After the Past. Andrew Feldherr

For an introduction to Varro’s approach to language, see Zetzel (2018, 38–46). My own appreciation of the importance of historicity in de Lingua Latina depends on an as yet unpublished conference paper delivered by Katharina Volk.

      36 36 For the metaphorical continuities with the imagery of the preface, see Krebs (2008, 592).

      37 37 E.g. Probus, Gramm. 4.47.17; further references in Maltby (1991, 54–5 s.v. (b)).

      38 38 The phrase bonae artes echoes its earlier use at Cat. 2.9, again accompanied by many assonantial intimations of virtus: verum enim vero is demum mihi vivere atque frui anima videtur qui aliquo negotio intentus praeclari facinoris aut artis bonae famam quaerit. And there is a logical connection as well: in the earlier passage, Sallust insists that virtus can manifest itself in many kinds of activity, which may be a contributing factor to the difficulty of recognizing it.

      39 39 Such logic was “circular” also in antiquity, as the Greek phrase “diallelos tropos” in Sextus Empiricus shows (Pyr. 1.169). The Latin circulus in probando is later.

      40 40 Note the shift from the imperfect to the present between the two sentences.

      41 41 McDonnell (2006, 384).

      42 42 See esp. Batstone (2010b). My understanding of Batstone’s reading was also aided by a still unpublished working paper, presented in 2013, entitled “Sallust, Kristeva and Intertextual Prosaics”.

      43 43 Batstone (1990, 129–30).

      44 44 Moles’ (1983a, 779) description of Brutus as “an Academic with a strong Stoic tinge” has been called into question by Sedley (1997).

      45 45 Tyche is a notoriously variable concept. In this passage the dominant sense seems to be the stoic idea of tyche as the causal force evoked by humans who imperfectly understand the workings of providence (this was, after all, spoken by Brutus at a moment of extreme despair). The kinship between this idea and apparently contradictory historiographic (particularly Polybian) uses of tyche/fortuna (i) to refer to what cannot be definitively explained and (ii) to suggest an active force shaping events is traced by Brouwer (2011).

      46 46 A similar possibility is described in Melchior’s reading of the scene (2010, 411).

      47 47 Ellen O’Gorman has observed to me viva voce how the language used to describe the viewing of the corpses can recall directly the readers’ handling of text: volventes was used for the unrolling of a book scroll, and cognoscere also describes “reading”.