On Sat, 23 Dec 2000 18:32:51 -0500 "Christopher M. Mislow"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I have a question which *half* fits the confines of this list; it
>concerns matters clearly medieval, but at best tangentially religious.
>I hope you will overlook the presumption.
>
> My question arises in connection with S. P. Scott's 1908 edition of
> _The
> Visigothic Code_, wherein (at page x), discussing "the omnipresent
> sacerdotal order" which exerted control over Visigothic kings, Scott
> translates the coronation oath
>
> Rex ejus cris si recta facis; si autem, non facis, non cris
>
> as
>
> Thou shalt be king so long as thou dost do right; but if thou
do
> not do right, thou shalt no longer be king.
The translation is right, except that the intrusive [ejus] has been
omitted; but 'cris' should be 'eris'. My resident classicist, Leofranc
Holford-Strevens, supplies the background of this phrase:
Horace, epist. 1. 1. 60-1 cites a children's song:
at pueri ludentes rex eris aiunt
si recte facies
Porphyrio in his commentary gives the full verse in the third person:
contra pueri lusu cantare solent
rex erit qui recte faciet, qui non faciet non erit,
but, in Visigothic Spain, Isidore, Etym. 9. 3. 4, asserting that kings
keep their title by behaving well and lose it by behaving badly,
suppresses the childish context but gives the verse in the second
person:
Recte igitur faciendo regis nomen tenetur, peccando amittitur. Vnde et
apud veteres tale erat proverbium:
rex eris si recte facies, si non facies non eris.
(Some MSS read 'facias', which is more correct if 'you' means 'one' as
in a proverb rather than a specific individual as in a game.) One
cannot help recalling the part that Isidore's brother Leander had
played in imposing Catholicism on the Arian monarchy.
See Edward Courtney, _The Fragmentary Latin Poets_ (Oxford, 1993),
483-4, who notes that in Julius Caesar's triple triumphs the
soldiers, permitted on these occasions to sing rude songs about
their commanders, parodied the verse to the effect; 'If you do right
you'll be punished, if you do wrong you'll be king' (as Caesar, it was
said, wanted to be); the parody is known only in Greek translation, but
it too is in the second person.
Bonnie Blackburn
------------------
Bonnie Blackburn
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