CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

Prop. 1.8.33 and Tib. 1.1.43; terra requieuit … Sabaea, Ov. Met. 10.480) or in with the ablative of the state
or activity giving one rest (Cic. Cael. 79 in huius spe requiescit, de Orat. 2.234 requiescam in Caesaris
sermone quasi in … deuersorio, Quint. Inst. 10.1.27 in hac lectione requiescendum).
Catullus’ phrase is echoed by Maximian Eleg. 1.39 quamuis exiguo poteram requiescere somno.
6 This line is echoed by line 29 (see ad loc.) and also by Ovid at Her. 1.7 non ego deserto iacuissem frigida
lecto and 13.107 aucupor in lecto mendaces caelibe somnos and by Seneca at Ag. 184-186 neue desertus
foret / a paelice umquam barbara caelebs torus, / ablatam Achilli diligit Lyrnesida (Clytemestra of
Agamemnon). There might also be an echo at Sen. H.F. 245f. caelibis semper tori / regina.
desertum This is the only word within Catullus 68a that characterizes the misfortune that has befallen the
addressee as some particular event. In view of its potential weight, it should be considered carefully.
desertus started its existence as the perfect past participle of desero (for a nearly complete list of occurrences
see TLL 5.1.684.38-55). desero and desertus share a somewhat complex history. In Plautus desero simply
refers to the action of abandoning people, not in an erotic but in a practical or an ethical sense, while desertus
is absent from the existing plays (it is attested as an inferior textual variant in the sole surviving fragment of
the Agroecus). desertus comes to be used later along these lines: still free from erotic overtones, it means
‘shunned by men’, ‘abandoned’, ‘an outcast’, in Terence (Ph. 751 ego autem, quae essem anus deserta egens
ignota), Accius (trag. 415 exul inter hostis, exspes expers desertus uagus), Cato the Elder (orat. 204 ecquis
incultior, religiosior, desertior, publicis negotis repulsior?), Cicero (Verr. 2.4.146 o desertum hominem,
desperatum, relictum! and Q.fr. 3.1.15 ad urbem accessit ...; nihil turpius nec desertius), Lucretius (6.1242
desertos, opis expertis) and others (see further TLL 5.1.684.55-7). On one occasion desertus is found with
erotic overtones in this general sense in Terence (Heaut. 391 desertae uiuimus, of aging prostitutes who have
lost their clients). A major change in meaning can be detected in Catullus. He uses desertus in a double
sense, for erotic as well as existential abandonment by one particular person, for Ariadne abandoned on
Naxos by Theseus at 64.57 desertam in sola miseram se cernat harena. Later poets continue to apply the
word to abandoned heroines (Virgil to Creusa at Aen. 2.562 and Ovid to Scylla at Met. 8.113 and to Ariadna
at 8.176). But in Catullus we also encounter an entirely erotic use of desertus for abandonment by one single
person: for that of the newlywed Berenice whose husband has left her to go on a campaign (66.21 et tu non
orbum luxti deserta cubile) and that of the slave-boy whose master has transferred his attentions to his young
bride (61.122f. desertum domini audiens / concubinus amorem). By this time desero seems to have become
the uox propria fore the action of erotic abandonment, possibly in parallel with a shift in morals; there might
simply not have been much need for such a word in the more puritanical world of the 2 nd century B.C. Later
poets continue to use desero in the same sense of abandoning one’s lover (cfr. Prop. 1.3.43, 2.8.29, 2.17.3,
2.18.8 and 2.21.46, Verg. Aen. 2.572, and Ov. Rem. 215 and Her. 5.75).
Here desertum could mean two things: either ‘abandoned’, ‘left behind’ by one particular partner (this is the
later use) or ‘abandoned’, ‘shunned’ by lovers or by people in general (this is the earlier use). One has to
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