CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

from charta loquatur anus to notescatque magis is very rough in the absence of a pronoun or a similar term
referring to Allius – and notescatque magis is hard to translate in Birt’s supplement (though not in line 48):
‘and he should become more famous’ - more than what? Moreover, the whole hypothesis that the line has
been lost through haplography may be called into question: lines can be omitted due to a number of causes or
indeed for no particular reason at all even by the best of scribes, and here we are dealing with a scribe who
was capable of omitting a single pentameter while copying a poem written in elegiac distichs.
It is all too easy to criticize the supplements of others, especially as long as one does not propose any of
one’s own. I do not want to disparage anyone from trying his or her hand at filling in this lacuna; but it is a
very difficult task to fill in a lacuna with a perfect Latin pentameter written in the style of a particular author:
the supplement must not only make sense, be in correct Latin, and only use phrases and constructions that
could have been used by the author himself, but it must be elegant to boot. The difficulty of the task should
remind us of the quality of what does survive of Catullus’ poetry.
48 Propertius may well be echoing this line when he writes nec minus haec nostri notescet fama sepulti, /
quam fuerant Pthii busta cruenta uiri (2.13.37f.).
notescatque Though not common, the verb appears to have been the uox propria for this concept, witness
an inscription from the Augustan period, the ‘Laudatio Turiae’ at CIL 6.1527.2.18 VT · AVCTOR · MEÓRVM ·
PERIC[VL]ORVM · NÓTÉSCERET and Phaedr. 3.3.3 notescet quae (i.e. causa) nunc primum fabella mea; cfr.
also Prop. 2.13.37, quoted above. Later it appears in Pliny the Elder, Seneca’s De Beneficiis and Suetonius
(once each) and becomes a fad of Tacitus’, who uses it five times in his Annals.
magis … atque magis The original expression for ‘more and more’ was magis magisque, which is attested
in drama (1x each in Plautus, Pacuvius and Afranius) and in prose (1x each in Sisenna, the Rhetorica ad
Herennium and the Bellum Africum, 5x each in Cicero and Sallust, 4x in Livy) but this iambic phrase could
not be used in dactylic poetry. For some reason or another magis et magis remained rare (1x each in Cicero,
Calpurnius Siculus and the Priapea, and nowhere else) but in dactylic poetry there emerged magis ac magis
(2x in Lucretius, 1x in the Aeneid, and from Pliny the Elder onwards also in prose: for references see TLL
2.1071.74-1072.11) or magis atque magis (3x in Virgil and in Stat. Theb., 1x in the Culex, 2x in Lucan and
4x in Valerius Flaccus, but this appears to have been too ponderous for prose). Catullus inserted another
word into this phrase, as did later Horace at Sat. 2.3.318f. cum magis atque / se magis inflaret.
mortuus Not tactless or harsh: compare 3.3 passer mortuus est meae puellae and 64.153 neque iniacta
cumulabor mortua terra.
51-56 The Muses know how Catullus suffered when his love for Lesbia was as yet unfulfilled. Why? From
his poems, as one would expect, but in fact none of Catullus’ surviving poems describes his frustration at not
being able to start a relationship with Lesbia; only 100.7 cum uesana meas torreret flamma medullas could
look back at this period. Had Catullus written poems about this experience that no longer survive?
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