CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

comedy (Pl. Curc. 697, Men. 1133, Aul. 120, 127 etc. as well as Ter. Eun. 1051, Phorm. 895 etc.) and is
found later in prose (Cic. De Orat. 1.4) as well as poetry (Verg. Aen. 12.883, Ov. Her. 11.25): it was
probably the most common way of addressing a male sibling in real life as well, with the vocative of the
praenomen coming a close second (see Dickey 2002: 257-263).
adempte Compare 68.31 ademit and 68.93 ademptum, all referring to Catullus’ brother. Death, or its cause,
is said to adimere aliquem (alicui) only in poetry (TLL 1.683.26-51): thus Naev. com. 95 deos quaeso ut
adimant et patrem et matrem meos, Pl. Epid. 362f. illam … mihi adempsit Orcus, Ter. Andr. 697 hanc nisi
mors mi adimet nemo, Hor. Od. 2.4.10 ademptus Hector, Ov. Met. 4.142 “Pyrame” clamauit, “quis te mihi
casus ademit? In prose only the set phrase uitam adimere is used, especially in pathetic contexts (thus Rhet.
Her. 4.65 non uox mea tibi uitam ademit? and Cic. Planc. 101 sin ... uitam mihi fors ademisset; see further
TLL 1.682.68-683.9).
21-24 Lachmann repeated these verses (and also line 93 and a slightly re-written version of line 101.6) in a
tentative to fill the lacuna after 65.8, apparently without too much confidence that he was doing the right
thing. In an attempt to improve on Lachmann’s edition Fröhlich (1849: 263) proposed to leave out 21-24
(and also 93-96), noting that they “belong not here, as emerges from the context, but in poem 65” (“gehören
nicht hieher, wie der Zusammenhang zeigt, sondern in Carm. 65”). I think that these lines are actually
required by their context, as 25 would follow too abruptly after 20. In any case it is fanciful to assume that an
interpolator should have excised a passage from one poem and inserted it into two others, into places where
they make good sense.
21 fregisti ‘You ended’, ‘destroyed’, ‘put an end to’ – a use of frango (OLD s.v. 9b) that is relatively rare
in high poetry: compare Caecina ap. Cic. Fam. 6.7.3 tot malis tum uictum, tum fractum studium scribendi
and Lucr. 4.1084 sed leuiter poenas frangit Venus inter amorem.
commoda Here the word cannot mean ‘advantage, benefit’ (OLD) or utilitas, emolumentum (TLL). The
sense rather seems to be ‘convenience, prosperity’, i.e. favourable external circumstances: compare Ter. Eun.
372 tu illis fruare commodis; Cic. Cluent. 150 quam multa sunt commoda quibus caremus, quam multa
molesta et difficilia quae subimus! atque haec omnia tamen honoris et amplitudinis commodo compensantur
and Cicero fils ap. Cic. Fam. 16.21.2 socium enim te meorum commodorum semper esse uolui. In
Republican authors commodum, commoda and the adjective commodus (already at Enn. Ann. 281 Skutsch)
are widespread, but from the Augustan period onwards they rather less common in poetry (except for the
works of Ovid) than in prose (see TLL 3.1921.71-1922.2; on incommoda, which has a rather similar
distribution, see the note on line 11).
Here, commoda is an apparent echo of incommoda in line 11, which occupies the same part of the line.
commoda and incommoda are Catullan buzzwords, occurring also at 23.24, 61.63 and 84.1 (commoda) and
14.23 (incommoda).
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