may hinge on our ability to isolate the author's words from those of his collectors. With respect to contemporary citations of De Analogia the scholar is engaged in what amounts to an exercise in rescuing Caesar's point of view from Cicero's Brutus. An implicit consequence of Garcea' s study is recognition of the extent to which interpretation of De Analogia requires interpretation of Brutus, unless one believes the now generally discounted assumption that Cicero's history of orators is no more than a disinterested catalog. Accordingly, much of Garcea's initial discussion examines Caesar's statements from within the context of Cicero's text. Garcea knows the paradox we face, in which the evidence closest chronologically runs the risk of being among the most skewed. The results are a matter of how much faith to place in Cicero's art of citation and paraphrase when he may disagree with the source he cites; one could compare Cicero's obvious and obviously polemical (mis?)translations of Plato. To rework the famous judgment on Caesar's commentarii (Brutus 262): can we look on the preserved fragments as nudi, recti et venusti and be certain that Cicero has not somehow clothed them in his own perspective (omni ornatu orationis tamquam veste detracta)? Garcea includes Brutus 253 as a citation of Caesar (fr. lB, the longest extant quotation of De Analogia). Like others before, he includes the material listed as fragment lA, earlier calling it a paraphrase (82): verborum dilectum originem esse eloquentiae. One wonders how accurately the paraphrase renders 227 Caesar's words and into what service to press them. It is hard to tune out the Aristotelian static behind the surface limpidity of Cicero's summary: EOTI o' o:px17 Tfi!> Ml;Eeu:; TO EAAEVtSEtv (Arist. Rhet. 1407a). Did Caesar draw on notable authorities, or does Cicero try to reduce Caesar to a recognizable principle from the tradition which Cicero absorbed and rivaled in his rhetorica? The scholar of Caesar's fragments works in some sense to rescue the physical remnants of a lost voice in late-republican debates over style and language, yet Garcea takes the additional step of working to render unto Caesar the ideology which belongs to that voice. The attempt is admirable if only because it is so difficult for modern scholars to move beyond Cicero's version of intellectual culture at Rome. Garcea accordingly reads Brutus 253 = fr. 1B, with its remarkable employment of "Ciceronian" prose rhythm, as Caesar's attempt "almost to parody Ciceronian style" (90). Further discussion of Caesar's own habits in the domain of prose rhythm might have clinched the argument. How much did Caesar differ from Cicero and how can we be certain that we might be facing parody? Beyond this question a reader open to the prospect of parody would also need to ask why Cicero incorporates a passage which so deftly undermines the very stylistic principles which he embraces. Garcea nevertheless knows circumspection in the conclusions he draws from the scanty remains even as he lets Caesar emerge to the greatest extent possible. As inevitably happens in reviews, the balance here has been weighted towards demurrals and limited by a selection of topics from among the many Garcea addresses. This should not fall to the author's discredit. Garcea's book will undoubtedly serve as the point of departure for future discussion of Caesar's contribution to the early ars grammatica at Rome and to the late-republican polemics of defining and using language. NECJ 40.3 (2013) Christopher S. van den Berg Amherst College Christopher Star, The Empire of the Self. Self-Command and Political Speech in Seneca and Petronius. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Pp. viii+ 302. Cloth (ISBN 978-1-4214-0674-9) $65.00. Christopher Star's book is a compelling contribution to the study of Neronian cu.lture which succeeds in its aim of building bridges and opening up debate. At its core is the renewed experiment of setting Seneca 228 

Alessandro Garcea, Caesar\u27s De Analogia. Edition, Translation, and Commentary.

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Alessandro Garcea, Caesar\u27s De Analogia. Edition, Translation, and Commentary.

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