CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

law at Cic. Leg. 2.22.15 nos (suppl. Urlichs; alii alia) leto datos diuos habento. The word is found in
Plautus (3x), Ennius (3x), Pacuvius (1x), Accius (4x), in the poems of Cicero (3x), Propertius (4x), Tibullus
(2x) and Horace (8x) and is a favourite word of Lucretius (33x) and of Virgil in the Aeneid (here 35x; 2x in
Geo., not in Ecl.). It is also found on occasion in prose (3x in Cicero, not in his speeches; 2x in Nepos; 6x in
Livy; 1x in Curtius; 3x Pliny the Elder; etc.); it is used in a low genre in a letter of Cicero’s to Atticus: uide
quam turpi leto pereamus (10.10.5). Pace Ernout-Meillet s.v., the word is not poetical, but pathetic. In
Catullus’ poems it is found here and twice in poem 64 (at lines 149 and 187), and compare letifero at 64.194.
miserabilis is first found at Cic. Ver. 2.5.163 acerba imploratio et uox miserabilis, then here, and afterwards
it is common in prose and poetry.
92 attulit Idiomatic (letum afferre is found at Cic. Ver. 2.5.118 and Div. 2.62, Quint. Decl. min. 270 p.
104.7 Ritter and Apul. Apol. 78, and cfr. Sen. Phaedr. 857), but awkward on account of its position in
enjambment, and of the weighty coincidence of the word-accent with the first ictus of the verse: this bland
verb receives an amount of emphasis that is entirely disproportionate to its contents. Evidently Catullus was
adapting line 20 abstulit. o misero frater adempte mihi, where the emphasis on abstulit is entirely justified,
and he did not change the verb but only the prefix.
93-96 These lines were deleted by Fröhlich (1849: 265), who is followed by Trappes-Lomax (2007: 239),
but they are surely genuine: see on lines 19-24 above.
93 iucundum lumen Apparently a set phrase, witness Verg. Aen. 6.363 per caeli iucundum lumen et
auras and CE 963.1 = CIL 6.17130.1 o iucundum lumen superum, o uitae iucunda uoluptas (a funeral
inscription from Rome from 12 B.C.).
97-100 Catullus’ brother has been buried in distant Troy, far from the ashes of his relatives: this painful
point is elaborated in two distichs that resemble the lament for Catullus’ brother (discussed on lines 19-24
above) in their repetitiveness. It adds to the mournful effect of these lines that the hexameters consist of
spondees everywhere apart from their fifth foot.
97 sepulchra The principal MSS write sepulcra, but it may be better to write –chra: Gellius 2.3.3 includes
sepulchrum among a list of words to which the ueteres had added a h, and the epigraphical evidence also
seems to go this way (there is as yet no TLL entry for the word): the index to CIL 6 (the city of Rome) lists
73 aspirated forms against 53 unaspirated ones.
98 The verse may be echoed by Ov. Met. 13.615f. inferiaeque cadunt cineri cognata sepulto / corpora.
Characteristically, Ovid seems to have made a literalistic conceit (‘related bodies’, of the birds sprung from
Memnon’s body) out of Catullus’ enallage.
208