CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

5) Agius 75-78 uos nostis, quanta iam languida sedulitate,
qua anxietate meam gestierit faciem,
quo desiderio susceperit aduenientem
et quam mirandis mulserit obsequiis.
Cat. 96.1-4 Si quicquam mutis gratum acceptumue sepulcris
accidere a nostro, Calue, dolore potest,
quo desiderio ueteres renouamus amores
atque olim missas flemus amicitias …
The two passages are linked only by the recurrence of quo desiderio at the same place within the distich.
Agius’ use of quo desiderio is slightly surprising, as a saintly abbess receiving a monk could hardly be
expected to display (and to be said to display) signs of desire; but he may simply be misusing the language of
Latin love poetry. I wonder whether he has taken languida from another passage by Catullus:
Cat. 64.219f. eripit inuito mihi te, cui languida nondum
lumina sunt gnati cara saturata figura …
6) Agius 417 ast hoc femellis teneris graue forte uidetur …
Cat. 55.6f. in Magni simul ambulatione
femellas omnes, amice, prendi
Agius uses femella, a word found only in Catullus in all that survives of classical Latin literature. Ullman,
Nisbet and Trappes-Lomax treat this parallel with caution, as femella was probably not uncommon in vulgar
Latin: it is attested sporadically in inscriptions and late texts, and after the end of antiquity it gave rise to Old
French ‘femelle’ and thus to the English word ‘female’. 197 However, Agius does not regularly use
vulgarisms, so this parallel too may well be significant.
197
Ullman 1960: 1029f. (he notes that “the Dialogus was written in France” – he may have confused Corvey in
Germany with Corvey in France); Nisbet 1978: 114 n. 47; Trappes-Lomax 2007: 18. femella is attested at CIL 4.3890
PVTEOLANA PEPERIT MASCL III FEMEL II (a wall inscription from Pompeii), Hesych. in Lev. 4.22/31 p. 828c
capram de haedis femellam (from the Latin translation of a commentary by a Greek ecclesiarch of the early 5 th century)
and in glossaries: see TLL 6.1.456.61-66. The fact that it existed in the spoken language is also indicated by its
derivative femellarius, which is explained by Isid. Orig. 10.107 as feminis deditus and equated with mulierarius, and is
also found in the glossaries: see TLL 6.1.456.73.
265