CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

Cat. 77.3-6 sicine subrepsti mi, atque intestina perurens
ei misero eripuisti mi omnia nostra bona?
eripuisti, heu heu nostrae crudele uenenum
uitae, heu heu nostrae pestis amicitiae.
One should note the resemblance between Catullus’ nostrae … uenenum uitae and Agius’ nostrae dulcedo …
uel gloria uitae. Agius appears to have used not one but two Catullan passages as his model – two passages
that echoed each other note omnia nata bono at 68.158 and omnia nostra bona at 77.4), as a matter of fact;
one passage appears to have reminded him of another.
3) Agius 71f. nam minime, ueluti est dignum, nunc dicere possum,
quanta ego uobiscum commoda perdiderim.
Cat. 68.21-23 tu mea tu moriens fregisti commoda, frater,
(22f. = 94f.) tecum una tota est nostra sepulta domus,
omnia tecum una perierunt gaudia nostra …
Catullus had used the striking word commoda to describe what he had lost along with his dead brother;
Agius uses the same word, and his uobiscum … perdiderim resembles Catullus’ tecum una … sepulta est and
tecum una perierunt. It is significant that in Agius’ poem this passage and the following two follow
immediately on one another; we seem to have a cluster of Catullan reminiscences.
4) Agius 73f. uos melius nostis, quanto me semper amore,
quantis incolumis fouerit officiis.
Cat. 68.41f. Non possum reticere, deae, qua me Allius in re
iuuerit et quantis iuuerit officiis.
Once again Agius uses similar (quanto ~ qua) as well as identical language (quantis … officiis, the latter
word at the same place within the distich) to make a similar point, how much the person in question has
helped him. At Cat. 68.42 Cornelissen conjectured fouerit officiis unawares of the parallel in Agius, and on
the grounds of the resemblance between the two passages Nisbet defended fouerit, which was accepted by
Goold and Trappes-Lomax; nevertheless, it may be better to retain iuuerit (see further ad loc.).
264