CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

Neue-Wagener 2.469f. (a list of its occurrences, which reach into the late Empire and beyond), Heusch
(1954: 101-103) and Austin (1971) on Verg. Aen. 1.95.
merser While here this could be taken as a repetitive ‘I keep going under’, ‘I keep being submerged’, with
the waves bobbing over Catullus’ head, parallels suggest that we are dealing with one single action that is
going on in the present: ‘I am in the process of going under’, ‘I am being submerged’. The metaphorical use
becomes common from this period onwards: thus Lucr. 5.1008 rerum copia mersat, CIL 6.1527.2.63 (the
‘Laudatio Turiae’) maerore mersor, Hor. Od. 4.4.65 (on the Roman nation) merses profundo, pulchrior
euenit and later, in 389 A.D., in the context of a full shipwreck metaphor at Panegyr. 2.7.4 naufragos atque
fluitantes ab illis quibus mersebantur erroribus aegre aetas recepit. Compare mergo at Verg. Aen. 6.614f.
me fata mea et scelus exitiale Lacaenae / his mersere malis, ibid. 6.615 and later (OLD s.v. mergo 10 and
TLL 8.835.18-51) and Horace Epist. 1.2.22 aduersis rerum immersabilis undis (of the hero of the Odyssey,
the archetypal submergeable man). There are at most only very distant parallels in Greek: compare the 5 th -
century B.C. elegist Euenus’ frg. 2.6 West = AP 11.49.6 βαπτ⇔ζει δ ⎧πνϖι, γε⇔τονι το⎝ ψαν του (of
Bacchus), and a series of fully-fledged metaphors by novelists from the 1 st century A.D. onwards: Ach. Tat.
3.10.1 το!ο⎛τϖι πλ→ψει βαπτι!ψ°ναι κακ∩ν, Hld. 2.3.4 τ°ι !υμφορ ι βεβαπτι!μϒνον, 4.20.1 and
5.16.2, and Charis. 2.4.4.
fortunae fluctibus ipse The grave sound of these words matches their dramatic contents: there is a
preponderance of long syllables (as already in quis merser), the ictus coincides with the word-stress, as does
foot-end with word-end after the last three feet, and the alliteration (perhaps suggestive of the splashing of
the waves) highlights the words fortunae fluctibus. This alliterative phrase is also used by the Augustan
rhetorician Albucius Silus ap. Sen. Controv. 1.1.10 tollite uestras diuitias, quas huc atque illuc incertae
fortunae fluctus appellet and by Pliny at N.H. 5.73 quos uita fessos ad mores eorum fortunae (fortuna
Mayhoff) agitat.
14 dona beata ‘Happy gifts’, a daring case of enallage in which an adjective characterizing a person
associated with the gifts is transferred to the gifts themselves. Commentators compare Prop. 4.7.60 aura
beata, of the Elysian breeze (Fordyce), and domos … castas at Cat. 64.384 (Baehrens). In an elegant conceit
the phrase both refers to the giver (Catullus) and to the recipient (Manlius): they have to be given by a happy
person to someone else whom they would make happy as well.
The meaning of beatus extends from ‘happy’ to ‘wealthy’ (of joyful ownership), as does that of its Greek
equivalent ⎞λβιο!. On its metonymical use de rebus uel ipsis felicibus uel homines reddentibus felices see
TLL 2.1915.33-1916.72, and compare Cat. 9.5 nuntii beati and 23.24 commoda tam beata. The notion of
‘happy gifts’ occurs already at Od. 7.148 το⇑!ιν ψεο⇐ ⎞λβια δο⇑εν and 8.413 = 24.402 μ λα ξα⇑ρε,
ψεο⇐ δϒ τοι ⎞λβια δο⇑εν, and cfr. 13.41f. πομπ↓ κα⇐ φ⇔λα δ∩ρα, τ μοι ψεο⇐ Ο⎡ραν⇔ϖνε! /
⎞λβια ποι→!ειαν.
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