Friday, July 07, 2023

 

Prayer of Thanksgiving

Plautus, Persa 753-756 (tr. Paul Nixon):
Now that our foes are vanquished and our citizens safe, our state tranquil, peace assured, and the war brought to a triumphant termination, with our army and garrisons intact, I do thank thee, Jupiter, for thy kindly aid, and to all the other denizens of heaven do I offer thanks for that I have wreaked such glorious vengeance on mine enemy.

hostibus victis, civibus salvis, re placida, pacibus perfectis,
bello exstincto, re bene gesta, integro exercitu et praesidiis,
quom bene nos, Iuppiter, iuvisti, dique alii omnes caelipotentes,
eas vobis gratis habeo atque ago, quia probe sum ultus meum inimicum.
For parallels with prayers of thanksgiving uttered by triumphant Roman generals see Eduard Fraenkel, Plautine Elements in Plautus, tr. Tomas Drevikovsky and Francis Muecke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 163-165, and Paul J. Burton, "Warfare and Imperialism in and Around Plautus," in George Fredric Franko and Dorota Dutsch, edd., A Companion to Plautus (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2020), pp. 301-316 (at 306-308). I don't have access to Erich Woytek's commentary on this play (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1982).

Joseph Matthew Conlon, Persa: Introduction and Commentary (diss. Princeton University, 2016), p. 318:
caelipotentes: The adjective is found only here.
But Thesaurus Linguae Latinae s.v. caelipotens (3:75) also cites Prudentius, Apotheosis 660:
sit nisi caelipotens aquilonum conditor idem?
For some conjectures that no one seems to mention see Louis Havet, Manuel de critique verbale appliquée aux textes latins (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1911), p. 237 (click once or twice to enlarge):



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