CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

fertur ‘They say’: this highlights that Catullus is simply re-telling a story, a myth. He resorts to the device
often: compare quale ferunt Grai in line 109 below as well as 2B.1f. tam gratum est mihi, quam ferunt
puellae / pernici aureolum fuisse malum, 64.1f. Peliaco quondam prognatae uertice pinus / dicuntur liquidas
Neptuni nasse per undas, 64.19 tum Thetidis Peleus incensus fertur amore (i.e. probably incensus esse
fertur), 64.76 nam perhibent olim, 64.124 saepe illam perhibent, 64.212 namque ferunt olim.
undique The line is half a foot too short in the primary MSS; one should add something to fill the
gap – but what? The most convincing remedy is the Renaissance supplement simul, as simul undique is
found in the same position within the hexameter at Verg. Aen. 11.610 exhortantur equos, fundunt simul
undique tela, Lucan. 7.54 indulgens regno, qui tot simul undique gentis, Stat. Theb. 5.161 pectora
congestisque auidae simul undique dextris and Val. Fl. 1.121 feruere cuncta uirum coetu, simul undique
cernit (for the phrase cfr. also Livy 9.14.9, 30.3.3 and 36.10.7). cuncta was proposed by Fröhlich (1849: 265)
but is less euphonius than one would wish (cuncta undique), while Eldick’s lecta would clash with
deseruisse focos: the homes were left empty. Lipsius’ unde is unattractive because it would cause a
lengthening in arsi in the second syllable of fertur, because unde undique is not attested, and because if it
did, it would presumably have meant ‘from somewhere or other’ like unde unde, while we know that the
people in question arrived from their homes. Vossius tried another remedy and proposed to turn fertur into
feruentior, but fertur is a quintessentially Catullan form (see ad loc.) and it is essential because it governs the
indirect statement.
pubes Thus also 64.4 Argiuae robora pubis and 64.267 Thessala pubes. When it meant ‘youth’ and not
‘loins’ it was an elevated word, proper to high poetry (inc. trag. 32f. omnes Danai atque Mycenenses, /
Attica pubes; later at Tib. 1.7.5 pubes Romana, Verg. Aen. 2.477 Scyria pubes, etc.), official formulae (Pl.
Pseud. 126 pube praesenti in contione, where a public crier is imitated) and pathetic rhetoric (Cic. Mil. 61
totam rem publicam, omnem Italiae pubem, cuncta populi Romani arma).
102 Graia The principal MSS write greca or gręca and most editors duly print Graeca; Lucian Mueller’s
emendation Graia is accepted by Baehrens and Goold. In comedy, satire and prose Graecus is either the only
form attested (thus e.g. in Cato the Elder, Terence, Lucilius, in Horace’s Satires and in Cicero’s speeches,
apart from poetic quotations) or it is by far the more common form (10x against 1x in Plautus), while in more
elevated poetry Graius is either more common than Graecus (4x against 2x in Ennius, 7x against 2x in
Cicero and 45x against 10x in Ovid; however 8x against 8x in Horace’s poems except the Satires) or it is the
only form attested (thus in Naevius and Pacuvius, in Accius’ tragedies, in Lucretius, Virgil, Tibullus and
probably also Propertius, depending on how 4.8.38 is reconstructed). Catullus does not use Graecus
anywhere else, but he has Graia at 66.58 (also at the start of the pentameter) and Grai at 68.109, just eight
lines from here. Since the present passage is notably elevated, he can be expected to have used the poetic
adjective here as well, and it could easily have been regularized to the everyday form.
At 66.57 the principal MSS write gratia and Baehrens restored the spelling Graiia; in view of this Trappes-
Lomax (2007: 240) argues that here too we should write Graiia. But it is the question whether any value
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