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    Classical Association of Canada

    A New Text of CatullusAuthor(s): G. P. GooldSource: Phoenix, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Autumn, 1958), pp. 93-116Published by: Classical Association of CanadaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1086234 .

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    A NEW TEXT OF CATULLUSG. P. GOOLD

    IF contemporary fashions in literature permitted one to speak of thepopularity of Latin authors, it would undoubtedly be correct to describeCatullus as being today the most popular poet of ancient Rome. Noportion of any classical author is more widely read or more deeplyappreciated by students at school or college and by their teachers thanselected poems of Catullus. Indeed, in this year of 1958 he probablyhas more readers than ever before, and next year the number will beyet higher. Surprisingly enough, no classical writer survived the middleages by a narrower margin, for we owe the poems to a single manuscriptwhich was lost soon after its discovery. Moreover, the text bristles withcorruptions from beginning to end; and no modern edition, howeverconservative, is likely to appear with less than five or six hundred con-jectural emendations of the text. Consequently, the appearance of anew text of Catullus,1 especially when it is as excellent as the newOxford Classical Text edited by the Corpus Professor of Latin in theUniversity of Oxford, calls for more than the usual brief review. It maybe said at once that this text is superior to all others, and no teacherof Latin should be without it.Two readings may be singled out for special commendation. Both arequite certain, no edition in currency gives either, and the poems inwhich they occur are included in every selection. The brother of Marru-cinian Asinius is at 12.8f. described as leporum/disertus puer acfacetiarum(so GR, and most editors). Now Latin idiom does not admit genitivesof quality without an adjective (uir summae sapientiae, but not uirsapientiae). The genitives must therefore be construed with the adjective.In Kinchin Smith and Melluish's Selections the phrase is imaginativelyrendered "with a flow of wit and humour," the genitives being identifiedas objective. However, while expressions like laudator temporis actipermit of a paraphrase is qui laudat tempus actum, the phrase leporumdisertus cannot be so elucidated: the genitive cannot in fact be objective,since disertus carries with it no more active force than interfectus.Passera-tius' differtus, which Mynors reads ("bursting with charm and wit"),gives just what is wanted, and is only a hair's breadth removed fromO's reading dissertus:f is often miswritten as s, e.g., 30.1 false Catullus,salse mss. Munro observes that differtus seems to have a bad sense, butthis, though often, is not always true. Of course, any word meaning"stuffed full of" is bound to be frequently applied in disparagement, but

    'R. A. B. Mynors (ed.), Catulli Carmina (Oxford Classical Texts). Oxford: ClarendonPress; Toronto: Oxford University Press. 1958. Pp. xvi, 113 ($1.60).93

    THE PHOENIX, Vol. 12 (1958) 3.

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    THE PHOENIXthis does not preclude an application without this disparagement.Catullus is writing in colloquial and even slangy Latin, and it is charac-teristic of the sermo cotidianus of any language that in speech as opposedto print the plain and simple word gives way to the coloured and exag-gerated: so equus was replaced by caballus and paraueredus, and ClassicalLatin by Vulgar Latin. Just as in referring to a full auditorium we mightsay "a packed house," so too Catullus here uses differtus with no moremeaning or implication than plenus.Though Lewis and Short are neither the first nor the last to trip upover the gender of Sirmio, the mistake is of less consequence thananother arising from the last three verses of the thirty-first poem, whichin Ellis' text appear as follows:

    12 salue o uenusta Sirmio atque hero gaude;13 gaudete vosque o Lydiae lacus undae;14 ridete quidquid est domi cachinnorum.Verse 12: "rejoice because of your master" is at variance with our poet'susual practice, which is to have an explanatory epithet for the person orthing in which joy is taken (55.20 uerbosa gaudet Venus loquella; 68.103Paris abducta gauisus . . . moecha; 95.10 populus tumido gaudeat Anti-macho). Verse 13: the conjunction "and," be it et or -que, is never post-poned by Catullus (well, hardly ever; and there is in any case a compli-cation at 57.2). Verse 14: grammatically, quidquid .. . cachinnorum canstand for a vocative plural (cf. 3.2), but the line thus construed is sodevoid of point ("laugh, O laughter!") that most critics have realizedthat undae must be the subject of ridete: but then the asyndeton betweengaudeteand rideteis rather misleading. All these difficulties were brilliantlyremoved by Bergk who emended gaudete to gaudente (i.e., gaudete): thecorruption is of the commonest (e.g., 9.2 antistas mss, antistans Avantiusand all editors), the correction of the slightest. With the necessaryrepunctuation the passage becomes in Mynors' text (for clarity's sakeI alter his comma after gaudente to a semi-colon):

    salue, o uenusta Sirmio, atque ero gaudegaudente; uosque, o Lydiae lacus undae,ridete quidquid est domi cachinnorum."Hail, lovely Sirmio! Rejoice in your master's joy! And you, ye watersof the Lydian lake, ripple forth all the merriment there is at home!" Itmust be stated in fairness to Bergk that he did not read the passagequite thus. Catullus had clearly shaken the dust of Asia Minor off hisboots with no regrets; so welcome was the sight of home to him thatthis moment's happiness was worth it all. Bergk did not believe that inthese circumstances Catullus called his lake (still less its waters) Lydianany more than his Lares and Penates Cappadocian. Bergk acceptedB. Guarinus' uosque lucidae "and you, glistening waters of the lake."

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    A NEW TEXT OF CATULLUSOur text of Catullus reposes on a single manuscript or archetype (V)known to have existed at Verona in the fourteenth century. Though Vitself is now lost, copies of it handed the text down to posterity: andthe first problem in the textual criticism of our author is to isolate andclassify all mss independently derived from V. Mynors' edition solvesthis problem once and for all by providing enough ms readings to proveHale's hitherto unsubstantiated claim (TAPA 53 [1922] 111) that "allthe manuscripts except O G R are derived from these three, and . . . wemay and must cut off the whole web below the manuscripts O G R."A curious and significant feature of the tradition deserves fuller mentionthan is given by Mynors (pp. v-viii). The archetype seems to have

    frequently exhibited interlinear readings in the body of the text.2 Theseinterlinear readings comprise variants (some genuine, some interpola-tions) and glosses; and this feature of the tradition had already left itsmark on the text when the archetype was written. At 66.6 dulcis amorgurodeuocetaereothe mss have guioclerowhich must have been the readingof V: Froehlich and Housman explain this as guro glossed by circo whichin a corrupted form has come into the text. At 66.70 lux aut canae thetirestituem (so the mss) Catullus had written autem, but -em was writtenabove the line, whence it was erroneously transferred to the end of theverse and displaced the ending of the verb restituit. Mynors might havementioned an attractive conjecture which presupposes this source ofcorruption at 116.7 contra nos tela ista tua euitabimus amicta: the last2A good deal of speculation devoted to the pagination of the archetype has not asyet led to any solid conclusion: Lachmann posited a ms of 30 lines to the page, andactually used this lineation to number the lines of his text; but undoubted difficultiessoon led to rival schemes (Bergk's archetype hovered between 26 and 27 lines to the

    page, Westphal's was a more stable affair of 27 lines to the page, while Froehner andEllis agreed in conjecturing an archetype with two columns of 16 lines each to thepage). It is necessary, however, to point out that the ms which we may possibly beable to reconstruct is not the archetype, but an ancestor of it. Conceivably the lacunaein the sixty-first poem are to be explained as follows: there was once a ms of 32 linesto the page, and in it this poem was written in two columns somewhat thus:

    (76) claustra pandite ianuae complexum sed abit dies (105)(77) uirgo adest uiden utfaces prodeas noua nupta (106)(78) splendidas quatiunt comas o cubile quod omnibus (107)... 3 missing lines .. ... 3 missing lines ...(79) tardet ingenuus pudor candido pede lecti (108)(80) quem tamen magis audiens quae tuo ueniunt ero (109)(81) flet quod ire necesse est quanta gaudia quae uaga (110)The next scribe who came along copied out this text line by line (76, 105; then 77,106; and so on), and here after copying out splendidas quatiunt comas o cubile quodomnibus missed three lines (thus three verses of each column). Some attentive readerwill point out that four verses (78a, 78b, 78c, 78d) are lost after 78, so I must explainthat 78b had very likely been lost earlier: some of the pherecrateans are refrains, andtwo of them (91 and 138) have certainly dropped out. If verse 91, like verse 78b, hadbeen lost earlier also, the reconstructed ms would have contained 31 lines to the page.

