CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

commune sepulcrum with Porphyry as well as Fedeli (1994) ad loc. In practice a commune sepulcrum may
not have been much different from a modern cemetery, but upper-class Romans, status-conscious and
individualistic, seem to have considered it degrading. They preferred to be buried in a plot of land of their
own, close to their relatives, with a suitable monument marking the site.
Asiae Europaeque On spondaic fifth feet involving exotic names see on 87f. primores Argiuorum … uiros.
90 The line contains three cases of elision; Catullus set his personal record at five in 73.6 quam modo qui
me unum atque unicum amicum habuit. Elisions are relatively rare in 68b (about one in every 2.7 lines),
more so than in 68a (there we find one in about every 1.8 lines): see Ross (1969: 121).
The present line is probably echoed by Virgil at Aen. 1.565f. quis Troiae nesciat urbem / uirtutesque
uirosque et tanti incendia belli? (note the image of the war as a conflagration).
uirum et uirtutum omnium The figura etymologica uir – uirtus is already found at Enn. trag. 254 Jocelyn
sed uirum uera uirtute uiuere † animatum adiecit † and is common later: compare Verg. Aen. 1.566 (see the
previous note) and 8.500 flos ueterum uirtusque uirum, Liv. 10.23.7 quod certamen uirtutis uiros in hac
ciuitate tenebat, Vel. 2.105.2 uirum multiplicem [in] uirtutibus, Lucan. 3.484 uirtus incerta uirorum, Gel.
6.1.6 uirum esse uirtutis diuinae, etc.
omnium must be taken π∫ κοινο⎝ with uirum et uirtutum. The exaggeration is typical of Catullus: compare
e.g. line 158 below and 77.4 eripuisti omnia nostra bona.
acerba cinis In a stark metaphor Catullus equates Troy with the ashes of the countless dead of the war.
Ashes appear to have been a rhetorical topos: note Rhet. Her. 4.12 nisi sanctissimae patriae miserandum
scelerati uiderint cinerem.
Most authors treat cinis as masculine, but Catullus’ MSS write acerba cinis here and mutam … cinerem at
101.4, but cognatos … cineres in line 98 below (the gender of the adjective is guaranteed metrically only in
the present passage). This is in line with Nonius’ statement (p. 198 M. = 291.8-14 Lindsay) that cinis
masculino Vergilius … feminino apud Caesarem et Catullum et Caluum lectum est, quorum uacillat
auctoritas, i.e. Calvus and Catullus and presumably also Caesar use the word both ways. In fact the word is
not attested in Caesar’s surviving writings, while in Calvus’ fragments it is found twice in the feminine (frgg.
15f. FPL 3 , with its gender guaranteed metrically in the first passage) but nowhere in the masculine. Lucretius
too uses cinis in the feminine (at 4.926, where the gender is not guaranteed metrically). The word receives
both genders in the MSS of two prose authors, of the medical writer Scribonius Largus, writing under
Claudius (masc. at 122, fem. at 114, 237 and 244) and of Apuleius (masc. at Met. 4.14 and 4.29, fem. at
9.12). In the fourth century A.D. the feminine is used by the medical writer Q. Serenus and in the
Mulomedicina Chironis (see TLL 3.1070.9-12). It is well attested in funerary inscriptions from Rome (CE
1017.2 = CIL 6.14831; CE 1054.2 = CIL 6.28228 fin., perhaps from the 1 st century B.C.; CE 1099.1 = CIL
6.2938; CE 1545.6; CIL 6.8431.7; CIL 6.27593.5f.; CIL 6.28228.6) as well as from Capua (CIL 10.4142.3).
The descendants of cinis in the modern Romance languages are feminine; some of them, such as the Catalan
‘cendra’ and the Spanish ‘ceniza’, appear to come from the late Latin neuter plural cinera (thus Ernout-
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