CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

(c) Carmen 68 is unitary and concerned throughout with one friend called M’. (= Manius) Allius,
who is referred to alternately by his praenomen Manius and by his gentilicium Allius.
This ingenious solution was first proposed by Lachmann in his 1829 edition. Lachmann printed Mani
in lines 11 and 30 and Manius in line 66, and wrote forms of Allius elsewhere. A variant goes back
to Bernhard Schmidt, who wrote Mani in lines 11 and 30 but Allius in line 66, as the evidence of O
makes it practically certain that that was the reading of the archetype, and it is attractive to let the
poet use consistently the praenomen of the poet in this part of the elegy. 39 Schmidt is followed in this
by Kroll and Mynors.
The principal manuscripts’ mali at lines 11 and 30 cannot have arisen directly out of an original
Mani: an n does not easily become corrupted into an l. One could think of a two-stage corruption
MANI > MANLI > MALI – or a copyist or a reader could have changed forms of the rare
praenomen Manius into forms of the reasonably common gentilicia Mallius or especially Manlius. 40
That could have taken place relatively early, say, in late antiquity, so perhaps it need not worry one
too much that Manius is not among the names attested in the MSS.
What is doubtful is whether Catullus could have addressed someone alternately by his praenomen
and by his gentilicium. He does not do anything of the sort anywhere else in his poetry. He uses the
praenomen only twice, along with the cognomen at 10.30 Cinna est Gaius (the unusual formula is
apparently a result of “the speaker’s confused embarrassment” according to Fordyce ad loc.) and
together with the gentilicium at 49.2 Marce Tulli (as a formal term of address, surely used
ironically). He does not address anyone by his praenomen alone.
The praenomen is used only relatively rarely as a form of address in Latin texts. Dickey has
calculated that out of all passages in which a Roman male is addressed by one name only, the
praenomen is used in 6%, the gentilicium in 16% and the cognomen in 78%. 41 She proceeds to
analyze these occurrences in detail and notes that “[t]he normal use of the praenomen, in both
address and reference, is for the speaker’s close relatives”, but on occasion it is also used to express
contempt, to imitate the Latin spoken by Greeks (who appear to have been prone to use the
praenomen by mistake, as they only had one name and were unfamiliar with the intricacies of
Roman nomenclature), neutrally for fictitious characters, as a pseudonym, or in order to avoid
ambiguity with other potential addressees if the rest of their name was identical, and also in a
flattering sense in order to ingratiate oneself with the person addressed – and in addition to all this,
rare praenomina such as Appius or Servius could be used more freely, as if they were cognomina or
39
Schmidt 1887: CXXVI (on 68.66).
40
Morgan 2008: 149 n. 4 brings up as an example the corruption in the MSS of M’. Tullius at Livy 2.19.1. That is not
quite a straightforward parallel, as there the praenomen had been abbreviated in the MSS (see p. 34, n. 63), but the
mechanism is plausible in any case.
41
Dickey 2002: 56.
23