writing Catuli for Catulli'. Why, of the 3 best out of the four Mss. whose readings Detlefsen gives us in this part of Pliny, one has Catulius, the other two Catulus ; and we find Catullus almost everywhere called Catulus in mediaeval times. Besides, if the Q. was taken from Pliny, we might expect to find in some one of the Mss. of Catullus a G. or C. taken from Jerome, of which there is no trace': this argument I cannot even apprehend; much less can I answer it. I still hold it to be more probable that he was born in 84 than in 87 B. C. Professor Sellar, in his interesting account of Catullus in the Encycl. Britan., observes with justice 'that the age at which a man dies is more likely to be accurately remembered than the particular date either of his death or of his birth. The common practice of recording the ages of the deceased in sepulchral inscriptions must have rendered a mistake less likely to occur in that respect than in respect of the consulship in which he was born'. Mr Sellar argues too that the 'iuuenalia' in the passage from Ovid which I have cited above, p. 73, is better suited to the age of 30 than of 33; and this also I think with reason. For tho' iuuenis is a very elastic term, and tho' Domitius Marsus in his elegy on Tibullus, who died about the age of 35, calls him iuuenem, yet we must remember that Marsus was about the same age as Tibullus. But Ovid, when he wrote his epicedium on Tibullus, in which the word in question occurs, was only about 25; and a man of 25 does not see youth with the same eyes as an older man does. And to my ear 'iuuenalia' has a more youthful ring than 'iuuenis.' M. C. 30 1-6 Alfene inmemor atque unanimis false sodalibus, iam te nil miseret, dure, tui dulcis amiculi? iam me prodere, iam non dubitas fallere, perfide? nec facta impia fallacum hominum caelicolis placent. quom tu neglegis ac me miserum deseris in malis, eheu quid faciant, dic, homines cuiue habeant fidem? 5 quom scripsi. que V. 6 dico V. dice Ellis, perhaps rightly. The only change which I have made on my own account in these verses, the last four of which have occasioned a good deal of difficulty to editors and induced some of them to make various transpositions and changes in the text, is in 5 to read Quom for Que, and to connect it closely with the next line: this seems to me to remove every difficulty. I assume that, e and o, as I have said, being almost indistinguishable in some predecessor of our Mss., que was copied from it instead of quo: thus 96 3 Que O, Quo G, Quom Guarinus, rightly I think: 66 79 quem V, quon Haupt rightly (Corradinus de Allio): if Ellis' dice in 6 be the poet's, it is another example of o and e confused. 4 Nec for non, so common in the older writers, I have illustrated very fully on Lucr. I 23: it has here, as often, the force of 'not at all'. Ellis' defence of Quae shews that he hardly thinks it can be defended. 31 7-14 O quid solutis est beatius curis, 10 desideratoque acquiescimus lecto? hoc est quod unum est pro laboribus tantis. 13 nosque o uinidae scripsi. nos quoque lidie V. This bright poem is in most parts as pellucid as its own beautiful lake. In 1 the rare paene insula or paeninsula is illustrated by Caes. bell. Gall. vI 36 2 paene obsessionem; and Victorius uar. lect. Ix 9 is worth comparing on Ocelle in 2. 8 peregr. Lab., ' labour undergone in foreign parts', in contrast with 'larem nostrum seems quite capable of defence: Baehrens reads 'Ab orbe' for 'Labore'. But comp. Mart. xш 29 Pruna peregrinae carie rugosa senectae Sume: age acquired in foreign parts': Livy III 16 4 id malum...tum quoque peregrino terrore sopitum uidebatur: 'by terror arising from foreigners'; just as ib. § 3 'terror seruilis' means 'terror caused by slaves', tho' it might mean 'terror felt by slaves': comp. too 'praetor peregrinus' with 'mulier peregrina' 'uir peregrinus'. 13 has given occasion to nearly as many conjectures as 25 5: 'uosque o lucidae', 'limpidae', 'uos quoque incitae', have all been proposed, and may any of them be right. But neither Scaliger's 'ludiae' nor Lachmann's 'Libuae' seems to me admissible; nor again 'Lydiae'; for the transference of the epithet to 'undae' is very unlike Catullus, as well as the obtrusive antiquarian reference, the parts hereabout once on a time having belonged to the Etruscans, and the Etruscans being supposed to have come from Lydia. My reading was suggested by Mart. x 30 11 Hic summa leni stringitur Thetis uento, Nec languet aequor, uiua sed quies ponti Pictam phaselon adiuuante fert aura. My 'uiuidae' is the same as the 'Nec languet' and 'uiuae' of Martial, and is surely as appropriate to the Benacus as to the Formian coast. Diplomatically too it is as near V, as any of the other readings except 'Lydiae'. 37 9 Atqui putate: namque totius uobis Is sopionibus corrupt, as it would appear to be? and, if so, is any of the numerous conjectures that have been made plausible enough to be received? One must first of all bring into comparison with it the often cited passage in Petron. 22 cum Ascyltos tot malis in somnum laberetur, illa quae iniuria depulsa fuerat ancilla totam faciem eius fuligine longa perfricuit et non sentientis labra umerosque sopitionibus pinxit. The two contexts are so much alike, that it is a most singular 'lusus codicum', if there is no real connexion between the two corrupt or apparently corrupt words. If there is such connexion, the word we want must express either the instrument--and a very simple instrumentor the material employed. The material must have been black to paint the lips; as the preceding 'fuligine' too implies. scipionibus can hardly be right; for why the plural; nor scorpionibus; for it is absurd to imagine the man's lips painted with scorpions. Whether we may assume an unknown word, as sopionibus with Vossius (or sopitonibus) for 'sopitis carbonibus', I will not attempt to decide, But the whole resemblance may be a mere lusus, and the editors of Petronius may be right in taking sopitionibus for the fragments of two words. This, as might be expected, is a very common phenomenon in Petronius: thus in the preceding line the corrupt ‘fuligine longa' may represent something like fuliginis linea longa': in 45 at beg. I would read 'modo sic, modo sic, inquit rusticus suario cum [uarium codices] porcum perdiderat': h. e. suarius; nam rusticus in alieno malo libentius quam in suo philosophari solet: in 77 'interim dum Mercurius uigilat, aedificaui hanc domum. ut scitis, caecus carcer erat [cusuc erat codices], nunc templum est:' in 46 perhaps 'nec uno loco consistit. scit bene [uene] itidem [set uenit dem codices] litteras, sed non uult laborare.' If Catullus then and Petronius are quite independent of one another, I will add one more conjecture to the many that have been made on this uncertain verse: namque totius uobis Frontem tabernae pusionibus scribam: uobis is then the abl. in apposition with pusionibus: I will scribble over the front of the whole tavern with you, nice young sparks'-probably both with their names and caricatures of their persons. 2310 b of the Pompeian wall-inscriptions Euplia hic cum hominibus bellis', and comp. ib. 1473 Martialis uos irrum-with v. 8 of our poem. Perhaps Catullus would write: Lesbia hic cum bellis hominibus, Egnatio, cet. and might give a caricature of Egnatius with his teeth and beard. pusionibus would be the same as the 'pusilli et semitarii moechi' of v. 16: Apul. met. IX 7 at uero adulter, bellissimus ille pusio; Cic. pro Caelio 36 (speaking to Clodia) minimum fratrem,...qui te plurimum amat, qui...tecum semper pusio cum minore sorore cubitauit In v. 5 'hircos' can only mean 'olidos hircos': comp. the line, applied to the 'hirsuto atque olido seni' in Suet. Tib. 45 hircum uetulum Capreis naturam liguroire. Catul |