CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

Hist. 5.20.1 pluribus nuntiis huc illuc cursantem and Ann. 15.50 cum ardente domo huc illuc cursaret
incustoditus. circumcurso is only attested during the Republic (also at Pl. Rud. 233, Ter. Heaut. 512, Lucr.
4.400) and late antiquity (see TLL 3.1127.43-63), while circumcurro is rare in the Classical period (1x
Vitruv., 1x Quint., perhaps 1x in tmesi in Verg. Aen.). The intensive aptly describes a child running to and
fro: compare Tib. 1.10.16 cursarem uestros cum tener ante pedes.
134 fulgebat crocina candidus in tunica recalls lines 70f. quo mea se molli candida diua pede / intulit et
trito fulgentem in limine plantam: Lesbia’s spellbinding beauty is mirrored by youthful looks and the divine
gleam of the god of Love.
crocina … in tunica Cupid is wearing a saffron-coloured tunic. In visual art the god is practically always
depicted naked from Attic vase-painting onwards (see LIMC s.v. ‘Eros’ and ‘Eros/Amor, Cupido’) and his
nudity is a commonplace in Augustan poetry (cfr. Prop. 1.2.8 nudus Amor formae non amat artificem, Ov.
Am. 1.10.15 et puer est et nudus amor and Met. 10.515f. qualia … / corpora nudorum tabula pinguntur
Amorum). Curiously, he does not appear to be called naked in Greek literature before Moschus 1.15 γυμν∫!
⎟λο! τ〉 γε σ∩μα (see further Fedeli 1980 on Prop. 1.2.8 and Mantero 1979: 175): for example, when Plato
describes the god in detail in the Symposium (203c-d), he calls him unshod but not naked. Earlier still,
Sappho frg. 54 Voigt had described Eros as ƒλψοντ ⁄ϕ ⎮ρ νϖ πορφυρ⇔αν περψϒμενον ξλ μυν.
Catullus may well be following her here. It is not particularly surprising that he lets the god wear not a
ξλ μυ! but a tunica, the vest-like Roman garment worn under the toga by adult citizens but also on its own
by young boys (see Wilson 1938: 55-69, and note especially plate XLII, which depicts a bronze statue of a
young boy wearing a tunica, conserved in the Capitoline Museum at Rome); the young sons of Roman
citizens could also wear a toga praetexta, but that would hardly have suited an airborne young god.
However, the tunic worn by most Romans was plain white, with or without a purple stripe, while that of
Cupid is croceus, ‘saffron-coloured’, that is, orange (on the colour see André 1949: 153-155). According to
Baehrens and Kroll, it has this colour for the sake of the contrast with Cupid’s skin, as at 61.9f. niueo gerens
/ luteum pede soccum (of the orange-yellow socks of Hymenaeus, the god of marriage); but such a marked
deviation from the norm of white and purple dress calls for a less casual explanation.
Here Cupid is wearing a saffron-coloured tunic, while in poem 61 the socks of the god of marriage are
orange-red: croceus and luteus evidently referred in origin to shades of yellow obtained with dyes prepared
from different plants, the saffron (crocus – see RE s.v. ‘Saffran’), or rather its stamina, and the weld (lutum).
Pliny makes an interesting observation about the latter colour: lutei uideo honorem antiquissimum, in
nuptialibus flammeis totum feminis concessum, et fortassis ideo non numerari inter principales, hoc est
communes maribus ac feminis, quoniam societas principatum dedit (N.H. 21.46), that is, luteum was the
traditional colour of the nuptial veil (on which see Rage-Brocard 1934: 22 and n. 2 with references, though
the scholiast on Juv. 6.225 who calls the flammea [sic!] sanguineum may be misinformed). Pliny guesses that
it might be as a result of this custom that the colour is not worn ordinarily by Roman men and women. Ovid
Met. 10.1f. croceo uelatus amictu … Hymenaeus describes the god of marriage as wearing saffron-coloured
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