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    THE PHOENIXword is patently false, but the sense of the line is not in doubt, "I shallsucceed in dodging the missiles you launch against me" (i.e., tela contranos acta); Baehrens here supposes that mi was written by way of explana-tion over dabis (or rather dabi') in the next verse and was swallowed upby acta to form amicta. Also worthy of consideration is Friedrich'sattempt on another obelized passage, 66.59 hi dii uen ibi: the subjectof this sentence is not mentioned for five lines; then we discover fromdiua (verse 64) that it is Venus; uen, argues Friedrich, came from a glossuenus which left only hidi . . . idi out of hic li(qu)idi; di is regularlyspelt dii in the Middle Ages, and idi was sure to be altered to ibi.For the sixty-second poem we enjoy the added testimony of T, aninth-century ms. Independent, of course, of V, it enables us to predicatecertain features of the latest ancestor common to itself and V. Forexample, at 62.7 this ancestor, I will call it A, had i6es (i.e., imbres), amisreading of iges (i.e., ignes). More significant is the fact that even atthis early stage the text had been corrupted by interlinear variants. Aclearly read at 62.35 Hespere, mutato comprendis nomine eosdem, wherefor the last word Schrader's Eous is now universally accepted. It hadfirst been corrupted to eos. But where did the further corruption eosdemcome from? According to Baehrens, the verb was originally not com-prendis but deprendis ("you catch in the act"), and a corrector hadinserted de above the false prefix cor-; thence it was moved to the endof the verse where it coalesced with eos to form eosdem (cf. note on66.70 above). Possibly, as Friedrich points out, deprendis is simply agloss on comprendis, rare in the sense it has to bear here. However thismay be, it is more than likely that A had a variant consurgerein verse 6,and that in verses 53 and 55 the corrupt verbs have been caused by theintrusion of an interlinear ac.

    To return to the cardinal mss: the Oxoniensis (0, 14th-century) wascopied from V, but V's interlinear readings were usually ignored. On theother hand, X, another copy of V (which was made for Coluccio Salutatiin 1375), preserved most and possibly all of these variants, and addedothers of its own manufacture: though X is now lost, two copies areextant, the Sangermanensis (G, also 1375) and the Romanus (R, late14th-century). R is perhaps the better copy, for it more often preservesas variants (R2) X's variant readings (X2): G not seldom takes itschoice. I subjoin a simplified stemma codicum (simplified, I say, becausein the first place O does occasionally give variants, and in the secondX2 sometimes comes from V, and X from V2, etc.).A few readings will illustrate the nature of the interlinear tradition. At61.225 we note: bonlei 0, bolnei X, bonei X2: V had bonei (Catullus'spelling of the masculine vocative plural of bonus) with i (the usualspelling) written over the n; mistaken as I (cf. piplabat for pipiabat at3.10), the i was differently inserted by O and X; as an afterthought X

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    A NEW TEXT OF CATULLUS

    Apoem \?62only / 12./ V./

    // 2.2X / /@ \2x

    T O G Rnoted as a variant bonei, which R2preserves. At 68.46 V had the meaning-less certa corrected by the letter a overhead: O incorporated the letterand gives cerata; G gives the linear reading certa only; R, here a paragonof virtue, gives certa al. carta, which must be what X and V had. At84.7, where Catullus wrote hoc, we note: hecOR2,hic GR: almost certainlythe archetype had hec with the false conjecture hic written overhead;O's scribe was content with hec; but X preferred hic, citing hec as avariant; and once again R, but not G, has preserved it. Notice that Xgives V2 and that X2 gives V. Sometimes we are confronted with indica-tions that some of the readings which Mynors denotes by r representa genuine tradition going back to the archetype; and Hale (p. 111) wasevidently of like opinion: "the text of Catullus must be based on OGRand R2 (= Mynors' r). R2 was Collucio Salutati. We have of course thedelicate task of distinguishing between what he preserved and what hechanged or added." At 3.9 we have a rare instance of O giving variants,silens al. siliens: the archetype clearly had the same, whence GR givesilens, presumably the reading of X. But why did X2 not preserve thevariant? The answer is that it almost certainly did, and was the sourceof "siliens r." But had it not been for the chance and abnormal preserva-tion of the variant by O, everyone would have ascribed r's reading toconjecture.3

    30'Onexample may serve to indicate the bearing of these minutiae on criticism. Intranscribing abstersisti from his exemplar at 99.8, the scribe of the archetype passedfrom the letter r, not to the s immediately following, but to the s of the termination,thus producing abster(si)sti or rather abstersti. But he noticed his mistake as he madeit, and wrote the omitted letters si above the line between r and s. The scribe of 0,according to his practice, ignored the "variant" and copied the word as abstersti. Thescribe of X did not ignore the "variant": as he frequently did elsewhere, he preferredit; here he thought -si was an alternative to -sti, and he consequently copied a(b)stersi(a normal inflection of abstergeo). No one has explained these variants before, nor hasa normal inflection of abstergeo). No one has explained these variants before, nor has

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    THE PHOENIXMynors accepts over eight hundred emendations of the text as givenby the cardinal mss OGR (and he is even so conservative). As it throws

    not a little light on the history of Catullian scholarship I reproduce achronological list of the originators of these corrections. Mynors' judge-ment, which naturally determines the list, gives a very accurate picture,except for the achievement of Baehrens which falls little short of Bergk's.I have ignored a few trifles like Pastrengicus' arida at 1.2, orthographicalrefinements like Ellis' (or rather Schwabe's) iniacta at 64.153, and(perhaps unjustly) conjectures consisting wholly of interpretation likeHousman's punctuation of 64.324; and for the sake of simplicity Irecord three conjectures against their sponsor Robortellus, though hehimself ascribes them to other sources. The dates are not meant to bemore than a "visual aid." When a scholar's emendations are dividedover several years, I usually give the earliest date. So I record all Avantius'corrections against 1495, though many of them fall as late as 1535. Thereis a reason for every date I give (Heinsius', for example, is that of hisdeath, for his conjectures were published posthumously in 1742), butone or two are little more than guesses and may be several years out.The first group of emendations consists of (1) corrections (r) writtenby a later hand or hands in R; (2) corrections (m) contained in theMarcianus, a fifteenth-century copy of R; and (3) corrections (g) writtenby a late hand in G. A fair number of corrections (rng) are common toall three sources, and wherever this is the case there seems no reasonto doubt either Hale's theory that m took them from r or that g receivedthem from m in turn, or perhaps even from r (gr in Mynors' apparatusat 61.13 I assume to be a misprint for rg). In a future edition theyshould be recorded against r only, though Mynors was quite right toreveal the dependence of mg upon r. The important point is that overa hundred of these conjectures have as their origin r, which means inall probability Collucio Salutati. However, as I argued above, somecertainly-possibly many-are not conjectures, but part of a genuinetradition. Fourteenth century (end of) - 121about 1400 rmg (28) about 1400 m (9)about 1400 r (77) about 1400 g (7)

