CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

mens anxia peruigilat ‘His troubled mind keeps awake’. A powerful phrase to describe Manlius’ suffering:
in mens anxia the ictus coincides with the word-accent and in peruigilat with the intensifying prefix, which
gives these words an emphatic and almost intense quality.
anxius does not mean ‘worried’ (OLD), and certainly not ‘worried about something’, but rather ‘oppressed’,
‘troubled’, ‘distressed’. Having been abandoned by Theseus, Ariadne is anxia (64.203). Cicero felt that the
word was connected to angere and angor (Tusc. 4.27 and 4.57).
peruigilet is found in some of the recentiores and was printed by Scaliger. However, purely temporal cum-
clauses take the indicative (Wackernagel 1926: 1.244) and we are dealing with such a clause here: Manlius is
not relieved by poetry while he lies awake, and not because he is doing so. There is no need to change the
indicative found in the principal MSS.
A number of later writers describe anxiety and waking using similar language: note Sen. Thy. 570f.
pauidusque pinnis / anxiae nocti uigil incubabat and Dial. 1.3.10 licet ... mille uoluptatibus mentem anxiam
fallat, tam uigilabit in pluma quam ille in cruce, Stat. Silv. 3.5.1f. Quid mihi maesta die, sociis quid noctibus,
uxor, / anxia peruigili ducis suspiria cura?, Sil. 8.209 anxia ducebat uigili suspiria corde (thus Bentley:
uoce MSS) and less closely even Ov. Met. 13.370f. uigili date praemia uestro / proque tot annorum cura,
quibus anxius egi. None show a clear debt to Catullus; they rather suggest that anxius and (per)uigilare were
two set elements in descriptions of mental distress in Latin.
9 id Used in a loose epistolary construction after Quod ‘as to’ in line 1 (see ad loc.), which it does not
simply pick up: ‘As to your sending me this little letter ..., this is ...’. Compare quod … , id … in lines 27-30
below.
gratum est mihi On its own, gratum est is a simple ‘I’m grateful’, ‘thank you’ (‘uox gratias agentis’, TLL
6.2.2261.35-50). For the construction gratum est id quod, especially common in letters, see on Quod in line
1; in Catullus compare also 2b.11f. tam gratum est mihi quam ferunt puellae / pernici aureolum fuisse
malum.
me quoniam tibi dicis amicum Catullus expresses satisfaction that Manlius has called him a friend. The
fact that this needed stating implies that they will have been acquaintances rather than close friends (thus
Thomson ad loc. and Skinner 2003: 152), though gratum hardly suggests “Catullus’ polite surprise at
Manlius’ claim to friendship” (Wiseman 1974b: 102).
quoniam does not introduce a subject or object clause amplifying id (cfr. Heusch 1954: 101-103) but is
properly causal; Thomson correctly translates it as ‘inasmuch as’. For amicus alicui ‘a friend to’, ‘a friend
of’ see further TLL 1.1903.51-1904.5. dicis is found in the principal MSS, but the humanistic conjecture
ducis (accepted by Calphurnius and some other earlier editors) is not unattractive: ‘inasmuch as you consider
me a friend’ is certainly smoother than ‘inasmuch as you call me a friend’. However, the transmitted reading
finds some support in Cic. dom. 68 qui me … amiciorem uobis ceterisque ciuibus quam mihi extitisse ... dixit.
110