CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

First, it is hard to see how the new-born grandson could have been the only possible heir to his grandfather’s
property (on Roman inheritance law see further Neue Pauly s.v. ‘Erbrecht’, III, and OLD s.v. ‘inheritance’,
with references). The legacy of a Roman citizen who died intestate (i.e. without leaving behind a legally
valid will) passed to his sui heredes, that is, to those of his descendants of either sex, whether natural or
adopted, who were in his patria potestas, and also to his wife, if she was in his manus. In our case it would
be the question whether the daughter of the paterfamilias was in the patria potestas of her father or in the
manus of her husband. In the former case she would have been per definition among her father’s sui heredes
and would have had to be named in his will for it to be valid (see Neue Pauly, loc. cit.). In the latter case she
would no longer have counted as a close relative, and due to the lex Voconia of 169 B.C. she would have
been ineligible to be declared an heir by a citizen belonging to the highest census class (with property worth
at least 100,000 as: see Neue Pauly s.v. lex Voconia). In this case, however, it would have been possible to
name her husband as an heir; and if he was no longer alive, then she would normally have passed back to her
father’s patria potestas and become a sui heres again. The only truly problematic possibility would have
been if her father or her husband would have freed her from his power through emancipatio, if her husband
had died, and no other suitable male heir was been at hand – but this is implausible: if she was an only child,
it would have been singularly imprudent for the family to let her marry cum manu or undergo emancipatio,
as this would have disqualified the only available heir to the property.
Equally problematic is the reference to the ‘vulture’ who is hoping to lay his hands on the old man’s
inheritance. The person is evidently a captator, a seeker of inheritances, who is a familiar figure in Roman
literature under the Empire (see Hor. Sat. 2.5.57, Petron. 125.3 and 141.1, Sen. Benef. 4.20.3, Juv. 5.98, 6.40
and 10.202 with 12.114). A captator was believed, probably not without reason, to use an impressive
repertoire of ploys to wheedle a rich man into naming him as his heir. Here the paterfamilias is overjoyed at
the birth of a grandson who can inherit his property, and he appears to be highly conscious of the possibility
that his inheritance may fall into the wrong hands. It is unlikely that such a person should ever have named a
captator as his heir. Catullus appears to have combined the Roman stereotype of the captator with Pindar’s
image of a father worried that his estate may fall into the hands of strangers.
Finally, the young grandson has his name entered in his grandfather’s will and thus restores glory to the
name of the family that has long been derided (derisi gentilis, line 123). In fact in ancient Rome a son took
the gentile name of his father and belonged legally to his paternal family. When the continuity of the family
name was threatened, the Romans resorted to adoption, often of the testamentary kind – but the present
passage can hardly be taken to refer to such a procedure, since the young grandson sees his own nomen
entered in the tablets of the will (line 122), which suggests that he was simply named as his grandfather’s
heir.
Catulllus took an image from Greek literature and added to it a series of Roman elements, without paying
much attention to realism or to legal niceties. Still, the image which he created may be unrealistic, but it
conveys dramatically the joy of a family precariously near extinction at the birth of an heir.
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