Context: Often the commander gets the credit that should be shared with the soldiers and Fortune.
sed illa tamen omnia communia imperatoribus cum militibus et fortuna, quod in proelii concursu abit res a consilio ad vices rerum virtutemque pugnantium. itaque iure suo nonnulla ab imperatore miles, plurima vero fortuna vindicat seque his plus valuisse vere potest praedicare.
Translation: but still all those joint credits [belong to] commanders with the soldiers and Fortune, because in the collision of battle the affair leaves behind the [commander’s] battle-plan for chance and the bravery of those fighting. And so, by his own right the soldier claims some, and Fortune more to be sure, and she can truly declare that she, more than the others, prevailed.
illa . . . omnia communia: all those common rights. It was hard to find a meaning for this.
it seems to me the reader must supply a verb for the first clause, where I put in “belong to”. I think sunt will do.
consilio (abl. sing.) here I think means battle-plan, and not the intellectual faculty of planning.
I read Fortuna as the antecedent of se and as the implied subject of potest
concursu is best translated as onset (thus Lewis). At the onset of battle. As to the rest I can see a textual problem. Is it really vices and not vires?
It seems that Nepos only survives in one manuscript (EDIT : I seem to have misread this " At one point in the twelfth century, Nepos survived in only a single manuscript—that was how close Nepos came to oblivion." ) so it is not surprising that there are corruptions. The Dickinson commentary on Hannibal looks very full if you wanted to read one of the lives with a commentary.
The Latin Library has “abit res a consilio ad vires vimque pugnantium”, which makes more sense to me but thats no guarantee that the text is right on the lectio difficilior principle.
in proelii concursu abit res a consilio ad vices rerum virtutemque pugnantium.
This can make sense, in a way that’s consistent with the general thrust of the passage.
“In the thick of battle [literally, ‘the running together’], the matter/outcome [res] devolves from the battle plans [of the commanders] to the vicissitudes of things [i.e., luck/fortune] and the courage of the combatants.”
res/rerum, in two different senses, leaves me a little uncomfortable.
But here again, I think we’re dealing with a corrupt text. If there’s only one ms., then either vices or vires is a conjecture. The passage as a whole is fraught with difficulties.
Thanks to Seneca and Hylander for their comments. That there are difficulties with the text I take as a good sign. It means some of the passages I ask about don’t have irresistible schoolroom interpretations. An amateur is expected to trip on things like that.
According to P.K. Marshall in Reynolds, ed., Texts and Transmissions (Oxford 1983), pp. 247-8, the text is based primarily on two mss., one of which was destroyed in WWI, and both of which were copied from a ms. that was in existence in the 16th c. but is now lost. So the tradition is indeed not very robust.
I have had a chance to look at Marshall’s Teubner edition.
He prints the following text: “sed illa tamen omnia communia imperatoribus cum militibus et fortuna, quod in proelii concursu abit res a consilio ad uires utrimque pugnantium.”
The notes are:
uires utrimque Heusinger uires uimque PA uires usque (uerbo usque sup. lin. a man. pr. addito)L uires cuiusque uel uires unique ς uires undique ς aliquot uires uirtutemque Lambinus uices rerum uirtutemque Fleckeisen, alii alia
P Parcensis (destroyed 1914) A Guelferbytanus
This obviates the res/rerum problem. Looking at his stemma apart from these two ms there is another L (15thc.) which Marshal discovered in Leiden. As Hylander says these all are descendants from a lost conjectured ms. of the 12th c. Heusinger the printed conjecture is mid 18th c.
I know the feeling!