C. O. Brink

Quintilian's De Causis Corruptae Eloquentiae and Tacitus' Dialogus De Oratoribus

Certain proximities between two distinguished but very dissimilar contemporaries, Quintilian and Tacitus, may be stated. Contemporary they were, though the former, born probably a little before A.D. 40, was older by about twenty years. Both were from outside Rome, Quintilian certainly of provincial, Spanish, origin, Tacitus very probably from one of the Galliae , yet both exemplars of Romanitas .

Justus Lipsius and the Text of Tacitus

Editors, and other students, of the text of Tacitus have of late been taken up with the problems of the two codices unici and perhaps have tended to neglect the contributions made by their predecessors. If this be true, Dr. J. Ruysschaert has rendered a service to scholarship in publishing a book on Juste Lipse et les Annals de Tacite: une methode de critique textuelle au XVIe siecle . It is safe to say that up to the nineteenth century a commentary on the text of Tacitus in the main consisted of comments by, and on, Lipsius. Much of this lore was gathered together in I. Bekkers Variorum edition of 1831 and, augmented by G. H. Walthers more unorthodox notes and a critique of them, in Rupertis four volumes of 1832–39. At that time, however, a breach in the tradition occurred and the Corpus Lipsianum (if this name may be applied to the lore in the Variorum editions) became less known than it deserves.