    From the mss OGR is derived a multitude of renaissance copies, whichcontain a vast number of emendations of the text. Mynors has himselfexamined over eighty of these mss and has taken into account tenanyone explained why Catullus should go out of his way to use the abnormal formabstersti, which does not scan, and reject the normal form abstersisti, which does. But,for all that, the corrupt and unmetrical abstersti has stood in most editions since 1893:and the expulsion of such certain readings as abstersisti for such ridiculous ones asabstersti is described as "a recoil from the prurigo coniciendi which vitiated nineteenth-century criticism."

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    A NEW TEXT OF CATULLUSothers; and in what is probably the most valuable and certainly themost laborious part of his work he has attempted to distinguish variousgroups of emendations, which he denotes by Greek letters. Did we butknown them, we could assign to each of these letters the name of someItalian humanist (or humanists). Some one hundred and fifty correctionswhich Mynors partially sorts out into two groups, date the richestharvest of Catullian emendation to a little before 1460. Thus in lessthan a century the cardinal mss were corrected in well over four hundredplaces, and this before any edition of our author had been printed.

    beforebeforebeforebeforebefore

    14121424145214521452

    a'7

    Fifteenth century (i) - 322(16) before 1460(33) before 1460(24) before 1460(23) before 1468(19)

    r/0(49)(50)(56)(52)

    Little more than fifty years from the date of the editio princeps sufficedto accumulate a further two hundred corrections, which Mynors ofnecessity records against printed sources more often than the names ofscholars. Fifteenth century (ii) - 2211472 (ed. princeps) (25)1473 (ed. Parmensis) (17)ed. Rom. (6)H. Barbarus (2)Calph. (ed. Vicentina) (45)B. Guarinus (26)

    Parth. (ed. Brixiensis) (15)Politianus (3)Beroaldus (1)cod. Edinensis (1)

    149514951496149815021503151515151521

    SabellicusAvantiusPall. (ed. Veneta)LaetusAldinaPontanusColotiusAldina alteraA. Guarinus

    Avantius' third edition, of about 1535, brings to a close the Renaissanceperiod of emendation. Convincing evidence of the skill and thoroughnessof the Italian humanists is provided by the small and progressivelydwindling number of conjectures achieved in the next three centuries:Scaliger, Heinsius, and Bentley claim only twenty-five between them.

    1548 Robortellus1553 Victorius1554 Muretus1561 Faernus

    Sixteenth century (most of) - 53(3) 1564 Turnebus(3) 1566 Sigicellus(9) 1566 Statius(3) 1577 Scaliger

    1472147314751481148114851485148914911495

    (1)(37)(9)(3)(18)(2)(1)(1)(8)

    (3)(1)(17)(14)

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    THE PHOENIXSeventeenth century - 281604 Marcilius (1) 1681 Heinsius (5)

    1608 Passeratius (2) 1684 Vossius (11)1621 Venator (2) 1697 Bentley (6)1668 Palmerius (1)Eighteenth century - 71702 ed. Cantab. (1) 1764 Eldik (1)1738 Corr. de Allio (1) 1788 Santen (1)1761 Schrader (3)

    Most corrections since 1800 are the contribution of the great age ofGerman scholarship; and the record shows that the first place amongsuccessful emendators of Catullus (if we exclude the early correctors asfalling outside the limits of a just comparison) belongs to Karl Lachmann,beyond dispute the finest Latin critic of the century. Mynors acceptsonly two conjectures made in the last fifty years, and of these it shouldbe noted that one (pinguis 39.11) is a glossary reading which was knownto Turnebus, whilst the other (uilia 66.78) is owed to a recent papyrusdiscovery.Nineteenth century - 601822 Orioli (1) 1862 Buecheler (1)1823 Sillig (1) 1862 Schwabe (2)1829 Lachmann (21) 1870 L. Mueller (2)1837 Haupt (5) 1871 Maehly (1)1849 Hand (1) 1874 Baehrens (3)1849 Froehlich (4) 1878 Ellis (2)1852 Meineke (1) 1879 Sch6ll (1)1854 Bergk (10) 1879 A. Palmer (1)1855 Heyse (3)Twentieth century - 21919 Lindsay (1) 1949 Lobel (1)

    Conformably to the pattern of the OCT series, there is in this apparatuslittle or no annotation. But the editor's skill and candour enable us todivine his views even to fine shades of opinion. The use of the obelus isrestricted to passages where the word or words in question cannot con-ceivably be genuine and must be altered. Where he considers the textpossibly or probably, but not certainly, wrong, Mynors either recordsa conjecture, as Turnebus' adiubeto for adiuuato at 32.4, or confesses hisdoubt as at 28.6-8 ("locus suspectus"), even to the point of scrupulosityas when at 57.9, 63.74, and 66.74, having admitted conjecture to thetext, he notes the archetypal reading with the comment '"fort.recte." tis a pity that he did not resort to this unusual practice in the much

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    A NEW TEXT OF CATULLUSmore appropriate instances where he consigns to the apparatus with a"fort.recte" the following well nigh certain conjectures: 10.8 ecquonam;17.21 merus (i.e., "this perfect fool"); 48.4 mi unquam; 68.148 diem;76.3 in ullo. Where a conjecture is received into the text, he normallydoes not record another conjecture; but occasionally there are specialreasons: thus at 29.4, where the mss have the corrupt cum te, the decisionbetween two candidates (uncti and ante) is a rather close one, and hecan only promote one to the text: so, preferring uncti, he places it inthe text, but records (wisely) the other conjecture as well.In design and execution the apparatus is so much better than Ellis'or anyone else's that criticism may seem ungrateful. But the mss ascribea title and authorship to the poems which we have a right to be toldof: I do not say that Catulli Veronensis Liber ought to be given on thetitle page, but it should appear in the apparatus. We are held up at thevery first crux (1.2 arido or arida?): the verse is given, we are told, notonly by the mss of Catullus but also by those of Isidore, Marius Victori-nus, Caesius Bassus, Terentianus, and Atilius Fortunatianus. Everyonewho weighs the variants will want to know what these authorities give.Mynors (who reads arida) does not say, but in fact they all give arido,and so does schol. Veronens. ad Verg. Ecl. 6.1, p. 73 K. Moreover, "aridaex Seruio Itali" is a trifle misleading, seeing that Servius does not quotethe passage or even the word: indeed, he never quotes-and had probablynever read-a single verse of Catullus. At 15.16 we note "nostrum G:nostrorum V," i.e., Mynors informs us that G's reading is a conjecture:this is by no means certain, since it quite likely comes from a variant inthe archetype. He ought to have stated the facts without prejudice, ashe does at 23.9 "ruinas G, minas OR." Several readings of R have inthis way been treated as conjectures. A special sign for the variantsintroduced by al. would have saved space without loss of precision: forexample, the notes at 12.2 ("ioco al. loco X, loco O") and 30.9 ("idem0, inde G, inde al. idem R") would become "loco OX2" and "idemOR2,inde GR" respectively. As it is certain that some of these variantsgo back to the archetype, it is possible and even probable that they alldo, and consequently where the text reposes upon them, it ought notto be ascribed to conjecture in other mss: for example, at 51.5 the noteshould read "quod R2,-que OGR." If it was worth while at 30.2, whereV has nichil, noting the source of the correction nil, so was it at 17.21where the same situation obtains; we are similarly left in the dark at50.8 Licini (source?: lacini V) and 95b.2 Antimacho (source?: eutimachoV); and at 17.6 Salisubsali we should add to the apparatus "sali subsiliV: corr. Bergk post Italos." At 31.13 a critic infers from the apparatuscriticus that O has uos quoque o lydi(a)e, though according to othereditors it has uos quoque lidie. The editor is so economical of his spacethat at 39.9 we have to infer the reading of the mss from the typography

