CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

is the rest of the reconstruction any more convincing: it is not clear how a quo could have slipped from the
hexameter to the pentameter, nor who would have inserted aufert, and why. We need a less invasive remedy.
There have been proposed a great many substitutes for terram dedit. Schwabe thought of (nobis)met eram
dedit, which is ingenious but unconvincing: –met gives a degree of emphasis to the preceding pronoun,
whether or not it is used as a metrical stopgap, as at Cat. 64.182 coniugis an fido consoler memet amore, but
here nobis lacks all emphasis. Owen’s quam tradidit is very far indeed from the transmitted text (how could
quam tra– have given rise to terram?), quam tradidit aufert would hardly constitute a ground for a honorable
mention on part of Catullus, and quam would have to be elaborated in some way, for which there is no space
within the distich. Ellis made two conjectures, out of which rem condidit is hard to understand, while
dextram dedit would be too trivial and could hardly be mentioned in one breath with omnia nata bona (or
else bono). Baehrens’ taedam dedit is unconvincing both because it is too abrupt as a reference to the start of
an affair and because it is imprecise – Catullus was all too aware that he was not married to Lesbia, and he
has just stated as much in lines 143-146 – and his other proposal curam dedit is no better: Catullus can
hardly have thought that he fell in love with Lesbia through the agency of somebody else: someone may
have introduced them to each other, but he fell in love with her because of what she was like, or how she
seemed to be. Birt’s terriculam dedit has already been discussed above under et qui principio. Lenchantin de
Gubernatis’ terram dat et aufert is problematic because principio can hardly accompany a present tense,
unless the giving would be a repeated action, which would make things even more complicated: it would
make sense in a text from the Middle Ages as a respectful reference to God, but not in a poem of Catullus’.
Kinsey (1967: 45) proposes erat omnia frater; he would write the distich like this:
et qui principio nobis erat omnia frater
a quo sunt primo dulcia nata bona.
He comments (ibid. n. 1) that “[a]ny awkwardness in making felix refer to the dead may be attributed to
Catullus’ desire to get the brother in the list” – but he does not see that sitis felices in line 155 is a farewell
greeting at the close of the letter. Finally, Ferrero (1955: 153 and 439) suggests that the entire distich should
be re-written as follows:
et qui principio nobis se era dedit et infert (or else: et qua principio …)
a qua sunt primo omnia nata bona,
He takes both clauses to describe the domus mentioned in line 156 and interprets qui as a locative meaning
‘in which place’. However, qui does not appear to be attested in this sense, and even if one writes et qua,
there arise a number of problems: as Cremona (1967: 262f.) has pointed out, the historic presents dedit and
infert would be out of place one line after lusimus and one line before sunt nata; the phrase se dedit et infert
‘she surrenders and goes in’ would be puzzling; and it is not plausible that while each of the series of ets in
258