3.A REIGN THAT IS CRUEL IS STORMY
4. WHAT THEN
Dialogismus, a rhetorical scheme, when someone argues and deliberates with himself. Seneca keeps to the form and style of “pathetic speech,”
which proceeds from hatred and indignation, and has an abrupt beginning, as Macrobius [Sat., 4.2.1.] says. Juno in Virgil [A., 1.37f]: Then am I
vanquished? must I yield? (said she) Nor turn the Trojan horde from Italy?
Ajax [Ovid., Metam., 13.5f]:
By Zeus!
Must we beside our ships now plead our cause? Said he, And must Ulysses be compared with me?
He also arouses indignation when he calls him MY MURDERER, as if he had already perpetrated what he planned. Cinna IN UNCONCERN; Augustus
FILLED WITH FEAR.
IN SO MANY CIVIL WARS
Augustus waged five civil mars, as Suetonius [Aug., 9] explains. The first was the Mutinensian, against Mark Antony, by which he freed Decimus Brutus the consul designate from siege. The second was the Philippian against Brutus and Cassius, by which he avenged the death of his
adoptive father, where previously had also taken place the battle between Pompey and Caesar [Ibid., 13]. Hence Virgil [G., 1.489-492] bitterly exclaims:
Philippi, then, again saw the Roman ranks Contend with equal weapons among themselves.
Nor did the gods think it unworthy, to fatten twice with Roman blood Emathia and the broad plain of Haemus.
Third was the Perusine, against L. Antony, brother of the triumvir. Fourth came the Sicilian against Sextus Pompey, exercising piracy. Fifth, that of Actium, against Antony and Cleopatra. This Ovid recounted [Metam., 15.822-828]:
The conquered walls of Mutina, besieged under his auspices, Shall sue for peace; Pharsalia shall feel him,
And Emathian Philippi, drenched again with gore;
And a great name shall be subdued in the Sicilian waves;
The Egyptian wife of a Roman general shall fall, Wed with unholy torch; and in vain shall she threaten, That our own Capitol shall be obedient to her Canopus.
Of these some were on land: the Mufinensian, Perusine, and Philippian;
the remaining two were naval, the Sicilian and that of Actium. Nor were
foreign wars lacking, as the Dalmafic and Cantabric [Suet., Aug., 10]. The fact that Augustus recalls these perils, has this meaning: him who escaped so many perils of wars, whom fortune chose to preserve from so many dangers — this man wishes to destroy. On the same grounds Alexander excites the feelings of his hearers [Curtius, 6.9.23]: How much more happily would I have fallen as enemy’s plunder, than as citizen’s victim?
Now, preserved from perils, which alone I feared, I have fallen into those things which I ought not to have feared.
IN LAND BATTTLES
The phrase PEDESTRE PRAELIUM (land battle) is more frequent and usual than pedestrium praelium. Yet here the form pedestrium is used, analogous to Gellius’ use of vulgarium for vulgare and singularius for singularis.
See Nonius Marcellus [8, p. 488, 491].
NOW THAT PEACE PREVAILS ON LAND AND SEA He makes L. Cinna the object of ill-will, for the reason that the author of public peace, after repose had been achieved for all peoples, is himself alone plotted against. Now he refers to that time when, having defeated Antony and Cleopatra at Cape Actium, he closed the temple of Janus, the locking of which was the sign of peace. Livy [1.19], Suetonius [Aug., 22], Plutarch [Numa Pomp., 20.13]. Virgil [A., 1.294-296]:
The gates of war shall close; the imprisoned fury throned On savage arms, and bound with hundred brazen knots Behind the back, will rage and shriek with gory mouth.
Ovid., Fasti [1.711-714]:
Draw nigh, sweet Peace! thy locks adorned with Actian boughs, And in thy gentleness abide in all the world!
While foes are none, let neither wars nor triumphs be:
A glory greater than of war thou to our chieftains art.
NOT TO MURDER BUT TO SLAUGHTER
Murder and slaughter are, of course, the same; but he makes light of the former as if it were of less weight, even though of itself it is a grave offense. This he does in order to exaggerate the heinousness of the crime,
because the crime is committed with the gods present as witnesses and also the pure and holy sacrificial victims are bespattered with human blood.
TO ATTACK
According to the proper meaning of the word. For the word adoriri [to spring forth, i.e., attack] as Donatus on Andria [4.1.46.670] states means:
to rush in suddenly from an ambush, from the fact that the bodies of the invaders loom up suddenly and grow large. Also on Adelph. [3.3.50.404]:
Aggredimur means, we attack from a distance; adorimur, we attack from an ambush. Cicero, Pro Mil. [10.29] Clodius’ party… partly ran to the coach intending to attack Milo in the rear… Livy [7.36.11f]:… they are led onwards to the enemy by a more open path. Having unexpectedly attacked the enemy when off their guard… Livy [21.27.3]:… that when the occasion required he might attack the enemy in the rear. Curtius [8.1.5]: When he was passing through a forest, those who were lurking there together, attacked without warning and killed him with all his companions. Yet this distinction is not maintained everywhere.