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    THE PHOENIXof the text, so why give the lemma at 61.31 ("ac V: ad r": the text hasac), where the note is unnecessary anyway? Sabellus at 64.243 ought tobe Sabellicus, and Balthazar Venator's three appearances in the apparatusought not to be honoured under three ostensibly different names (B.Venator at 8.15; Meleager at 21.11; Venator at 63.34). Likewise thefamous humanist Francesco Robortello is given an initial at 67.42, butnot at 61.191 and 66.28, though the same person is meant, and nottwo different ones. The attractive conjecture longe at 64.215 is ascribedby Mynors to I.H.H. (Classical Journal 10.169)-not, by the way, theAmerican Classical Journal: this is Jacob Hendrik Hoeufft (1756-1843),who according to Baehrens first published the conjecture in his PericulaCritica p. 6. That Catullus at 27.4 wrote ebria acina was the queerfancy, not of Moriz Haupt, as Mynors' note implies, but of AulusGellius: Haupt's queer fancy was Parthenius' ebriosa acina.The most important task of an editor is the establishment of thetext. Naturally no one will want to produce an edition copiously decoratedwith daggers, but where defective sense is found hand in hand withdefective metre, the existence of corruption is removed from the realmsof speculation. Ellis' obeli ought to have been retained at 29.20; thesense procured with nunc . . . timetur is extremely feeble, for habebatin verse 4 shows that the time for fear had passed-anger and hatredwere more in point; but nunc is proscribed by the metre which consistsof pure iambics (as all quibus non est cordi Catullum laedere will agree;and even those who scan the first syllable of Mamurram, verse 3, aslong must allow that the names of Tuticani enjoy prosodic privilegesnot extended to common adverbs like nunc). In verse 54 of the sixty-third poem, another tour de force, Catullus represents Attis as beingworried about stumbling across a lion's den during one of his ecstasies;but the mss make him worried about stumbling across all the dens onMount Ida, as if being mauled to death a second time were a seriousanxiety; however, the metre is violated in the line, and, sure enough,by omnia, which produces in the first colon ionics a minore instead ofthe required anacreontic. At 67.23f. we encounter the father whoviolated his son's bed (sed pater illius gnati uiolasse cubile/dicitur): illiusis not only otiose, it is confusing, and it prompted Muretus' ipsius,which is only otiose; Ellis' explanation that illius goes with pater, andgnati with cubile, is unlikely to be bettered as a reductio ad absurdum;but Catullian prosody shows illius to be corrupt, since the -i- of thepronominal genitive is everywhere else in the poet short; true, in Kroll'sedition ("the most reliable for consultation by scholars" says Levens)this is denied with 5.3 unmusand 17.10 totlus, but look up these versesand you find that Kroll has got his scansion wrong: Baehrens' illusidefies objection. Our editor's text of the penultimate poem requires theobelus at two places. In the first verse instar is corrupt since, if it means

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    A NEW TEXT OF CATULLUS"to the tune of" (as it must to make sense), it must be followed by thegenitive: metre reveals that a word with an initial consonant once stoodin its place. In verses 4 and 5 we are told that the single estate of Mentulacontained pasturable and arable land, vast woods, and estates and lakes(prata, arua, ingentes siluas, saltusque paludesque): something is con-cealed by "estates," and style dictates an adjective with "lakes" tobalance-nay, justify-the adjective "vast"; to procure this, however,we must get rid of the "and" joining the last two items; significantly,metre demands this very piece of demolition, because hypermetric linesare not permitted in elegiacs: altasque paludes (') should have appearedin the apparatus, if not in the text (altasque, under the influence of thepreceding -s, was miscopied as saltasque, and the rest of the corruptionwas inevitable).We are not always apprised of corruption by the red light of defectivemetre. Take an instance from the tenth poem (from which at verse 26commoda:nam Mynors discards Ellis' obeli, though the dactylic impera-tive is unique: elsewhere, even in Plautus and Terence, shortening ofthe final long vowel of the imperative is confined to iambic words:ama, puta, roga, uola; caue, habe, iube, mane, moue, tace, tene, uale, uide:abi, adi, redi). The very real difficulties of verses 9ff. are sufficientlyindicated by Gronovius' mistranslation of ipsis as "provincials," Muretus'quaestoribus (approved by Housman), Munro's full-stop after cohorti(accepted by Palmer), and many other proposals besides. Here Mynorswas right to record only Westphal's nunc for nec (which has a parallel at63.68). The construction will be: respondi, id quod erat, nihil nunc essecuiquam (neque ipsis praetoribus nec cohortibus eorum), cur caputunctius ex Bithynia referret, praesertim eis quibus esset etc., which means"I told them quite frankly that nowadays no one, governors or staff,had any cause for satisfaction at being stationed in Bithynia,-least ofall poor devils who had a beast of a governor over them." Latin idiompermits cuiquam being "held" for the subordinate clause, to which itscase is naturally accommodated (cf. diem-for so we should read-in68.148). But the datives are hard, for one says nihil est cur timeas, notnihil tibi est cur timeas: I wonder if the whole corruption is not to belocated in neque ipsis, where the mss exhibit puzzling variants. A wordmay be said touching the punctuation of 10.9, especially since thefull-stops and colons which have vanished from the ends of 3.15, 10.4,23.23, 84.7, 85.1, and 116.7 will no doubt be restored for a second im-pression, and there will thus be an opportunity for other corrections.Latin punctuation, unlike that of modern English, which is often dic-tated by speech-pauses, should be based exclusively on syntax. Ininstances where a clause is broken by a parenthesis or by another clausethe insertion ought, if punctuated at all, to be punctuated at bothends. So at 39.20 we should punctuate

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    THE PHOENIX... ut, quo iste uester expolitior dens est,hocte ampliusbibissepraedicet oti.

