CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

in apparatu, accepted by Baehrens), or one could turn prece … implorate into pare … implorato (Trappes-
Lomax 2007: 234f.).
The easiest solution is surely to write implorata and to take it as a nominative with aura secunda. imploro
(common in prose from Cicero onwards, but in poetry only 2x in Pl., here, 6x in Verg., 1x in Prop., and later)
can mean either ‘to ask, to make supplication for something’ or ‘to call on somebody for help, to invoke
somebody’. Here it has to have the first meaning, and there are reasonably close parallels: e.g. Sall. Cat. 52.4
frustra iudicia inplores and esp. Hor. Epist. 2.1.135 caelestis implorat aquas docta prece blandus. preces are
not attested elsewhere with the genitive of the deity invoked, but one should compare Liv. praef. 13 uotisque
et precationibus deorum dearumque, Verg. Aen. 11.4 uota deum … soluebat and Prop. 4.1.101 Iunonis facito
uotum impetrabile (Iunoni in some recentiores and some modern editions). The alternative solution of taking
implorata as an ablative with prece is not plausible, as imploro never takes the entreaty, request or prayer as
its object; Plautus Rud. 259 qui sunt qui a domina preces mea expetessunt? and Cornelia ap. Nep. frg. 2
deorum preces expetere (P. Petruvius proposed prece, while Bergk 1860: 626f. would write paces or pacem,
but in view of the former parallel there is no need for either) use a different verb. As for the other conjectures
that have been proposed, Statius’ implorante would need to govern two accusatives, but Pollucem would be
unmetrical; Lachmann’s imploratu can be ruled out because imploratus is not attested anywhere else; and
Trappes-Lomax’s pare … implorato is ingenious but unnecessary in the presence of a more simple solution.
The sailors have prayed to Castor and Pollux to send them a favourable wind. The Dioscuri were believed to
help those in need, and especially sailors in a storm: see the Homeric Hymn addressed to them as well as
Alcaeus frg. 34 Voigt, Eur. Hel. 1495-1505, esp. 1504f. να⎛ται! ε⎡αε⇑! νϒμϖν / πϒμποντε! Δι〉ψεν
πνο !, and Lucian Nav. 9.
66 tale fuit ... auxilium As at CIL 6.25369.a6 ]pareret patrono auxsilium et decus (apparently 1 st century
BC, with quoi for cui and ei for ī) and Ov. Pont. 1.9.25f. respice, quantum / debeat auxilium Maximus esse
tibi; see further TLL 2.1621.74-83.
Allius G and R write manlius; O reads allius, but after the end of the line the scribe has added uł (= uel)
manllius, as if these were the last words of the verse. He has evidently copied the variant from the margin of
A, getting the spelling slightly wrong in the process and writing manllius instead of manlius, while the scribe
of X jettisoned the reading in the text and adopted the variant. O’s behaviour suggests that the variant in A
may have been in the hand of the first scribe, so that he could easily have mistaken it for part of the text;
consequently it could already have been present in the pre-archetype V.
67 Almost a ‘silver line’, if the pronoun is is disregarded: see Conrad (1965: 234-241) and cfr. on line 29
above.
The image and the words are echoed at Verg. Aen. 9.323 haec ego uasta dabo et lato te limite ducam and
10.513f. proxima quaeque metit gladio latumque per agmen / ardens limitem agit.
180