CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

original text did not contain any form of the name Allius; and a miscount of the minims in
desertoinmanli written in a minuscule script can be excluded because as we have seen, a manuscript
from no later than the 6 th century A.D. must have read qua me allius at line 41. Moreover, if one
reads quam mallius or quam manlius in line 41, then the first iuuerit in the following line will not
govern any accusative and will become unintelligible (see the note ad loc.). Calphurnius printed qua
mallius, but it is hard to see how that could have yielded the transmitted reading quam fallius.
This line of reconstruction raises a whole series of problems that do not arise at all if one writes
Allius in lines 41-148. It is best abandoned.
(b) Carmen 68 is unitary and is addressed to someone who had two gentilicia, Manlius or Mallius
and Allius.
This was the view held by Scaliger, who explained in his Castigationes that “Alterum uero
cognomen huic Manlio fuit Alius, uel Allius.” 36
Many Romans had two or more cognomina – one should just think of P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus
and L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi. However, the names Manlius, Mallius and Allius are gentilicia. During
the Republic only two or three men are attested with a double gentilicium, presumably because they
have been adopted, and in each case “the original name” (i.e. the latter one among the pair of
gentilicia, standing in the same position as adoptive cognomina in -ianus) “is a non-Roman name
ending in -ienus, perhaps more liable to be used as a cognomen than a nomen ending in -ius”. 37 It is
only during the Empire that double gentilicia become less rare. 38
It is a problem, then, that in this period there are attested no individuals with two common Roman
gentilicia comparable to our hypothetical Manlius (or Mallius) Allius, or Allius Manlius (or
Mallius). If in fact there existed such people, they will have been very few. If they did exist, it is still
very unlikely that a poet should have referred to such a person within the same poem sometimes by
one gentilicium and sometimes by the other one: his readers were used to people having one
gentilicium only, after all, and if they were not provided with information to the contrary (e.g. the
double name Manlius Allius), they would surely have thought that Manlius and Allius were two
different people, as they were living in a world where at least 99% of people had one gentilicium
only. All this argues strongly against Scaliger’s hypothesis.
36
Scaliger 1577: 84.
37
On double gentilicia under the Republic see Salomies 1992: 12 (whence the quotation) with Shackleton Bailey 1975:
82 and 101-103. The men in question are C. Annius Bellienus, C. Aelius Paetus Staienus or Staienus Paetus and
perhaps Q. Salvius Salvidienus. Adoptive cognomina such as *Bellienianus might have appeared long and cumbersome
and, in view of the rarity of these gentilicia, unnecessary.
38
On double gentilicia under the Empire see Salomies 1992: 24-42.
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