CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

119 The line is echoed by Virgil at Aen. 4.599 quem subiisse umeris confectum aetate parentem.
nam nec tam carum Not as much as was Protesilaus to Laodamia.
confecto aetate ‘Worn out, enfeebled by old age’ (OLD s.v. conficio, 13b), a set expression: compare Enn.
Ann. 522f. Skutsch fortis equus … nunc senio confectus quiescit, Caes. Gal. 6.31.5 aetate iam confectus, Sal.
Iug. 9.4 morbo atque aetate confectus, quom sibi finem uitae adesse intellegeret, Verg. Aen. 4.599 (see the
previous note), Col. 2.1.2 terram sicut muliebrem sexum aetate anili iam confectum, and see further TLL
4.202.50-64.
120 una … nata ‘His only daughter’: for this emphatic use of unus compare e.g. line 135 uno non est
contenta Catullo, 45.14 huic uni domino usque seruiamus and 73.6 qui me unum atque unicum amicum
habuit; see further OLD s.v. unus, 7f.
caput seri … nepotis ‘A lateborn grandson.’ The metonymical use of caput alicuius to mean aliquis was
quite widespread, especially in poetry, like the analogous use of κ ρη in Greek: compare 15.16 ut nostrum
insidiis caput lacessas and 116.4 tela infesta mittere in usque caput as well as Calvus frg. 3 FPL 3
Sardi Tigelli putidum caput uenit; see further OLD s.v. caput, 7 and TLL 3.404.3-406.34. In prose caput Gai
seems to have meant something like ‘Gaius’ person’: compare Cic. Ver. 2.2.98 cum uero abs te tui capitis
causa peteret, Pis. 30 indemnati ciuis atque integri capitis … proscriptio and Caelius ap. Cic. Fam. 8.1.4
quod illorum capiti sit! (of those spreading a false rumour).
121 diuitiis … auitis auitus can either mean ‘of one’s grandfather (auus)’, as here, or ‘ancestral’, as at
25.68 inepte, quae palam soles habere tamquam auita (i.e. as if they were venerable heirlooms). The word is
first attested in these decades (Cic. Ver. 1.1.13 nulla res tam patria cuiusquam atque auita fuit and 2.3.43
paternus honos et auitus, Var. Men. 258 Astbury auito ac patrio more precantur). Like patrius, it had a very
positive ring for the patriarchal Romans.
uix tandem Fordyce on 62.2 is surely right to interpret this set phrase, consisting as it does of uix ‘just
about’ and tandem ‘at long last’, as “implying that the event takes so long to happen that it comes near to not
happening at all”, witness Cic. Fam. 3.9.1 uix tandem legi litteras dignas Ap. Claudio, Ov. F. 4.343f.
Claudia … credita uix tandem teste pudica dea and Liv. 44.5.9 uix tandem ex insperato stabilem ad
insistendum nanctis locum. The expression is already found in the comedians (Pl. Most. 727, Ter. Andr. 470
and Phorm. 234), but Catullus seems to be the first to use it in non-comic poetry here and at 62.1f. Vesper
Olympo / exspectata diu uix tandem lumina tollit. After him it becomes firmly established in elevated poetry
(Verg. 4x, Ov. F. and Stat. Theb. 1x, Val. Fl. 3x).
122 nomen … intulit ‘He entered his name’, i.e. ‘he had his name entered’, ‘his name was entered’.
Fordyce on 64.305 quatientes corpora (‘with their bodies shaking’) explains that “by a not uncommon idiom
the subject is represented as performing an action in which he is actually the patient”, comparing also 17.24
si pote … excitare ueternum, 64.206 concussitque micantia sidera mundus, Lucr. 5.415 constiterunt imbres
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