CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

68.41 non possum reticere deae quam fallius īre
iuuerit aut quantis iuuerit officiis
41 quam fallius A: quam Mallius 13 106: qua Mallius 14 50 98 2mg. 126: quam Manlius 24 49: qua Mallius Politianus, 17
85 86: qua me Allius Scaliger in re R: ire O: īre G 42 iuuerit … iuuerit X: inuenit … uiuerit O: iuuerit … fouerit
Cornelissen: iuuerit … auxerit Usener
68.50 in deserto alli nomine opus faciat
50 in deserto alli A (ali X): deserto in Mallii Calphurnius
68.66 tale fuit nobis allius auxilium uel manlius
66 allius O: uel manllius O 1 ad finem uersus: manlius X: Manius Lachmann
68.149 hoc tibi quod potui confectum carmine munus
pro multis aliis redditur officiis
149 hoc (nisi haec O: res parum liquet) quo Muretus 150 aliis A: Alli Scaliger (Manli iam 30)
The evidence for the name(s) of the friend(s) has been mangled badly, as is the case with so many other
names in Catullus. 32 The principal manuscripts O, G and R variously use forms of Alius, Allius, Malius,
Manlius, Manllius, Maulius and Fallius, and in one passage (line 149) they have a grammatically correct but
incoherently used form of alius at a point where the name of the addressee has been reconstructed. Out of the
forms that they use only Allius and Manlius are known Roman names; but the other forms, except Fallius,
could easily be misspelled versions of these or of the similarly well attested name Mallius. The extraordinary
confusion in the manuscripts cannot be due merely to textual corruption, but it has to be ascribed in part to
misguided interventions by medieval readers, as is shown by the presence of variants in the primary
manuscripts at lines 11 and 66, and by the range of forms attested at line 66 – allius, manllius and manlius.
Archimedes said that if he were offered one solid point (and a long enough lever), he would tilt the earth out
of its axis; here one such solid point is given by the poem’s metre. At lines 11 and 30 it calls for a name that
begins with a consonant, while at line 50 it requires one beginning with a vowel. Out of the other three
places where a name occurs, lines 66 and 149 would be suited by either. (Note that nōbīs in line 66 has a
long ī.) Meanwhile, line 41 is corrupt – the manuscripts contain the bizarre non-name fallius, and their text is
ungrammatical because there is no accusative to go with iuuerit in the following line.
Paradoxically here we have another solid point. As was first seen by Julius Caesar Scaliger, the manuscripts’
reading quam fallius i(n) re must have arisen from qua me allius in re; this must have involved the
misreading of QUAMEALLIUS as QUAMFALLIUS in a MS written in capital script, that is, written not
32 See e.g. 32.1, 37.1 and 41.1 for some salient cases of names being mistreated in Catullus’ manuscripts.
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