    Yet all modern editions omit the comma after ut. Nobody, it may beargued, could possibly take ut as governing est. Perhaps. But why makeLatin harder than it is? We should likewise at 61.225f. write at, bonei/coniuges, bene etc. At 10.9 a comma after respondi is needed to makeid quod erat parenthetical, which Latin usage proclaims it to be: Caes.B.G. 4.32.2 Caesar, id quod erat, suspicatus aliquid novi a barbarisinitum consilii; Cic. ad Fam. 4.6.2 existimabam, id quod erat, omnes me... fructus ... perdidisse; de Orat. 1.20.89 siue ille ... potuisset siue, idquod constaret, . . . studiosus audiendi fuisset; ibid. 1.44.196 si nos, idquod maxime debet, nostra patria delectat; pro Sest. 13.30 nihil acerbius. . . quam, id quodperraro accidit, ex urbe exire a consulibus iuberi; ibid.17.39 si, id quodfacilefactufuit, ui armisque superassem; Sail. Cat. 51.20de poena possumus dicere, id quod res habet, . . . mortem aerumnarumrequiem . . . esse; lug. 56.1 ratus, id quod negotium poscebat, Iugurtham. . . uenturum. The punctuation of 29f. meus sodalis/Cinna est Gaius issibi parauit raises problems of interpretation. With the old scholarsFraenkel (Horace, p. 115) puts a stop after Gaius, but the first clause ofhis translation ("I have a friend, Gaius Cinna") is a downright dis-tortion. Mynors follows Baehrens' parenthesizing of Cinna est Gaius(Munro more wisely limits the brackets to est Gaius), but this ought tomean "my friend-he is Gaius Cinna,-he etc." Why est? Why the oddposition of the praenomen? Why is it given at all? Palmer's devastatinganswer (CR 5 [1891] 7) is that the insinuation is "my friend (not I)-Gaius Cinna (not Gaius Catullus)-bought them." This fanciful explana-tion is consonant with Housman's punctuation in his note on Man. 5.451meus sodalis/(Cinna est Gaius is) sibi parauit "my friend (Gaius Cinna,I mean) bought them." This is but one of numerous problems from thepatrona uirgo of the dedication-poem to some of the remarks (untrans-latable in more senses than one) which the tenderest of Roman poetsflings at his acquaintances in the concluding epigrams. Some probablecorruptions are indicated by Mynors. But not all. And if at 23.27 he isdoubtful of Calphurnius' sat es (else why note Bergk's beatu's?), howmuch more doubtful ought he to be of 63.63 mulier, for example, or116.1 uenante?

    Contrariwise, "liber multis suspectum" at 84.5 is timid. In verses 4and 5 Catullus introduces a special barb into his ridicule of affectedaspiration by suggesting (credo in epigram and satire guarantees thehypothetical nature of what follows) that it was in this case hereditary.Why? Whoever would say of a cockney without some special reasonthat difficulty with aspirates characterized the speech of "his mother,hismother'sbrother, his mother'smother, and his mother'sfather"? Explana-

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    A NEW TEXT OF CATULLUStion must reside in the otherwise pointless epithet attached to auunculus:that it was the man's name, Liber, may be dismissed as irrelevant apartfrom the improbability of the name itself; and Marcilius' (unmetrical?)Iber, Heinsius' Cimber, and Riese's Vmber all fail to account for itsrestriction to the auunculus. There is in fact only one Latin word whichfits the indications of the mss and the requirements of the context: liber.Arry's mother and thus Arry himself were of servile origin, or so Catullusimplies by his contemptuous reference to his uncle's title to citizenship,"thus spoke his mother, thus that freeborn uncle of his, thus etc." This,Passeratius', explanation is quite unexceptionable.Our mss have so frequently mistaken o for e that Baehren's o for eat 9.1 deserved at least a mention ("thou dearer to me than the wholemultitude of my friends put together"): the preposition is hard totranslate and implies that Veranius was dearer than some of his friends,but not others. Again, at 29.5 (and 9), is it more likely that, having askedin the first verse quis hoc potest uidere, quis potest pati?, Catullus mis-repeated himself with haec uidebis et feres? than probable that hoc(Baehrens) has been misread as hec? Mynors shares with many authorsan unreasonable reluctance to fill 51.8: a partitive genitive uocis afternihil is unescapable, and Ritter's uocis in ore seems so likely a restorationof the poet's own words that it was a duty to mention it. To give inits stead Parthenius' purely illustrative quod loquar amens is inconsistentwith the exclusion of Peerlkamp's saluete bonarum (or some other supple-ment) at 64.23b. Similar reluctance has left a gap in the text at 111.4,where Doering's ex patruo parere is assured by certain palaeographicalconsiderations which debar the other candidates. At 61.216 omnibus,which ought to have been branded with the obelus, violates the synaphea:a neat correction of Dawes is mentioned in the apparatus, but notPleitner's obuiis, which makes better sense and was similarly corruptedat 64.109.If the foregoing proposals fall short of certainty, there are at leasttwo which do not. The abandoned Ariadne complains at 64.145: "Whenmen want women to gratify their passions, (146) nil metuunt iurare, nihilpromittere parcunt: but when their desires have been satisfied, (148) dictanihil metuere, nihil periuria curant." Casanovas might well be expectedto fear retribution, but not their own wheedlings. However, this indicationof corruption is reinforced by another, which locates the fault in thetext: the tense of metuere. Ariadne's argument is expressed in the formof a chiasmus: 146a "they do not hesitate to swear anything" is con-trasted with 148b "they worry not over their broken oaths"; 146b "thereis nothing they will not promise" is contrasted with 148a dicta nihilmeminere "they remembernone of their promises." Czwalina's meminere,not recorded by Mynors, is an exceptionally meritorious conjecture. Andso is Palmer's at 100 5ff., where Caelius is told: nam tua nobis/perfecta

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    THE PHOENIXest igitur est unica amicitia,/cum uesana meas torreretflamma medullas.The main verb was splendidly restored by ', perspecta est, and Palmercompleted the correction with perspecta est igni tur unica amicitia: "Thetest of fire proved you a friend in a million that time my heart wasaflame with furious passion." The words est igni tum were written com-pendiously eigitu, from which some scribe elicited exigitur, noting, how-ever, est above the word; this est was wrongly inserted after the word, soproducing est exigitur est (G's reading) whilst O and R correctly expelledthe ex- (but not the superfluous est). The trouble arose from neglect ofthe compendium for n, as at 111.2: "To be faithful to one's husband"says the pious poet, "nuptarum laus est laudibus eximiis." Baehrensrestored ex nimiis (i.e., eximiis). Here we have another colloquialism(found often in comedy), nimius denoting perfection rather than excess,much as we say "it was only too true," "most unique," "very adequate,"etc. Conversational language soon becomes dissatisfied with implicitsuperlatives. Mynors falls a victim to Scaliger's e(x) for est, as he doesto Scholl's ex igni for est igni at 100.6: but the verb is not only sound,it is indispensable.The foregoing instances are lapses not really characteristic of theeditor's judgement, which is generally reliable. Out of over eight hundredconjectures admitted to the text very few are false. Indeed, this editionstrikes a well-timed blow at the obscurantism inaugurated by Schulze,who in 1893 re-edited Baehren's text with what Housman in disgustdescribed as Oedipodean piety: but Housman is dead, and in reviewingCatullian studies in Platnauer's Fifty Years of Classical ScholarshipR. G. C. Levens makes the ingenuous declaration that in the textualcriticism of the poet "Schulze set a fine example." Levens selects as atest-case the question of hiatus in Catullus, and since his views have sofar gone without protest, a refutation of Levens will conveniently demon-strate how sound and impartial Mynors is in the handling and selectionof conjectures.Excluding cases of "correption" or "epic hiatus" (i.e., shortening of along vowel in hiatus, e.g., 97.1 ita me di ament) and apparent cases ofhiatus after o and io, Levens finds eleven clear instances of hiatus inthe mss, which he enumerates op. cit. 303. He presumably concurs inthe emendation of 39.9 monendum est (monendum est te Maehly) as hedoes not mention it. I pass over 55.12 em hic (en hic r, rightly), since theLatin word em is simply the truncated form (em') of the imperative emeand is consequently never elided. I also pass over 77.5 and 6 heu heu, ifindeed this, and not Baehrens' eheu, is the correct reading: all the otheroccurrences of heu heu in the Latin poets support the view (vaguelyrealized by Servius on Aen. 2.69) that, whatever its spelling, this exclama-tion is prosodically reckoned as a single word of spondaic length.In no less than eight of these eleven "clear" instances scrutiny reveals

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    A NEW TEXT OF CATULLUSthat, on grounds other than metrical, corruption of the text is certainor probable.

