Seneca: De Clementia (review)

This major edition and commentary of De Clementia is the fruit of over two decades' labor; the arrival during that time of Malaspina's large Turin edition (2001, 2nd ed. 2005) must have been a mixed blessing. Braund's broader cultural approach nicely complements his textual focus, although the reader who has invested $150 may be disappointed to be referred so often to Malaspina "for full discussion" and bibliography. An elegant 91-page introduction develops the customary contexts. Building on the work of Griffin, Leach, and Braund herself, it draws a convincing picture of a pragmatic engagement with autocracy, staged for the benefit of Nero and senate both.

What survives of De Clementia is badly mauled in transmission. In preparing her text Braund relies on Malaspina but regularly intervenes, weighing emendations scrupulously and often convincingly. Her own suggestions will offer food for debate; one to be rejected immediately, however, is 1.9.3, where iam <se> unum hominem occidere non posse (for poterat) would have a self-reflexive Augustus losing sleep at the thought "that he was now unable to kill a single individual," as if his anxiety were about weakness of will or power. The paradosis, in good declamatory style, needs no interference: "Now [this man who used to plan proscriptions over dinner] could not bring himself to kill just one person!" In the next clause Antonio is an unannounced and unnecessary conjecture for Antonius, and dictarat (preferable to Braund's dictasset) is attributed to Madvig: Malaspina gives it to Pincianus (1536). Elsewhere she is cautious, accepting Gertz's contineant for the corrupt contineas in 1.12.5, despite the uncomfortable subjunctive: try continent.

Braund makes welcome efforts to avoid translationese and to remedy our poverty in particles, a difficult task: phrases like "the fact is" and "you see" for enim and nam start to pall. Seneca's sermo is brought up to date and way down to earth with language like "totally ready" (101), "it is just typical . . ." (105), and "so what's my point?" (143 bis)—though the closing phrase, "make the crooked straight" (151), leaves a curious aftertaste of Isaiah. Accuracy is good, despite various oddities. A sample: in 1.5.2 supply decora in the quidem clause (Seneca nowhere says that "all humans possess clemency"); in 1.6.1 the tenses of the conditional are awry (and the note confused); in 1.18.3 melius fuit is modal ("it would have been better"); in 1.20.2 "no less" should read "no more"; in 2.6.3 "he will not in the least avert his face" for uultum quidem non deiciet misrepresents quidem (concessive), the verb ("cast down") and the point of the passage (that mercy and pity are distinct). Read with caution, then, but savor the style of a rendition like "show me a tribune or centurion who is savage: he will simply produce deserters—and who can blame them?" (desertores faciet, quibus tamen ignoscitur, 1.16.3).

The commentary is full and wide ranging, with numerous parallels but abundant interesting discussion too. Regular mention of intertexts with Pliny and Tacitus keeps us looking forward as well as back, though Braund seems not to relish the irony of using the Neronian Annals for (counter-) examples of clementia. Annals 14.48-9, for instance, is not so much "clementia in action" (420) as an explosion of speciosum clementiae nomen (Clem. 2.3.1). Historical sensitivity slips occasionally: "Emperors were typically elevated from the ranks of the aristocracy" (356). More persistently, discussions of prose style proceed without any historical context, as if Seneca's Latin can be judged and emendations weighed by some Ciceronian norm. Perhaps we are all familiar enough with the "sententious turn," but let us savor (or scorn) the wit of 1.8.3 adfixus es fastigio tuo, where the conceit of nobilis seruitus culminates in a crucifixion, and not blunt an acris iunctura like 1.10.1 ipsum Lepidum quam diu [Augustus] mori passus est! ("allowed to die": Braund insists...