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M. TVLLI CICERONIS

PRO

GNAEO PLANCIO

ORATIO AD IVDICES

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M. TVLLI

CICERONIS

PRO

GNAEO PLANCIO

ORATIO AD IVDICES

EDITED WITH COMMENTARY AND INTRODUCTION
FOR THE SYNDICS OF THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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London CAMBRIDGE WAREHOUSE 17 PATERNOSTER ROW
. Cambridge DEIGHTON BELL AND CO
Leipzig F. A. BROCKHAUS

29456.

1881

[All Rights reserved]

Р

9

BODLEIAY

7 - NOV 1

Ολ

PREFACE

THE Planciana is not included in any English edition of select orations of Cicero, nor has any separate edition of it ever been published with English notes. And yet it must be regarded as one of Cicero's best, if not so choice a specimen of formal perfection and polished Latinity, as the Miloniana, the Verrine or Catilinarian orations. 'There is no tearing of any enemy to tatters,' as Mr Anthony Trollope well remarks in his Life of Cicero, 'but there is much pathos and a few passages in it of peculiar force.' Such are the orator's lively comments on the caprice of the people in their appointment of magistrates, on the relation between a candidate for office and his electors, and on the arts of electioneering; on the use of the ballot; on political consistency: such is the famous comparison between the pecuniae debitio et gratiae, and such again the beautiful irony with which he ridicules the pretensions of the pro

secutor.

6

It is the more surprising then, that while other speeches of Cicero have been edited and re-edited, this has lain in comparative neglect. Wunder's edition, which' it has been said 'may safely be pronounced to be the most elaborate, if not the ablest, edition of any of Cicero's works,' has been long out of print, and Köpke's is practically useless, the notes being written in German. No apology therefore seems to be needed for the publication of a new edition with English notes for the use of students at the University and for boys at public schools.

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