CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

desertum in line 6). The second pair appear to describe not Manlius’ misfortune, but its consequences, or
rather aspects of its aftermath: he lies alone at night, awake, deprived of love and sex, and cannot distract
himself by reading classical poetry.
Manlius has suffered some sort of grave misfortune. The phrase fortuna casuque oppressus acerbo would
seem to imply that the disaster had been brought upon him by an external cause that is perhaps an impersonal
force – but Catullus may simply be mitigating the blow by describing it in these terms. It is less humiliating
to suffer at the hands of the ineluctable powers of nature than at those of other human beings, or indeed of
oneself. The shipwreck metaphor is similarly hard to understand. It would imply that Manlius needs to be
rescued ‘from the threshold of death’ (a mortis limine, line 4). But from his continuing desire to make love
and to read good poetry he does not appear to be on the verge of death, unless he is contemplating suicide; so
once again the words of the poem may not reflect on the nature of Manlius’ situation, but at most on its
seriousness.
One word from the rest of the poem could cast further light on Manlius’ misfortune. Afflicted as he is, Venus
does not let him find rest in sleep, as he lies all alone in his bachelor’s bed, desertum in lecto caelibe (lines
5f.). As a perfect participle describing Manlius, desertum resembles oppressus and eiectum and could also be
taken to refer to Manlius’ misfortune – but once again this is not inevitable. It complicates matters that
desertum could mean two things: ‘abandoned’ by one particular lover, or ‘shunned’ by all potential lovers, or
even by all and sundry (see ad loc.). The first interpretation would seem the most likely here in view of the
erotic context, and in this case we could conveniently identify the departure of Manlius’ lover with the
misfortune that has befallen him. However, it is not inevitable; and since (as we shall soon see) Manlius is
asking Catullus to procure him unspecified erotic delights, one could argue that he was not broken-hearted
after being abandoned by a lover, but sexually frustrated in general.
Here ends the evidence. Scholars have proposed a broad range of theories about Manlius’ misfortunes. Most
interpreters believe that they were of an amorous nature. Parthenius proposed that Manlius’ wife or mistress
must have died. This theory has found favour with a series of scholars, most notably with Schwabe, who read
poem 68a in conjunction with carmen 61: he believed that L. Manlius Torquatus, whose marriage is
celebrated in poem 61, subsequently lost his wife and smitten with grief he wrote to Catullus, whose reply
we have in poem 68a. 99 A number of scholars believe Manlius to have been abandoned by his beloved,
others think that she (or perhaps he, as one might add) must have left him only temporarily, while others still
99 Schwabe 1862: 343f. Manlius’ misfortune is reconstructed as the death of his mistress also by Palladius in his 1496
edition as well as Scaliger 1577, Doering 1788-1792, Ellis 1889 2 and Guglielmino 1915.
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