Cicero's Pro Sulla and the Bobbio Scholiast: What can we
learn from “Bob”?

Jane W. Crawford (University of Virginia)

The Bobbio scholiast, so called because the manuscript of his work was found at a monastery near Bobbio in Northern Italy, lived as early as the 3rd or 4th century and wrote commentaries on a number of Cicero's orations. Of these, 12 are preserved in fragmentary form, along with the Ciceronian lemmas, in a palimpsest manuscript, half of which is in the Vatican library (Vat. Lat. 5750) and the other half is in the Ambrosiana (E 147). Although the commentaries are not as extensive Asconius', and have not yet been translated, nevertheless they do contain useful insights into the speeches of Cicero which they address.

In this paper, I will discuss the Bobbio scholiast's treatment of Cicero's Pro Sulla (62 BCE). The scholiast's comments on this speech apply to 25 of the 93 sections, but most of the remarks are brief, and refer to short quotations from the oration. It is my intention to explicate these comments, focusing on what insights the scholiast provides to help us understand Cicero's argumentation in this speech.

Because the Pro Sulla is so closely focused on the Catiline conspiracy and on Cicero's own role in crushing it, the scholiast devotes considerable attention to the orator's tricky position as prosecutor of some conspirators and advocate of others. In my paper, I will show how the scholiast defends or criticizes Cicero's actions, as he tries to explain by a close analysis of the vocabulary and rhetorical treatment how Cicero structures the defense. I argue that the scholiast is very much aware that Cicero is defending himself as well, and frequently turns his attention to rebutting the comments of the prosecutors and to explaining what Cicero meant in reply to such criticism. This is shown by the scholiast's choice of which lemmas to comment on and what to emphasize or downplay. Finally, I will point out the instances in which the scholiast has provided us with new evidence regarding the trial, its participants and its impact, and/or where he has made mistakes in his interpretation. In this way I hope to show the value of the Bobbio Scholiast's contributions to Ciceronian scholarship, for classicists and historians alike.