CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

querelas, Ov. Am. 1.8.66 tolle tuos tecum, pauper amator, auos and A.A. 1.718 taedia tolle tui. However, the
basic meaning of tollo is ‘to lift up’ and the verb only means ‘to remove’ when its basic meaning is excluded
by the context, or else when the removal is done by lifting up. Thus one may well expect tolle onus to mean
not ‘remove the burden’ but ‘lift up the burden’, and there are parallels for this usage: compare Ov. Met.
12.281f. inque umeros limen tellure reuulsum / tollit, onus plaustri, Vitr. 10.1.2 onera machinis pertrahuntur
ut ad altitudinem sublata conlocentur and Scaev. Dig. 19.2.61.1 euenit, ut onerata nauis in ipsa prouincia
nouem mensibus retineretur et onus impositum commisso tolleretur, and in a metaphorical sense at Cic. Ver.
2.3.1 non solum quid oneris in praesentia tollant, sed quantum in omnem uitam negoti suscipere conentur.
There is no parallel for tollere onus in the sense ‘to remove a burden’, and it is extremely doubtful whether
any Roman would ever have understood the expression in this way. In short, tolle … onus should be taken to
mean ‘lift up the burden’, ‘shoulder the burden’. For the metaphorical use of onus compare Cat. 31.7f. o quid
solutis est beatius curis, / cum mens onus reponit … ?
However, it is hard to see how the image of shouldering the burden of an aged parent could follow on the
previous line, and a number of scholars have tried to emend the text. Lachmann conjectured tremulist illa
and Haupt olla, Birt (1904: 429) proposed to write tale for tolle and Postgate (1888: 253) suggested opus for
onus, which was printed by Goold in his 1983 edition (not in that of 1973, however, nor in his 1988 revision
of the old Loeb) and was also advocated by Trappes-Lomax (2007: 243). But these proposals are not
convincing: it is not clear how comparing humans with the gods (line 141) could constitute a burden of a
trembling parent, while it would put the Latin under strain to take Postgate’s tolle … opus to mean ‘do away
with the task of’: at Propertius 3.11.22 tollere opus means ‘to raise a building’. Kroll suspects that the line
may have been transposed, but if we removed it, there would remain a lacuna, as both the preceding and the
following lines are hexameters, and it is not likely that a line should have been transposed to fill such a hole.
It is easier to assume with Marcilius that there is a lacuna before this line, which presumably once contained
the words that would have made sense of it. Fröhlich (1849: 266) suggests that lines 137 and 141 (after
which there follows no lacuna) exchanged places, and proposes to write ut, siquidem diuis homines
componier aequum est, / saepe etiam Iuno, maxima caelicolum (141 and 138) and ne nimium simus
stultorum more molesti: / “ingratum tremuli tolle parentis onus!” (137 and 144). However, his
reconstruction of the text is problematic in more ways than one (there is no need for an introductory phrase
before saepe etiam; it does not solve anything to put line 144 in quotation marks) and it is hard to imagine
how two lines could have exchanged places over a considerable length of text.
This means that the most economical solution to the problem is Marcilius’ lacuna. There need not have gone
lost more than one single distich: this much is suggested by the apparent correlation between the two
conjunctions nec in the previous and in the following line, either of which introduce a circumstance that
makes the infidelities of Catullus’ mistress even less reproachable than those of Jupiter.
It is not easy to reconstruct the run of thought, but perhaps not impossible. In all of lines 135-148 Catullus
considers his own position regarding Lesbia’s infidelities, in what almost amounts to an address to himself
(note line 136 feremus, 137 ne … simus and 143 mihi), so he could well have directed the imperative tolle in
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