    (1) 11.11 horribilesque ulti/mosque Britannos. Corruption is certainsince in Catullus -que -que means "both . . . and . . .," which wouldhere wreck the sequence. Haupt's horribileaequor("the stormy Channel,"cf. 64.205) passed into horribileques, e and o and likewise s and r beingperpetually confused: and the corruption horribilesque was as sure tofollow in a subsequent age as be defended in our own. Mynors readshorribile aequor.(2) 66.11 qua rex tempestate nouo auctus hymenaeo. So almost alleditors, though auctus, being exceedingly ill-suited to the context, issuspect. It would doubtless have been long ago expelled from the text,had it not been for the irrelevant fact that Catullus has used the participlewith a similar noun at 64.25 taedis felicibus aucte "blessed with happymarriage" (aucte explained by felicibus). At 66.11 the context is notone marked byfelicitas: the bridegroom has had to go off on militaryservice, and the honeymoon has been cut short. How inappropriate tosay ". . . at a time when the king, blessed with new marriage, had goneto lay waste Assyrian territory"! The meaning required is, as the poetmakes explicit in verses 13 and 14, "carried off from his honeymoon."Catullus' metrical practice tells us that a molossus is wanted beforehymenaeo (cf. 62.4, 64.20, 64.141), one with an initial vowel to producethe necessary elision (for which cf. 116.7 contra nos tela ista tu(a) euita-bimus acta). Peiper's palmary emendation fulfils these requirements andis the slightest of changes: qua rex tempestate nouo auectus hymenaeo. Iexpect many will protest against adding an e to this end of the linequite unaware that there is one left over from the other end, where themss have quare ex. Callimachus' Greek is not extant here. Mynors readsnouo auctus without comment.(3) 66.48 ut celerum omne genus pereat (so 0). This is hardly a clearinstance of hiatus since celerum is plainly corrupt. The Latin is a trans-lation of Callimachus frag. 110.48 Pf., XaXiv3wvus abr6bXoroyevos.Politian's Chalybon is obviously right: there is no reason to suspect theGreek termination, for Catullus often employs Greek forms. Howvulnerable these Greek forms were is revealed at 64.3 Phasidos: here iswas written above -os and then incorporated into the word, so that thearchetype had fasidicos (from an earlier fasidisos). The variants in themss (celerum 0, celorum R2, celitum GR) suggest that the archetype hadcelorum al. celitum, which, if it comes from calonum al. calibum, wouldbe a very instructive reading indeed: the correct -on, written abovecalibum, was wrongly interpreted as a correction of -ib-, hence calonum.Mynors reads Chalybon.(4) 67.44 sperent nec linguam esse. Here too a word, sperent, is un-questionably corrupt, and correction to the singular number is obligatory:

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    THE PHOENIXI suspect that the -n- has been caused by a misreading of a compendiumfor -re-. Sense demands the imperfect subjunctive anyhow, and therequired speraret provides normal scansion. For the elision of a spondaicword at the caesura, see 97.2. Mynors reads speraret.(5) 68.158 cannot be considered apart from the three verses whichprecede, the whole constituting perhaps the most baffling passage inCatullus:

    155 satisfelices et tu simul et tua ui(rtu)te156 et domus in qua lusimus et domina157 et qui principio nobis terram dedit aufert158 a quo sunt primo omnia nata bonoEditors agree in emending the first line (sitis . . . uita Itali), but not thesecond or third or fourth (it may be significant that the difficulties beginin the middle of each of these verses). That in 156 domina means Lesbiais clear from verse 68; and, since lusimus et domina is not Latin forego et domina lusimus, the customary correction in qua nos seems reason-ably certain. The very meaning behind 157 is still undetermined, anduntil 157 is corrected, the exact meaning and text of 158 must remaina matter of uncertainty. Most editors change bonoin 158 to bona, thoughthis is not a word which causes any difficulty. As it stands, the versemeans "from which blessing all (my?) blessings first(?) derive": primoseems redundant, and in its place an attribution of the "blessings" issorely wanted (nobis Scaliger, primo mi Haupt). The hiatus is but oneof several indications of corruption. Mynors reads primo omnia nata bonaunobelized, but cites in the apparatus Peiper's ridiculous semina nataboni ("from whom the seeds of the blessing were first born").(6) 99.8 guttis abstersti omnibus articulis. As I explained in the footnoteon page 97, corruption here is revealed by X's variant astersi whichpoints to abstersisti (misread through homoearchon) as being the originalreading. Mynors reads abstersisti.(7) 107.1 si quid quid cupido optantique optigit unquam/insperanti (soO). All editors agree in assuming corruption here. Though the poem isof only eight verses, Mynors finds that he has to obelize it twice, theonly poem he so treats. The sense of the clause is not in dispute "if evera man unexpectedly obtained his heart's desire": but the necessaryalteration of quid quid, the absence of cui (indispensable with the doubleadjective), and the absence of a conjunction to join optanti and insperanti(as in line 5 cupido atque insperanti) cannot but engender the gravestsuspicions about the hiatus. I may remark that quicquam in 102.1 is noparallel to the verse under discussion, that hocin the apodosis presupposessomething more pointed than an undefined quid (or quicquam) in theprotasis, and that all considerations seem to require si quoi quid cupidoqueoptantique optigit unquam/insperati (three conjectures, it is true, but all

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    A NEW TEXT OF CATULLUSof the slightest). Mynors reads si quicquam cupido optantique . ../in-speranti, but records the three conjectures advocated above.

