“I have followed thee…”
Antony x Octavian pseudo-amphora art commissioned by me from the kind and talented @roa2112. Please do not repost.
Title is from Shakespeare's Octavian mourning Antony. Loosely inspired by the scene below (translated from ancient Greek by me; I’m still learning so please pardon any mistakes. I’ll explain later why I have not used the official translation):
They gathered together, shouting, and pelted with stones those who would not join them; they also threatened to plunder and burn down their houses. By the time the entire populace had been roused, Caesar [Octavian] came into their midst with his friends and a small number of guards, wishing to meet them face to face and reason through their grievance. But the moment he appeared, they pelted him utterly without restraint. They felt no shame even as he stood his ground, offered himself up to their blows, and was wounded. When Antony heard what was happening, he hurried to his aid. As Antony came down the Sacred Way, they did not at first pelt him too, because he was prepared to negotiate a settlement with Pompeius; instead, they ordered him to withdraw. When he refused to obey, then they pelted him as well. Antony summoned a larger body of heavy-armed troops who were stationed outside the wall. When the crowd would not let him pass even then, the soldiers divided along the sides of the road and the Forum, attacked from the narrow lanes, and killed everyone they encountered. The people could no longer even flee with ease: they were packed tightly together by the crowd and had no open passage left through. There was slaughter and wounding, while wails and cries rose from the rooftops. Antony barely managed to force his way through; and then, most conspicuously of all, it was he who rescued Caesar from danger and brought him safely into the house.
Appian, The Civil Wars, 5.68
Explanation regarding the translation
I would like to suggest a small correction to the Loeb translation of the passage above. The complete sentence appears originally as follows:
[…] καὶ ὁ Ἀντώνιος μόλις τε παρῆλθε, καὶ τοῦ κινδύνου τὸν Καίσαρα περιφανῶς δὴ τότε μάλιστα οὗτος ἐξείλετο καὶ ἐς τὴν οἰκίαν περιέσωσε.
A more accurate translation would be:
Antony only just managed to make his way through; and it was he who, in full view of everyone and at that very moment, rescued Caesar [Octavian] from danger and brought him safely into the house.
Horace White translates the latter part of the sentence as follows:
“…snatched Octavian from the most manifest danger, in which he then was.”
This translation first appeared in White’s English version published by Macmillan in 1899. It was subsequently incorporated into the 1913 Loeb Classical Library edition of Appian’s Roman History, Volume IV. The same wording is reproduced in the University of Chicago online text and retained in Brian McGing’s revised 2020 Loeb edition.
περιφανῶς is an adverb ending in -ως, meaning “clearly,” “conspicuously,” “openly,” or “in full view.” The LSJ entries include clearly, conspicuously, famously, and manifestly. It cannot grammatically function as an adjective modifying “danger.”
The phrase τοῦ κινδύνου consists of the noun “danger” in the genitive and depends on ἐξείλετο, forming a genitive of separation: Antony “rescued Caesar from danger.” There is no adjective in the surrounding text agreeing with κινδύνου in gender, number, and case. Had Appian intended to say “from an evident” or “from a manifest danger,” one would expect a construction such as ἐκ περιφανοῦς κινδύνου, with the adjective περιφανοῦς agreeing with κινδύνου, rather than the adverb περιφανῶς.
Upon reading White’s translation (as a non-native speaker), I initially assumed that “the most manifest danger” was simply an archaic English expression, although it seemed rather redundant—as though the point were that the danger was an exceptionally obvious one. The Greek, however, indicates that White has converted an adverb modifying the act of rescue, or perhaps the assertion as a whole, into an adjective modifying “danger.” He then expands τότε into the relative clause “in which he then was,” although no such clause exists in the original.
This rendering also obscures the emphatic structure of περιφανῶς δὴ τότε μάλιστα οὗτος. The particle δή reinforces the assertion; τότε means “then” or “at that very moment”; μάλιστα adds the sense of “especially,” “above all,” or “precisely”; and the explicitly expressed demonstrative οὗτος means “this man,” or emphatically, “he.” The preceding subject is Antony, and Appian identifies him once again through οὗτος. The point is not that the danger was especially manifest, but that, on this particular occasion, it was conspicuously and unmistakably Antony himself who rescued Octavian.
I also consulted translations in several languages to see if others have shared this interpretation. Maud Étienne-Duplessis’s French translation, published in the 2013 Budé bilingual critical edition, Histoire romaine, tome XII, livre XVII: Guerres civiles, livre V, preserves the structure and emphasis of the Greek accurately:
Ce fut lui qui, aux yeux de tous et à ce moment précis, arracha César au danger.
That is:
It was he who, in full view of everyone and at that very moment, snatched Caesar from danger.
