CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

would not have been taken over into poem 68a. Also, the epanaphora of various forms of tu makes better
sense in lines 21-24 than in 94-96: one would expect such a series to start with the nominative, and certainly
not with the compound form tecum. In 68a Catullus professes to have been single and unhappy ever since the
death of his brother, while in 68b he is happy and with Lesbia. And most importantly, lines 95f. (‘your death
has put an end to all my joys’) contradict the general contents of poem 68b, and especially lines 159f. (‘I am
happy as long as Lesbia is alive’), while they fit perfectly into poem 68a. Evidently Catullus first wrote poem
68a, and then he recycled parts of it in 68b.
Poem 101 was probably written after both 68a and 68b: misero … adempte mihi in lines 20 and 92 is
stronger than miser … adempte mihi at 101.6 and looks like the original phrase, and while in 101 Catullus
purports to perform the funerary rituals for his brother, lines 97-100 suggest that nothing of the sort has taken
place as yet.
Trappes-Lomax (2007: 239) follows Fröhlich (1849: 265) in deleting lines 93-96 on the ground that
“Catullus is too good a poet to have to decorate one poem with second-hand lines lifted from another poem”.
(Fröhlich also deleted 21-24: see ad loc.) In fact, the lines have not simply been lifted from 68a but they have
been adapted to their new context (see above). More importantly, while one can delete lines 93-96, one
cannot remove line 92 without leaving a gaping hole, even though it is a close imitation of line 20; and it
undermines the logic of this operation that it is physically impossible to remove the repetition entirely. In
fact, repetition occurs in Catullus’ manuscripts to such an extent that it is hardly possible to accept the view
of Trappes-Lomax (2007: 10-12) that it is always due to interpolation. It also occurs at the following
passages (I use the tilde ~ in cases where a line is not repeated verbatim): 8.3 ~ 8.8; 16.1 = 16.14; 21.2f ~
24.2f. ~ 49.2f.; 23.1 ~ 24.5; 24.5 ~ 24.10; 36.1 = 36.20; 41.4 = 43.5; 45.8f. = 45.17f.; 52.1 = 52.4; 57.1 =
57.10; 42.11f. = 42.19f. and 64.154 ~ 107.6 (the refrains in poems 61, 62 and 64.327-381 are not relevant
here). It is telling that there are no serious incongruities between the supposed interpolations and their textual
environment. There is no reason why Catullus need have thought with Trappes-Lomax (loc. cit.) that a good
poet should not repeat himself, or with Holzberg (2002: 165f.) that repetition implies a lack of profound
emotion: the Romantic notion that artistic quality or authenticity requires every phrase to be unique is
certainly not a law of nature.
19 totum hoc studium ‘This whole pursuit’. studium can refer to any activity or pursuit (OLD s.v. 4),
including youthful ones: plerique omnes faciunt adulescentuli / ut animum ad aliquod studium adiungant,
aut equos / alere aut canes ad uenandum aut ad philosophos (Ter. An. 55-57). Here it has been interpreted in
a variety of ways, as embracing not only the munera Veneris of line 10, but also the munera Musarum (thus
Frank 1914: 67 n. 2 and Skinner 2003: 146, who comments that this is one of a series of “ambiguous
expressions” in the poem that “might embrace poetry as well as erotic pleasure”). In fact, the deictic pronoun
hoc points back to one particular item, namely the erotic games just mentioned in line 17.
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