Robert Browning

Abstract: as synonyms (meaning, roughly, ' barrister '). From its strict legal meaning the word patronus is said (19-118) to develop into denoting a looser and less formal relationship—one of protection rather than mere power—based on the old ritual of applicatio ; thus, while retaining various aspects of the original meaning, it comes to include the particular case of the ad hoc relationship between a litigant (especially a defendant) and his counsel. That this was still felt to be connected with the original concept is shown by the lex Cincia, forbidding payment to a patron for his services, which applied throughout the range of the concept. Orator (119-165), originally a 'speaker', comes to mean, in particular, ' one who speaks for another,' i.e. either as an envoy ( = legatus: not common in Classical Latin except in Livy), or before the People and the law-courts (i.e. a politician or a barrister); in the late Republic it is used to translate the Greek rhetor and comes to be used almost exclusively for the trained orator, so that in Cicero it is a title of honour. In conclusion (166-206), the author investigates the particular line in the development of each of the two words, which led them to be used as synonyms, and he tries to show why this coincidence was not lasting and the meanings of the words began to diverge again before long. There is an index locorum, but no bibliography or general index. Misprints are not too numerous. The collection of material from the literary sources is meritorious and enables the reader to see a great deal of the evidence for a view which, in outline, most scholars have long held. That this work is nevertheless not a significant contribution to our understanding of Rome is in part due to the limitations the author has set himself: he claims to be writing Wortgeschichte, not history of ideas or institutions ; and he limits himself to the literary sources. For the latter limitation he does not even advance any excuse: it is hard to see of what value an investigation can be, which ignores the abundant epigraphical evidence on the use of patronus. The former limitation, though he tries to defend it, is no more excusable. An investigation into patronus so circumscribed that it ignores (e.g.) patrocinium and patrocinari—not to mention cliens and its family—is surely the sort of blinkered research that has brought doctoral dissertations into disrepute. There would have been room for a great deal more material of real use in this book, if repetitions and the constant summaries of background information taken from standard works had been severely pruned. The author's reading of his texts has, on the whole, been careful; but he is not to be trusted where he advances new interpretations. An attempt at emending Plautus, Vid. 62 (in ' quor, malum, patronum quaeram, postquam litem perdidi ? ' he suggests ' perdidici' for the last word !) ruins both sense and metre. A new interpretation of Livy ix, 20, 10 (' Antiatibus . . . dati ab senatu ad iura statuenda ipsius coloniae patroni'), where the author takes ' ipsius coloniae' with ' iura ', produces peculiar Latin and doubtful sense. In Cicero, Balb. 25, the author thinks that ' patronus foederum foederatorum ' (sic) applies to Balbus himself. His knowledge of law and history is taken entirely from modern authorities, not always perfectly understood. Thus Wenger is made responsible (157) for the statement that the Greek rhetors were again expelled from Rome in 92 B.C., but—we are glad to know—not for long. Communities that have performed deditio to Rome are municipia, with precarious tenure of their soil (43); the relation of Rome to those communities is never called patronatus (which the author seems to think is the abstract noun corresponding to patronus) or clientela, but foedus (44)! An example of the clientela automatically won by a conqueror and his family over the conquered is that of the knight M. Satrius, patron of the ager Picenus et Sabinus (92). Needless to say, the author has no idea of Cicero's connection with Sicily before the Verrines (93). When the Rhodians seek the support of their hospites and patroni in Rome (Livy XLII, 14, 7), the use of ' hospites' shows that Rhodes was still autonomous, since hospitium was the official form of the relationship of Rome with her socii (p. 104—a footnote informs us that the legal form was the foedus aequum, which, as the author himself says, Rhodes did not have). These few specimens will suffice. They are typical. The author's reading is practically confined to the German masters—necessary (if properly understood), but not sufficient. One need hardly dwell on the numerous instances where new work is simply unknown ; but ignorance of Heuss's Volkerrechtliche Grundlagen is surely inexcusable in a German-speaking scholar. However, the harm this book is very likely to do will be confined to German-speaking elementary students. The careful and well-informed reader will find much that is profitable in the author's collection of evidence. Nevertheless, the question must at least be asked whether dissertations like this are worth publishing in substantially unaltered form. E. BADIAN.