CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

Ellis (ad loc.), Schöll (1880: 473) and other unitarians have accepted interpretation (a), and identified the
dutiful act of the addressee with the officia mentioned in lines 42 and 150 below. However, it is very much
the question whether providing someone with a house in which to meet his girl-friend can qualify as an act of
hospitium.
There is evidently no need to write sospitis for hospitis here, which was proposed by Schrader ap. Santenius.
13 In describing his own condition, Catullus picks up the nautical imagery he used for his friend’s
misfortunes in lines 3f. Some take this to be an act of veiled criticism: Catullus would suggest that he is in
more dire straits than Manlius, but complains less. This line is taken by Sarkissian (1983: 9), who infers from
the word merser that “Catullus actually goes under”, unlike Manlius. I do not think that the text contains
anything that would support such an interpretation; in particular, merser refers to being in the process of
going under (see ad loc.), which is not manifestly worse than to have suffered shipwreck and to be on the
threshold of death, as is said of Manlius in lines 3f. On the contrary, by applying to himself the imagery with
which he has characterized the fate of his friend Catullus seems to say “I am in the same situation as you”
(note the emphatic ipse ‘I myself’ at the end of the line): the resumption of the shipwreck imagery serves not
to distance Catullus from Manlius but to bring him closer to his addressee.
accipe Not ‘listen’ or ‘hear’ (pace OLD s.v. accipio, 18, Ellis ad loc. and others), but ‘grasp the point’,
‘understand’ or ‘take the meaning’ of what Catullus is about to tell. Compare 35.5f. nam quasdam uolo
cogitationes / amici accipiat sui meique and 64.325 accipe quod laeta tibi pandunt luce sorores (the Parcae
to Peleus). The verb is used in this sense throughout Latin literature, by authors as varied as Plautus,
Terence, Cicero, Sallust, Horace, Ovid, Tacitus and even Virgil (Aen. 2.65, Aeneas to Dido), often in
conversational contexts, but Catullus is clearly following its epistolary usage to introduce a longer account:
thus Cic. Att. 4.15.4 nunc Romanas res accipe and Pliny Epist. 5.6.3 accipe temperiem caeli, regionis situm,
uillae amoenitatem. For refs. See further TLL 1.306.45-309.76.
quis I.e. quīs, an alternative form for the dative-ablative plural quibus, a relic from the time in which quis
and qui had interchangeable forms that followed the thematic and the consonantal declensions. Leo (1912:
316 n. 1) ably summarizes its history and use: “In der älterem Literatur fast verloren … taucht der Dativ-
Ablativ quis bei Lucilius (4mal), dann bei Varro, Sallust, in Ciceros Briefen und gleichzeitig bei Lucrez und
Catull wieder auf, lebt dann in Horazens Satire und im Epos Vergils und der folgenden, während die feineren
Stilarten ihn entweder perhorresciren wie Horazens Lyrik, Vergils bucolica, oder vermeiden wie die Elegie.
Es ist offenbar eine der Formen, die in der Sprache des Lebens immer geblieben sind; in der Zeit des Plautus
und Terenz in niedriger Sprachsphäre, dann in den gebildeten Umgangston recipirt, dann in die Poesie, bald
als ein Wort der Umgangssprache (Catull, Horaz), bald als ein Wort altertümlichen Klanges, das sich in
höheren Stil schickte (Epos).“ Elsewhere Catullus only uses the word in more elevated passages within the
longer poems (at 63.46, 64.80, 64.145 and 66.37), apparently with overtones of refinement rather than of
archaism; here it may be used to add an elevated touch to the shipwreck metaphor. On the form see further
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