Purser — Cicero's Corresjjondence during his Proconsulate. 399 



swe pupillus ipsis aucforihus, nee cogendi sunt tutores cavere, tit defenmres 

 potent. Licentia igitur erit, utrum malint ipsi suseipere indicium 

 an pupillum exhilere^, ut ipsis auctorihus iudicium suscipiatur : ita 

 tamen ut pro his, qui far i non possunt vel ahsint, ipsi tutores iudicium 

 suscipiant, pro his autem, qui supra septimum annum aetatis et praesto 

 fuerint, auctoritatem praestent. Cicero makes use of the same allusion 

 in Att. vi. 1. 4 itaque aut tutela cogito me dhdicare aut faenus et 

 impendium recusare. 



V. 20. 2. — Cum dies quinque ad Cybistra Cappadociae castra 

 habuissem. 



Editors generally bracket Cappadociae. Eather perhaps read 

 Cappadociae <castellum'* castra. Elsewhere Cicero speaks of it as an 

 oppidum, Earn. xv. 2. 2, 5 ; 4. 4. But the latter is a generic word for 

 a town : and castellum means no more than that it was fortified or 

 possessed a military garrison. 



V. 20. 8-9. 



These paragraphs were added on the 26th Dec, while §§1-7 

 were written on the 19th (§5). That letters sometimes were written 

 piecemeal is most strikingly shown by Q,. Fr. iii 1 (see above page 396). 

 Most commentators indeed read xv. for v. in § 8. But, besides 

 altering the reading of the MSS., this introduces a most unusual order 

 of topics. That Cicero should wait until the eighth paragraph to 

 express his delight at the letters he had received from Attieus, while 

 alluding to them quite casually in §1 (litteris) is quite unnatural. This 

 and other similar points have been advanced by Schiche {op. cit. p. 24). 

 In favour of the ordinary view that the whole letter was written on 

 the 19th, it is urged by Moll (De temporibus epp. Tullianarum, p. 33) 

 that the reference in § 8 must be to the meeting on Sept. 29th, at which 

 March 1st was fixed as the day for the debate on the provinces ; and 

 that knowledge of this debate is presupposed in §7. Schiche 

 (pp. 21, 22) answers this by showing that March 1st had been 

 provisionally fixed in political circles as a suitable day on which the 

 debate should be held, but was not formally fixed as such until the 

 sitting of Sept. 29. This is undoubtedly true : but in § 7 it seems to 

 me that Cicero knew that March 1st was formally fixed upon, that is 

 he knew of the sitting of Sept. 29th. And there is no reason why 

 this should not have been the case. Caelius wrote Earn. xva. 8 

 (wherein there are copies of the decrees passed on Sept. 29th) early 

 in October. Allow somewhat more than 47 days for the letter to reach 