    (8) 114.6 dum modo ipse egeat. Though not devoid of sense ("let usadmire his estate, so long as he himself goes wanting"), this is devoid ofpoint, and would be a feeble ending for an epigrammatist of Catullus'calibre: the dum clause merely repeats dum omina desint of the precedingverse. Superior ridicule would have provided egeat with an ablative andsaltum with a contrast; and Lachmann's dum domo restores Catullushis wit as well as his metre with such a trifling alteration that furtherspeculation is idle. The shortening of a final long vowel, after Greekpractice, is held to remove the hiatus, cf. 10.27 mane, inquii. Catullus'joke is that Mentula would be a wealthy man if only he had a cent, andan enviable property-owner if only he had a house. Mynors obelizesmodo, and notes "dum modo V: dum tamen (, alii alia."(8a) Though it is not one of Levens' examples, I note here a muchmore specious case of possible hiatus: 3.16 bonumfactum male bonus illepasser. This is the corrupt reading of the archetype, which ought not tobe forgotten. Editors compare Carm. epigr. 1512.4 ofactum male, Myia,quodperisti, and this is reasonably taken to confirm ofactum male. How-ever, it does not lend support to the conjectural hiatus male! o miselle.How unlikely this is may be judged from the poet's practice at suchplaces as 9.5 uenist(i.) o and 27.7 migrat(e!) hic. The parallel is instructivein emphasizing that, whilefactum (accusative) male is an exclamation,miselle passer (vocative) is an apostrophe. It is interesting to note thata corrector of O has written quia over the first word of the next verse,as though he construed the passage ofactum male, quod, miselle passer,/tua nunc operaetc. ("O bitter blow, that now through thee, poor bird, mysweetheart's eyes are red with tears and blurred!"). This is no doubtthe sense, but it is also implicit in Lachmann's simpler correction iomiselle, which possesses the merit of explaining the corruption: io misellewas misread as io nuselle, and then as ionus elle, someone guessed bonusfor the first five letters and wrote it above io, and someone wrote theadjective above the first word of the verse also, thinking that whateverapplied to io applied to o also. Mynors reads o factum male! o misellepasser!, not recording any other conjectures.The remaining three cases of alleged hiatus need such slight correctionto restore normal scansion that no sane judge can doubt that thesecorrections are sound. If the mss of Catullus were pillars of truth likethe mss of Vergil, there would be some reason in accepting as gospel theuncharacteristic prosody they here impute to the most sensitive prosodistof ancient Rome. But they are not. They give as the poet's words suchdistortions as cuma est grauis (10.30) where everyone knows that hewrote cinna est gaius. In real life one does not swallow tall stories fromliars convicted of lying a thousand times over.

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    THE PHOENIX(9) 38.2 malest, me hercule, et laboriose. Sillig's et est laboriose is acorrection as slight as felicitous: for the position of est compare 14.10

    est . . . male, and for the elision 14.12 di magni, horribilem and 56.1Cato, et. Lachmann's me hercule, ei et is disposed of by Mueller's observa-tion that the iambus ei does not occur before Ovid and Germanicus; andCatullus himself scans the word at 82.3 as a monosyllable. Mynors readsme hercule, et laboriose, recording Lachmann's conjecture as well asSillig's.(10) 76.10 quare cur te iam amplius excrucies? Metre is restored withBaehrens' simple correction tete for te (at 101.5 tete is similarly corruptedto te in the codex Bononiensis 2621): cf. 68.88 sese and Ovid Ars. Am.2.690 meme also at this position in the pentameter. The most popularconjecture iam te cur (hr), though a slight alteration, is wrong. The poetwas unlikely to postpone cur or, as Baehrens observes, to separate iamamplius "any more." This collocation seems to belong to spoken ratherthan literary Latin, and perhaps it is not over-fanciful to see some signifi-cance in the location of its occurrences in the Aeneid: 3.192, 260; 5.8;and 11.807. Vergil of course elides i(am) amplius, as also do the otherwriters in whose works it occurs, and it is unthinkable that Catullusshould not have done so, especially since twice elsewhere in this verypoem (verses 18 and 23) he elides iam. For the elision of a monosyllableat the beginning of the second half of the pentameter, cf. 88.8 and 102.4.Mynors reads iam te cur.(11) 97.2 utrum os an culum. Avantius restores metre with utrumne.If the final e of this word was ever absorbed by the o of os, utrin wouldinevitably become utrum. But the error was likely anyway. Mynorsreads utrumne.There is no certain instance of hiatus in Catullus, as is hardly sur-prising when we consider that elision occurs nearly a thousand times inhis poems and in almost every conceivable position. The Romans hadno glottal stop, and the first of two contiguous vowels in different wordswas regularly elided in spoken Latin. It had to be elided. Otherwise, asQuintilian (9.4.33) says, hiat et intersistit et quasi laborat oratio. Thestress-accent of our language prevents us from realizing how naturalelision was in Latin and how unnatural hiatus. That Cat. 73.6 quammodo qui m(e) un(um) atqu(e) unic(um) amic(um) habuit cannot havebeen "ungeschickt"or anything but perfectly natural Latin is proved bymany a similar line in Plautus and Terence-not to go into details suchas the probable light pronunciation of the syllables elided, the minimumconsonant content of the words, and the coincidence of accent. It is, tobe sure, an unusual pentameter: but only because Roman elegy is notcomposed in the spontaneous idiom of everyday speech, and becausethe Ovidian pentameters which were to set the fashion for contemporaryand subsequent composers are conceits of rhetoric, and not cries from

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    A NEW TEXT OF CATULLUSthe heart. The harshness of hiatus rests on the explicit testimony ofCicero and Quintilian, who are concerned with far less rigid canons ofeuphony than the poets are. In poetry hiatus is found on the rarest ofoccasions, usually in special circumstances which do not attend thealleged examples in Catullus.Levens declares with approval: "Schulze restored the received text inall eleven places, . . . [and] only one subsequent editor [subsequent toEllis and Merrill] has departed from the ms reading in as many as threeof these passages." Mynors is to be commended on doing so in six andquestioning four others; and his opinions carry the more weight becausehe has clearly judged each passage on its merits without allowing thegeneral question of hiatus in Catullus to pre-determine the issue inany. Though it will be obvious that I think Mynors should have removedall the instances of hiatus (just as one would naturally remove allinstances of amare taking a direct object in the genitive case, for example),nevertheless his errors in this matter, as in others, are few and discon-nected-and thus venial: what ill-founded prejudice on the one side orthe other can cause scholars to perpetrate is well illustrated by therecensions of Propertius by Phillimore (OCT) and Richmond. So far assoundness of judgement is concerned, it is to be observed that whereverMynors adopts conjectures he is usually right (some of these conjectures,like Palmer's colitur at 64.184, are excellent); and wherever conjecturesare merely recorded in the apparatus, he is usually right in suggestingcorruption (at 68.39, for example, posta is clearly wrong and Froehlich'spraesto-recorded in the apparatus-almost certainly right).As difficult a problem as any for an editor of Catullus is raised by thematter of orthography. To reproduce with any certainty the poet's ownspelling is with our present resources impossible, and there is much tobe said for presenting a text giving a conventional spelling, and eitherindicating the relevant evidence in the apparatus criticus or compilingan orthographical appendix after the pattern of Housman's to Manilius:this applies especially to a series such as the Oxford Classical Texts.Mynors follows Lachmann's principle of retaining traces of genuineorthography in a rather skilful way, reducing possible confusion for theuninstructed to a minimum without ignoring the most exacting demandsof scholarship.One striking fact which emerges is that, while our mss are muchcorrupted, the corruption is of a superficial rather than a profoundnature: where it is removed, there is revealed a text which must be ofa very high antiquity indeed. In more than a score of words is preservedevidence of the spelling -ei for a long -i (always a final syllable unlessBaehrens' seitis for 68.155 satis is right): of course this spelling mustoriginally have existed in many more places, and it is not surprisingthat it survives only in proper names, corrupt forms, and forms liable

