CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

eassuring environment, with the windows shuttered: illa uerecundis lux est praebenda puellis, / qua timidus
latebras speret habere pudor (Am. 1.5.7f.). Elsewhere he notes that the divine adulterers Mars and Venus
behaved discreetly at the start of their liaison: sed bene concubitus primo celare solebant; / plena uerecundi
culpa pudoris erat (A.A. 2.571f.).
Taken in this sense, the epithet uerecundae is in line with what Catullus says about his mistress in this poem.
She did not come to Catullus as a bride but gave him her little gifts stealthily at night, snatched from the very
lap of her own husband (lines 143-146); she was evidently just as discreet when meeting her other lovers.
Lesbia is the only major character in Catullus’ poems whose identity he consistently conceals by the use of a
pseudonym; she may have been quite averse to publicity (cfr. Wiseman 1985: 130-137).
Here Catullus appears to expect not to be offended by Lesbia’s future liaisons, since she is, in his view,
discreet; she does not behave scandalously and might even conceal her other affairs from him as much as
from others. Of course, he was hardly in a position to object.
furta ‘Thefts’, i.e. ‘clandestine love-affairs’. Catullus is the first author to use furtum and furtiuus in this
amorous sense (furtum here and in line 140 below, furtiuus at 7.7f. sidera … cum tacet nox, / furtiuos
hominum uident amores) but if the innovation is really his, it is certainly not bold: Sallust Hist. 1 frg. 112 M.
uses furta belli. Afterwards the usage becomes widespread: thus Verg. Geo. 4.346 and Aen. 10.91, Prop.
2.2.4, 2.30.28, 4.7.15 and 4.8.34, Tib. 1.2.36, Sulpicia ap. Tib. 4.5.7, Ov. A.A. 1.33 (nos Venerem tutam
concessaque furta canemus), Met. 1.606, Petron. 100.1, etc.: see further OLD s.v. furtum, 2b and TLL
6.1.1649.48-1650.28 as well as 1644.42-63 (on furtiuus).
erae ‘Mistress’, a honorific term used normally for a goddess (OLD s. v. 1, only in poetry: thus Cat. 63.18,
63.92 and 64.395) or for the mistress of a slave (OLD s. v. 2; common in poetry but also present in prose at
Petr. 74.15 and conjectured at 105.6; not in Cat.). It is used of a beloved woman only here and at Ov. Her.
9.78 aequaque formosae pensa rependis erae (Deianeira to Hercules, referring to Omphale), in a line that
appears to echo this one – note the identical syntactical and metrical shape of the two verses, and the fact that
erae stands in the same position. The Augustan elegists prefer to call their beloved domina.
137 The verse is quoted around 1300 A.D. by the Paduan judge Hieremias da Montagnone in his book
Compendium moralium notabilium at 2.1.5. For a collation of Hieremias’ manuscripts see Ullman (1910:
81). Hieremias had access to a text that preceded the archetype (see the Introduction, pp. 75f.).
stultorum more ‘As fools do’ – a widespread use of more: cfr. Pl. Rud. 346 lenonum more, Cic. Ver. 2.4.5
more Atheniensium uirginum, Lucr. 4.1264 more ferarum, the ubiquitous more maiorum (Cic. Ver. 2.5.12,
2.5.22, etc.), and see further TLL 8.1526.54-60.
stultus and its derivatives are not vulgar, but only moderately bathetic: they belong to the standard
vocabulary of comedy (110x in Pl., 27x in Ter., 2x in Caec., 2x Titin., 2x Afran.) and of Cicero (orat. 81x,
rhet.-phil. 130x, epist. 48x), and are avoided only in the very highest registers of poetry (in Republican
tragedy only 1x each in Enn. and Naev., and not in Enn. Ann.; 3x Lucil., 4x Lucr., 5x Prop., 4x Tib., in Verg.
only 2x in Ecl., 32x Hor. but only 2x in Od., 33x in Ov. but only 2x in Met.). Catullus only uses stultus here
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