CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

etween Catullus and his addressee implied by the phrase hospitis officium in line 12 does not have anything
to do with the events described in lines 41-160. It constitutes no argument, then, for the unity of the poem.
(U 6) muneraque et Musarum et Veneris in line 10 is echoed by confectum carmine munus in line 149.
This could be an echo, if lines 41-148 constituted the munera Musarum that Manlius had asked for. In fact,
they do not: see above under (U 3).
(U 7) Lines 1-40 do not make sense as a separate poem.
As Williams puts it, “[t]he reply 1-40 ends very abruptly (and if it ends at that point, there must be a strong
temptation to regard it as only the fragment of a poem).” 28
Lines 37-40 recapitulate Catullus’ most persistent concern until that point: that his friend should not be
offended by the poet’s inability to comply with his request. He has made the same point twice before, in lines
11f. and lines 31f. It makes good sense to let a poem end on such an important note.
It is indeed somewhat surprising that two sorts of elements are absent from lines 1-40: the clarification of
some issues that are merely hinted at (what misfortune has the friend suffered? what requests has he made to
Catullus?) and the circumstantial detail that one would expect in a letter (“Yesterday, when I arrived in
Verona…”). But it is possible to explain the absence of both: if lines 1-40 were sent to their addressee by
Catullus as a genuine letter, he will not have needed to explain in them what his friend already knew; and the
lack of circumstantial detail also occurs in two other letters in verse by him, poems 65 and 116, and may be
due to the influence of poetic convention or practice, as the poet normally refrains from serving irrelevant,
unimportant or petty pieces of information to his reader. Therefore lines 1-40 make excellent sense as an
individual poem.
(U 8) There can be found a plausible overall interpretation of carmen 68 as a unitary composition; the
arguments that have been brought up against such an interpretation are based on points of detail that
are too small or too ambiguous; therefore carmen 68 must be one single poem.
This line has been taken not only in articles on poem 68, the scope of which might not allow for a full
consideration of all the evidence, but also in three of the most significant studies into carmen 68 that have
appeared in the twentieth century.
Lieberg writes that “all significant points of view have already been set out sufficiently in the international
discussion during the recent decades” about whether or not poem 68 should be divided, and “in the process it
has become clear ... that the question cannot be answered either way on the basis of external criteria. The
external criteria do not allow for a precise answer because they can be interpreted in various ways according
to the assumptions of the interpreter regarding methodology and aesthetics. Today the issue has entered a
phase in which the issue would be to test these contradictory assumptions according to psychological and
philosophical categories. One would have to ask how far logical contradictions do not need to dissolve the
28 Williams 1968: 229.
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