CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

a desire to avoid any particular sound-effect (cfr. West 1982: 37f.), so that the fact that the Latin elegiac
poets breach it more often than their Greek predecessors would simply indicate that they have adopted new,
freer techniques of composition.
50 in deserto Alli Calphurnius’ conjecture in deserto Mallii (which later scholars, including Newman,
easily changed into in deserto Manli) is unacceptable: see the Introduction, pp. 21f.
opus faciat Compare ƒργον ραξν ϖν at Callim. Hecale frg. 42.6 Hollis = 285.12 SH and later also at
Dion. Per. 757.
45 porro dicite porro is a pragmatic word, widespread in prose of all sorts (Rhet. Her. 4x, Cic. 79x orat.,
38x rhet.-phil. and 38x epist., Caes. 1x, Colum. 31x, Celsus 2x, Sen. maior 8x, Sen. minor 29x, Petron. 3x,
Plin. N.H. 2x etc.) and in comedy and mime (Plaut. 54x, Ter. 40x, Afran. 3x, Caecil. and Labien. 1x) and
used very often by Lucretius (74x), but only twice by Catullus, apparently on account of its conversational
overtones (here in an informal address to the Muses, and at 45.3 in an actual conversation). It is rare in
elevated poetry during the Republic (2x in Pacuv., not in Enn. or Acc.), in the Augustan poets (only 3x in
Verg. Aen., 1x in Hor. Sat. and 3x in Epist., and 1x in Ov. F.) and in general in epic (also 1x in Lucan, 1x in
Stat. Theb., 3x in Silius, 1x in Val. Fl.).
Here porro dicite means not ‘continue to speak’, as in Plautus (in perge porro dicere at Amph. 803, Cist. 754
and Trin. 777 as well as Pers. 296 scis quid hinc porro dicturus fuerim), but ‘say in turn’, ‘tell in turn’ (cfr.
OLD s.v. porro, 4).
45f. multis / milibus To be taken together: milibus cannot go with loquatur, as Catullus always leaves et in
the first place of the clause. The first certain cases in which it is postponed are found in the Augustan poets:
see TLL 5.2.897.52-898.6.
46 et facite Trappes-Lomax (2007: 232) proposes to write ecficite on the ground that “[p]ostponed et is
not Catullan”. That is correct, but the solution is surely to take multis / milibus together with dicite: see the
previous note. It would be hard to justify the asyndeton in uos porro dicite multis; / milibus ecficite haec
charta loquatur anus.
facite haec charta loquatur anus The Muses should let the paper (charta, which is feminine) speak, when
it will be an old woman: that is, in future ages they should let the poem be read or recited widely. It is
characteristic of Catullus to associate poetry closely with the material on which its written (thus also in
poems 1 and 95.7f., cfr. 22 and 36) and to refer to the future condition of an object by personifying it as a
senior or hoary-headed individual: he does the same thing at 95.6 Zmyrnam cana diu saecula peruoluent and
at 78b.3f. te omnia saecla / noscent et qui sis, fama loquetur anus, which resembles this passage closely (the
second half of the pentameter fits here better and it seems likelier that the present passage was written first).
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