CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

a term of endearment, albeit a somewhat extravagant one (Lucil. 730 Marx cum mei me adeunt seruuli, non
dominam ego appellem meam). After Catullus the word is used in this sense by Gallus in the Qaṣr Ibrîm
fragment (frg. 4.1f. FPL 3 ṭaṇdem fecerunt c ̣[ar]mina Musae / quae ̣ ̣ ̣ pọ
ssem ̣ domina deicere digna mea) and it
becomes common in poetry from the Augustan period onwards, also in erotic elegy (Hor. Od. 2.12.13, Tib.
2.3.5, Prop. 1.1.21, Ov. Am. 1.4.47, Mart. 6.71.6, etc.; see further OLD s.v. 3b with 3a and TLL 5.1.1938.1-
26 with 35-41, and see also on erae in line 136 below). Since there are parallels for both uses of domina,
they do not help to answer our question and we must take a closer look at the poem to decide what this word
might mean. For convenience’s sake I quote the present passage:
68 isque domum nobis isque dedit dominam [or –ae with Fröhlich]
69 ad quam communes exerceremus amores
The matter stands or falls with how one interprets the words ad quam. It is natural to assume that the
antecedent of the relative quam is the last noun before it, that is, dominam (Fröhlich’s conjecture dominae
does not go well with this interpretation). In this case ad quam would have to mean ‘at whose place’, ‘in
whose house’, chez quoi, which is a well-established usage (see below); and since the house evidently does
not belong to Lesbia, the domina would have to be identified with an anonymous chatelaine. It follows that
in order to identify the domina with Catullus’ mistress one either has to take ad quam to refer back to
something or somebody other than the domina, or one has to write something else in its place.
In fact, it is not impossible for a relative pronoun to be further removed from its antecedent: this is the case
in Pl. Epid. 55 et is danista aduenit una cum eo, qui argentum petit and in Cat. 102.1f. si quicquam tacito
commissum est fido ab amico, / cuius sit penitus nota fides animi. Evidently it is possible to separate the
antecedent from the relative pronoun, especially in contexts where the tone is colloquial, or worse (Fordyce
has rightly censured Catullus’ carmen 102 for its slapdash quality). Thus one can look for an antecedent for
the relative pronoun earlier in the sentence. There present themselves two candidates, is, that is, Catullus’
friend Allius, and domum; however, the text as it stands does not easily allow for quam to be taken with
domum, which is not the last word in the feminine preceding it, and it does not allow at all for it to be taken
with is, which is in the masculine. If one identifies its antecedent with is, one must evidently write ad quem,
which was conjectured by Baehrens; there is also a remote possibility that this is the reading of O (see ad
loc.). This would result in the following text:
68 isque domum nobis isque dedit dominam [or –ae with Fröhlich]
69 ad quem communes exerceremus amores
That would be very awkward Latin, not only because of the distance between the antecedent and the relative
pronoun, but also because such a relative clause would have no raison d’être: the effects of a gift
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