CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

19f. luctu fraterna mihi mors / abstulit The expression is struggling, circuitous, even clumsy, but
powerful. luctu is superfluous. fraterna mors is a striking circumlocution with a suitably harsh sound (note
the triple r, the littera canina, the sound of which resembles the growling of a dog: Lucil. 377 Marx and
Pers. 1.109f.); the monosyllable mihi is lodged awkwardly after fraterna (one would expect it to come after
abstulit, but here it stresses Catullus’ bond with the deceased) and its unemphatic last syllable receives the
weight of the verse’s last ictus; the line is closed by the monosyllable ‘death’; and abstulit stands in a highly
emphatic position at the start of the next line. The right words to express pain.
20 ábstulit The word stands in a highly emphatic position: the stress that falls naturally on its first
syllable, before the unusual consonant cluster, is reinforced further by the strong ictus at the beginning of the
line; and it is isolated further as it constitutes a one-word enjambment. Catullus also uses enjambment
elsewhere (see also lines 107 and 126 below as well as 37.14, 83.6, 84.2, 86.2 and 87.2), but nowhere to such
effect.
‘It took him away’: this hugely emphatic word carries the key information not about the event itself (that was
already given by fraterna mors in the previous line) but about how it was experienced by the poet: he feels
that he his brother has been snatched away from him by an external force. The humanistic conjecture
abscidit would do away with this forceful word.
o misero frater adempte mihi “By beginning the apostrophe in the middle of the second line of a couplet,
the poet dramatizes the spontaneity and anguish of Catullus’ outburst” (Sarkissian 1983: 10). The verse is
repeated at line 92, but with ei instead of the initial o. In the critical apparatus of his edition (which appeared
in 1876) Baehrens proposed to write ei here as well, and this has been re-proposed by Trappes-Lomax (2007:
228) as it “regularizes the exclamations”, evidently by bringing the two passages closer to each other.
However, Baehrens changed his mind in his commentary (which appeared in 1885) and noted that “ ‘o’ hic
in sollemnis inuocationis initio, contra LXVIII b 52 [i.e. in 68b.92 – D.K.] in parenthesi ‘ei’ aptius”. o is used
regularly with the vocative (see OLD s.v. 1 and TLL 9.2.8.6-9.84, and compare Ciris 286 o mihi nunc iterum
crudelis reddite Minos), while ei is not; so o better here; but in lines 92f. the epanaphora ei ... / ei ... would
not be possible with o.
Catullus’ apostrophes to his brother here, at verse 92 below and at 101.6 heu miser indigne frater adempte
mihi were imitated frequently by later Latin poets. This verse, line 92 or both are echoed at Ov. Her. 9.166 et
patria et patriae frater adempte tuae, Stat. Theb. 9.53 quando alius misero ac melior mihi frater ademptus
(cfr. line 93 here ademptum ׀), Ciris 313 tene etiam fortuna mihi crudelis ademit (perhaps with an added
touch of line 1 fortuna casuque oppressus acerbo), CE 1119.5 maeret cara soror quae fratrem luget
ademptum (“primi fere saeculi”, Buecheler ad loc.) and possibly even at Oct. 178 ut fratrem ademptum
scelere restituat mihi.
frater After Lesbia and himself, his dead brother is the third person Catullus addresses most often in his
poems (see also lines 21 and 92 and also 65.10, 101.2, 101.6 and 101.10). We do not know the brother’s
praenomen, as the poet always calls him frater. Plain frater is a common way of addressing a brother in
128