CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

How should we solve these problems? A convenient starting-point is offered by the noun leuamen, which is
attested here for the first time, but is soon met again at Cic. Att. 12.16 quod si esset aliquod leuamen, id esset
in te uno. It is commonly found with the dative of the person or the sufferings relieved: thus also Ov. Her.
3.62 quis mihi desertae mite leuamen erit? (where mite leuamen could be an echo of dulce … leuamen here),
Sen. Med. 547f. hoc perusti pectoris / curis leuamen and Ag. 491 nec hoc leuamen denique aerumnis datur,
Tro. 961 leuamen afflictae and also Mart. 6.68.5 hic tibi curarum socius blandumque leuamen. This suggests
that here the dative uiatori may well be correct.
The MSS’ basso is defended by Birt (1904: 428) on the ground that it makes sense and should not be
jettisoned. In fact, the adjective bassus is first attested in a work of the late grammarian Martyrius, writing
probably in the 6 th century A.D. (thus the Neue Pauly s.v.), who notes that he found it in a number of
glossaries, where it was evidently translated as grassus (i.e. crassus, ‘fat’): bassus etiam, id est grassus, in
glossematibus repperi et per b mutam scribi cognoui (Martyrius, de B et V, at GL 7.176.14f. Keil). The word
is indeed found in a number of surviving glossaries, where it is variously translated as grossus, crassus,
pinguis, obesus and ƒγξυλο! (see TLL 2.1778.11-16). There certainly did exist a vulgar Latin word bassus at
some point in time, as is also shown by its descendants in many Romance languages (Italian ‘basso’, Spanish
‘bajo’, French ‘bas’ etc.), but it is out of the question that Catullus should have used a word belonging to
such a low register in the middle of an elaborate and highly artistic simile. Nor would basso ‘fat’ or ‘chubby’
mean the right thing: Baehrens (1878: 769) rightly notes that “the image of a corpulent man sweating under
his burden of fat could not be more out of place here” (“das bild eines ob seiner fettlast schwitzenden,
wolbeleibten mannes hier so unpassend wie nur möglich ist”). Vulgar Latin bassus comes into play, if at all,
as the cause for which a different word could be corrupted into basso. The question is what that word had
been.
A Renaissance reader or scribe conjectured or stumbled upon lasso. This is an attractive reading because it is
close to the transmitted text, the adjective is already attested in Catullus at 63.35 ut domum Cybebes tetigere
lassulae (it is an old word, found already in Plautus, Terence, Cato and Ennius, and survives in poetry but is
avoided by Cicero, Caesar and Livy) and the uiator lassus was a frequent figure in Roman funerary verse (
CE 77.1 = CIL 3.9733.1 quamuis la[ss]e uiator, roughly from the Augustan period; CE 119.1 = CIL 1.1431.1
/ 5.4111.1 heus tu, uiator lasse, qu[i] me praetereis, probably from the 1 st century B.C.; and the later
inscription CE 1125.10 = CIL 9.3358.10 to qui preteriens [legis]ti, lasse uiator) and also in poetry of a more
literary sort (Ov. Am. 1.13.13 te surgit quamuis lassus ueniente uiator and Mart. epigr. 2.6.14 lassus tam cito
deficis uiator). The one problem is that in the line dulce uiatori lasso in sudore leuamen the epithet could be
taken with uiatori as well as in enallage with sudore, even though the latter would seem more likely; a bare
sudore unaccompanied by an epithet would be unattractive.
Alternatively, one could adopt one of the conjectures adopted by Baehrens (1878: 769), crassus or salsus.
crassus can qualify a liquid and indicate that it is ‘thick’, ‘concentrated’ (OLD s.v., 4a), but one would hardly
expect Catullus to qualify the viscosity of the sweat of his imaginary traveller. (Incidentally, crassus can also
mean ‘stout’, ‘fat’, ‘plump’, witness OLD s.v., 2, but Baehrens’ crasso cannot be taken with uiatori, as he
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