lus' says Ellis, 'after upbraiding the taberna and its frequenters for lewdness, would scarcely contrast them with an animal which is a type of this very quality'. I hardly catch the meaning of this: it is not Catullus who 'contrasts' them; but these fine fellows who draw the contrast themselves. 42 Adeste, hendecasyllabi, quot estis persequamur eam, et reflagitemus. 16 pote, ut scripsi. potest V. 17 ore, Conclamate scripsi, ore. Concl. uulgo. I have printed the whole of this lively and humorous poem, not that I have anything to say, in addition to what has been said by others, on the greater part of it; but because I have long felt that there is a hitch in one portion, and wish to make my reasons clear for attempting to remove that hitch. I entirely go with Ellis in thinking that Lesbia cannot be the object of attack. xI With vss. 11, 12 and 19, 20 I would compare Plaut. most. 600 Mihi faenus reddat, faenus actutum mihi... Cedo faenus, redde faenus, faenus reddite. Daturin estis faenus actutum mihi? Daturne faenus? 14 I keep the potes of G and O, that is of V: Cic. ad Att. XI 18 2 sed hoc perditius, in quo nunc sum, fieri nihil potest; XIV 1 1 nihil perditius, shew 'perditius' not to be 'unique'. 8 Turpe: surely not strictly an adverb', but the neut. acc. of the adjective, so often joined by the poets with verbs denoting any bodily action, as 'Perfidum ridens Venus': in one of the passages which Ellis quotes from Cicero all editors now read 'turpi pace'; in the other the adverb is 'hilare' from 'hilarus'. 13 o lutum, lupanar: Cic. in Pis. 62 o tenebrae, lutum, sordes. 16 the manuscript reading here seems to me to interrupt the simple and natural progress of the poem: the words would properly mean: 'if nothing else can extort a blush from her brazen face'. But even assuming they can mean: if nothing else can be done, let us extort a blush': even thus the plain purport of this very simple poem is thwarted. The extorting a blush must surely be the same as shaming her into doing what we want. But in that case there is a most awkward stop at the end of 17; and 18 proceeds as if there was nothing between 15 and it. Westphal seems to have sought to remedy this by putting 16 and 17 after 23, and reading Quo, si for Quod si my remedy is much simpler and I think more efficacious: I change a single letter only and alter the punctuation after ore: 'if nothing else can do so, in order to extort a blush from her brazen face, bawl out once more in louder tones'. Catullus, like the older writers generally, employs pote for potest very freely; as 17 24, 45 5, etc. We might retain potest and read: Ferreo ut canis exprimamus ore, Concl.; but I prefer the other remedy. 45 Acmen Septimius suos amores tenens in gremio 'mea' inquit 'Acme, caesio ueniam obuius leoni'. hoc ut dixit, Amor sinistra ut ante 10 at Acme leuiter caput reflectens illo purpureo ore sauiata unam Septimius misellus Acmen uidit, quis Venerem auspicatiorem? 8 ut ante is corrupt. Perhaps sinister astans. 9 Dextra V. The whole of this poem too, the most charming picture in any language of a light and happy love, I have printed, in order to make clear the view I take of its action and motive, which seem to me not to have been quite rightly apprehended even by those editors, Scaliger, Vossius, Baehrens, etc., who have seen that v. 8 is corrupt. The ut ante has probably, as Baehrens says, come from 17, and may have displaced something quite different, such as 'sinister ipse', or 'manu sinistra' but my suggested 'sinister astans' gives the sense that is required. The scene which the poet paints is quite distinct to my mind, while from Ellis' notes I cannot gather how he represents the situation to himself; and Baehrens' 'sinistra ab Acme', as well as his punctuation of 17, is not compatible with my view of the matter. Septimius is resting on a couch of some kind and is leaning with his right side against it: Acme is reclining on his bosom. They are both therefore looking more or less towards the left. Septimius declares that he loves her as dearly as mortal man can love. The moment he has said this, Love well-pleased, standing on their left, sneezes at them approval towards the right (as he must do, being as he is on their left). Then Acme, slightly bending back her head and kissing the sweet boy's eyes drunken with passion (which he would hold down to meet her lips), protests that her passion is much stronger than his. The moment she had spoken this, Love on the left hand, just as before, sneezed at them approval towards the right. The twice-repeated omen encouraged them in their passion: * Now starting from so fair an augury, soul answering soul, they love, are loved again'. The poem, thus explained, is surely simple enough and keeps clear of all the 'difficulty' in which Ellis involves himself and it. 3 te perdite amo: 'amare coepit perdite' occurs twice in Terence. amare: this is more emphatic than Froelich's conjecture 'amore', accepted by Schwabe; 'te' then belongs to 'amo', to 'amare' and to 'perire'; for, since Catullus has in 35 12 Illum deperit inpotente amore, and in 100 2 'depereunt' with the accus. simply and without 'amore', and as Plautus Poen. IV 2 135 has the less usual 'hic alteram efflictim perit', also without 'amore', there seems no reason to refuse to Catullus the same construction 'perire te'; and 'amore' without an epithet would certainly be weak. With the change of word in 'amare ...Quantum qui pote perire', I would compare Mart. x 86 1 Nemo noua caluit sic inflammatus amica, Flagrauit quanto Laurus amore pilae. There is even a greater hitch in Cat. 96 5 non tanto mors inmatura dolorist Quintiliae, quantum gaudet amore tuo. 12 comp. Apul. apol. 403 oris sauia purpurei. 54 [Reprinted from the Journal of Philology, vol. 5 p. 301-304) The lost manuscript of Catullus, from which directly or indirectly all the others are derived, would appear to have handed down this trivial and uninter |