Third Meeting

Abstract

1. On the use of ego and nos in Cicero's Letters. The object of the paper was to point out the meaning conveyed by the use of the forms of the 1st pers. plur. in place of the 1st pers. sing. These had been hitherto assumed (e.g. by Reid on Cic. A cad. 1. 1. 1, and ' Cicero in his Letters,' p. 251) to be simply 'equivalent,' and although Madvig (Lat. Gr. § 48.3) had felt there must be a difference, he had only indicated one definite category, the use of nos by an author in referring to his own writings; this would be found to be only a particular case of a wider use which Prof. Conway claimed to have established by examining all the occurrences of the sing, nos in more than one-third of the letters. He had counted over 600 examples which showed clearly one of two meanings which might be called ' projective' and ' patronising '; and he had found no case where neither category was applicable. All the cases in which nos (or noster, or the 1st plur. in verbs) was a true plural must be put aside; besides references to definite groups of persons, there was a large number of indefinite and obvious plural uses; e.g. nos might mean humanity at large, the writer's own nation, generation, family, political party, his school of philosophy, his circle of friends (especially in the possessive adj.), his household (as regularly in invitations), and, in particular, the people who happen to be together in the place whence the letter is written (esp. in phrases like nihil adhuc scimus ; cf. nos hie...P. Sullam mortuoni habebamvs Att. 15. 16. 2, and 16. 13 a. 1); or persons travelling together by chance (so almost invariably when a ship is mentioned, naueni spero nos bonam habere Fam. 14. 7. 2, so Att. 6. 4. 1, 5. 12. 1, 10. 17. 2, 16. 4. 4 etc.). Especially noteworthy was the use of noster of relatives and friends to avoid the expression of intimate personal feeling implied in ineus; thus noster was used by a father of very young children e.g. filiam meam et tiiam (Tullia) Giceronemque nostrum (Marcus Cicero, then seven years old) ad Q. F. 1. 3. 10, contrasted with Cicero metis seven years later (Att. 6. 5 ad tin.), though when he had been behaving badly