CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

incommoda, pessimi poetae, 43.8 o saeclum insapiens et infacetum!, 78b.3f. te omnia saecla / noscent et qui
sis, fama loquetur anus and 95.6 Zmyrnam cana diu saecula peruoluent. This connection seems to have been
commonplace: thus also Cinna frg. 14 FPL 3 saecula permaneat nostri Dictynna Catonis, Cic. Div. 1.36 hos
… mentiri iudicemus nec saeculorum reliquorum iudicium quod de ipsis futurum sit pertimescere (on the
authors of astrological works), Lucr. 3.629f. pictores itaque et scriptorum saecla priora / sic animas intro
duxerunt sensibus auctas and Quint. 10.1.92 dicent haec plenius futura saecula (they should pass judgement
on the Emperor Domitian’s literary talents).
While the word is often written in the MSS as sec- rather than saec- (thus the OLD), the correct form is
surely the latter: CIL 10.1401.6 (A.D. 44/46) writes SAECVLI and the word is related to Gallic hoedl ‘life-
time, life’ (Ernout-Meillet). Here Catullus is using the anaclastic form saeclum, which he prefers to saeculum
(he uses the former 6x, the latter 1x), as do other Republican poets (Pl. 3x against 1x, Ter. 2x against 0x and
most conspicuously Lucr. 45x against 0x; Caec. Stat. and Cic. 1x against 0x; only in Cinna 0x against 1x ).
saeculum is the only form found in prose, apart from Cicero’s rhetorical and philosophical works (15x
saeclum alongside 30x saeculum). From the Augustan period onwards the anaclastic form is gradually
eliminated even in poetry: Propertius has saeclum 3x against saeculum 2x, Virgil 5x against 9x, Ovid 3x
against 21x, Silius 6x against 21x and Valerius Flaccus 2x against 4x. Horace, Tibullus, Manilius and Lucan
only use the longer form.
Note the archetype’s error sedis: it must result from the misreading of a minuscule MS, in which cl
resembled d. The mistake was already corrected by the scholar who copied MS β (78, that is, the famous
Codex Traguriensis) for his own use, as he added seclis in the margin as a variant some time after copying
the text.
44 caeca nocte Catullus picks up Accius trag. 33 deum regnator nocte caeca caelum e conspectu abstulit,
a stark phrase that was imitated similarly by Lucr. 1.1115f. nec tibi caeca / nox iter eripiet, Verg. Aen.
2.397f. multaque per caecam congressi proelia noctem / conserimus and Geo. 3.260 and directly or through
Virgil’s mediation also at Ciris 523, Ov. Met. 6.472f., 10.476 and 11.521, Sen. Oed. 1049 and Thy. 668,
Lucan 4.244 and 10.506, Sil. 10.538f. and 13.254 and a number of Christian authors: see TLL 3.44.72-77.
The present passage is probably echoed by Ovid Tr. 3.6.31f. quaecumque adeo possunt adferre pudorem, /
illa tegi caeca condita nocte decet. Here caeca is passive and means ‘obscure’, as at 64.207f. caeca mentem
caligine Theseus / consitus; see further OLD s.v. 5a and TLL 3.44.70-45.44. For nox ‘darkness’ compare
51.11f. gemina teguntur / lumina nocte.
49f. As so often in Catullus, an abstract phenomenon is rendered palpable through an image drawn from
real life. The use of cobweb imagery to characterize neglect is conventional: cfr. Od. 16.34f. Οδυ!!°ο! δϒ
που ε⎡ν↓ / ξ→τει ⁄νευνα⇔ϖν κ κ ρ ξνια κε⇑ται ⁄ξο⎝!α and Theocr. 16.96f. ρ ξνια δ∋ ε⇒! ⎟πλ
ρ ξναι / λεπτ δια!τ→!αιντο. In the present image Allius’ name has been inscribed somewhere,
probably not onto “a statue or bust identified by a titulus” (Clauss 1995: 240) but rather onto a funerary
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