CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

et flumina uim minuerunt and 6.645 pauida complebant pectora cura, Prop. 2.19.25f. sua formoso Clitumnus
flumina luco / integit and 4.3.27 diceris et macie uultum tenuasse.
For infero ‘to enter’ compare Cic. Flacc. 20 quam … facile falsas rationes inferre et in tabulas quodcumque
commodum est referre soleant, Colum. 1.7.7 nec conditum cum fide rationibus inferunt and Petron. 53.8
quicumque … mihi fundi empti fuerint … in rationes meas inferri uetuo; see further OLD s.v., 7b and TLL
7.1.37-44.
testatas … in tabulas ‘The tablets that have been confirmed by witnesses’, those of the paterfamilias’ will.
The perfect participle of the deponent testor ‘I testify’ often has a passive meaning: thus e.g. Cic. Ver. 1.48
eius modi res, ita notas, ita testatas, ita magnas, ita manifestas, Fam. 5.20.5 pecunia grauissimis …
certissimisque monimentis testata and Nep. Alc. 4.5 eiusque deuotionis quo testatior esset memoria; see
further Neue-Wagener 3.94-96.
123 impia … gaudia ‘shameless’, ‘nefarious joy’, i.e. ‘Schadenfreude’. If an onlooker rejoices at the
demise of an ancient family, (s)he is being impius not because (s)he breaks any particular bond of pietas or
social obligation, which certainly do not bind one to strangers, but because (s)he offends against decency and
the moral order of the world. Being impius need not be directed at anybody in particular, and it can even be a
character trait (TLL 7.1.623.19-40).
gaudium with the genitive for ‘joy at something’ is quite common: thus Cic. Phil. 13.45 praecipio gaudia
suppliciorum uestrorum, Ov. Met. 14.653 ut caperet spectatae gaudia formae, and see further TLL
6.1.1718.2-21.
derisi gentilis nominis is omitted after nomen in the previous line. In classical Latin the expression nomen
gentile is only found at Suet. Nero 41.1 (cfr. TLL 6.2.1867.16-19), while substantival gentile is not used
anywhere else in this sense.
This detail implies that the paterfamilias was the last representative of his gens, and had no male agnate
relatives. The young son not only preserves the family line but also keeps a venerable gentile name from
extinction – though we should not ask how the son of a daughter can do this: see on lines 119-124.
124 suscitat a Here OR read scuscitata (evidently this stood in A) and G has scusoitata. Thomson (1997)
reports in his apparatus that G 1 corrected this to scusitata, but I could find no trace of this in the manuscript.
Here the verb suggests that the vulture is shooed away from the old man’s head.
cano … capiti From Plautus onwards this alliterative expression was a set ingredient of pathetic references
to old age: compare Pl. Cas. 517f. cur amem me castigare, id ponito ad compendium. / ‘cano capite’, ‘aetate
aliena’, id ponito ad compendium, Merc. 305 tun capite cano amas, senex nequissime?, also Asin. 934, Ba.
1101 and 1208, Tib. 1.1.72f. nec amare decebit / dicere nec cano blanditias capite, Ov. F. 5.57 magna fuit
quondam capitis reuerentia cani and Pers. 1.83f. nilne pudet capiti non posse pericula cano / pellere?; see
further TLL 3.297.8-13. Catullus, who has an eye for old age (cfr. line 46), often uses canus ‘hoary-headed’:
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