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    THE PHOENIXto be mistaken as other words, e.g., 23.1 Furei (vocative singular ofFurius), 61.225 bonei (masculine vocative plural of bonus: bonlei 0),46.3 aureis (ablative plural of aura). The editor never promotes con-jectural spellings in -ei to his text (against the spirit of Lachmann'sprinciple), and even when the mss preserve the form it is often left inthe apparatus, presumably in deference to Lucilius fragg. 364ff. Marx(though these rules are artificial and go unheeded in inscriptions). A fewclear traces indicate that Catullus wrote such forms as the nominativesingular seruos (23.1), which some would restore throughout the text:Friedrich accordingly prints in the first poem nouom and aeuom, butconsistency would lead us on to quoi in the first verse and Cornelei inthe third, and we should soon find ourselves out of our depth. It maybe wondered whether we ought to alter such forms as 114.4 exuperatand 45.13 sauiata, these being consistently given by the mss. Accusativeplurals of-i stems of the third declension are found now in -is and nowin -es, and there is also the arresting form aequalis (nominative plural)at 62.11 and 62.32: this, like the double ii of Graiia (66.58), was hardlya unique instance. Scaliger's suggestion that Catullus wrote loedere (i.e.,ludere) at 17.1, where the mss give ledere, is undermined by two latemss which at 50.5 corrupt ludebat into ledebat; and his goero (for guro at66.6) is also doubtful (Froehlich's explanation of the corruption hasbeen given above). More likely than either of these is Schwabe's dexstraat 68.143 (deastra V), which was worth a mention, as was Lachmann'sadpetenti at 2.3 (at petenti V). Among other interesting orthographicalfeatures preserved by Catullus' mss may be mentioned the distinctionbetween the substantive gnatus and the participle natus; 64.40 glebam(better than glaebam); and 64.274 increbescunt(probably genuine, thoughEllis notes that the best mss of Vergil all favour crebresco).The manyincorrect spellings like Adriaticus, herus, iocundus, and nequicquamwhichmarred Ellis' large edition and were only partially removed from hisOxford Classical Text have of course gone, and at 4.1 phaselus is naturallygiven (in view of Wendell Clausen's note at Pers. Sat. 5.136 it may beremarked that this spelling is not new in his edition, but was given byLachmann and others, Friedrich pointing out that several authoritiescited the verse with the word correctly spelt). There is no sure basisfor determining whether Catullus wrote 40.1 Raude (Rauide V), thoughhe must so have pronounced the name: so this is left in the apparatus.However, in view of such corruptions at 51.1 mihi and 55.7 prehendi(X), it is probably incorrect and certainly perverse to insist on thespondee uehemens at 50.21 and the monosyllable mihi at 44.20 (thefirst foot of a scazon may not be a dactyl): uemens (guaranteed forLucretius and Cicero) and mi ought to have been read. Prodelision ofest and es is established for 38.1 malest and 66.27 adepta's, and almostcertainly was widespread: still, if one starts introducing the principle

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    A NEW TEXT OF CATULLUSat the end of the pentameter (Lachmann on Lucr. 1.993), at 66.10brachia pollicitast, for example, it is difficult to know where to stop (orwhy), and Mynors wisely refuses to be drawn.Greek names present some knotty points of orthography. The aspirateis so often omitted by the mss in palpable error that to jettison it at64.156 Charybdis and at 74.4 and 102.4 Harpocraten is questionable.However, there is no doubt about the correctness of the editor's spellingat 64.35 Pthiotica and 64.211 Erectheum, noteworthy because even inthis latter half of the twentieth century works of fine scholarship appearshowing ignorance of the point: the Romans represented the Greekdouble aspirate by tenuis and aspirate (i.e., cthfor x8, pth for '6); spellingslike Phthius (most texts at Hor. Carm. 4.6.4 and all at Serv. in Verg.Aen. 2.197) lack inscriptional or reliable ms evidence and were notestablished until the Renaissance. Mynors follows most editors in bowingdown before Usener's pronouncement that the name of Protesilaus' brideis spelt Laudamia (though the mss, like some mss of Ovid, give anapparently metathetical form Laudomia). All forms with Lau-, such asLaudiceni, probably represent a diphthongized pronunciation, usual nodoubt in ordinary speech, but ill-suited to metrical Muses. One of thefascinations of Roman poetry according to Quintilian was the repro-duction in Latin of exotic Greek names, and it is against all odds thatCatullus, who is ever ready to borrow Greek accidence and syntax, drewthe line at Laodamia. Vergil's mss, which are reliable, give Laocoon andnot Laucoon, and even Propertius' mss, which are unreliable, provideat 2.14.2 an eloquent specimen of the tendency towards corruption, thesincerest ms giving Laomedontis, the others Laumedontis. At 66.8 theform Beroniceo, another adulterated spelling, reflects the late BepoYlKf(whence Veronica) and ought not to usurp the place of Bereniceo. What-ever the spelling accorded by later Romans to this name, Catullus foundBepevJLKln his text of Callimachus and is unlikely to have vulgarizedthe orthography in his translation: the vowel-change was a Greek andnot a Latin development, and has not the same plausibility as 11.6 Sagasfor Z6.Kas(so too the best mss of Mela, Pliny the Elder, Curtius, andClaudian). In JP. 33, pp. 54ff. Housman investigates the principle onwhich Latin adjectives derived from Greek proper names acquire theterminations -aeus and -eus: examples are virtually confined to Latinpoetry, and since there is no such thing as ms authority in decidingbetween -aeus and -eus, he argues that these render respectively -atosand -Los in Greek, adjectives with the termination -aLosbeing formedfrom feminine substantives of the first declension, and adjectives withthe termination -Etosbeing formed from all other substantives. Acceptingthis principle we shall have to correct the following in Mynors' edition:64.3 Aeetaeos (Haupt had already given the correct Aeeteos as repre-senting Air1TEtous,but the very corrupt archetypal oeticos hardly points

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    THE PHOENIXto a form in -aeos anyway); 66.60 Ariadneis (read Ariadnaeis: Calli-machus' text gives no help); 68.109 Cylleneum (read Cyllenaeum, asServius instructs us in his note on Verg. Aen. 1.697). As the Latin poetsalmost always call the mother of Telemachus Penelope perhaps we oughtto read Penelopaeo and not -eo at 61.223 (though Housman observesthat IHiYeXo6retawould correctly make an adjective HllveXboretosndjustify Penelopeus). At 66.8 the question is settled in favour of Bereniceoby Callimachus' BepevlKeLOs, formed, says Housman, not from BEPeyLKl,but from a paragogic BepevlKeLa.This, it must be admitted, is curious,seeing that Callimachus had used the form BepEVK in verse 7 (andeven more curious is the fancy spelling Beronicaeo at Anth. Lat. Riese916.8 which flouts the morphology as well as the orthography of theGreek poet).The new edition includes in the preface a list of titles to the poems asexhibited by the archetype, and presents in an appendix the originalGreek of poem 51 (text of Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta no. 31, Lobeland Page) and of poem 66 (text of Callimachus frag. 110, Pfeiffer).Mynors reasonably ignores a few scraps of the latter, among whichyet(roves) at the beginning of the verse corresponding to 66.94 isilluminating. From the scholiast we gather that the construction of theGreek sentence was yELToves 'frrwaav 'TtpoxOos KaL '2Qapiov, uicinisunto Hydrochous et Oarion, and this confirms proximus in 94 as a sub-stantive "neighbour" and Hydrochoi as a dependent genitive. The readeris tacitly instructed so to construe the words in Mynors' Index Nominum,but Ellis' commentary and the new Teubner are sure to lead someastray.It is very fitting that Ellis' Oxford Classical Text should now besuperseded by the edition of a successor in the Chair he held. In thisarticle I have endeavoured to focus attention on (and thus secure theremoval of) what seem to me the defects rather than to extol the meritsof the new edition. When its defects are removed, and they are after allslight enough, this text will enormously improve-as I indicated at theoutset-the study of Catullus in schools and universities, and inevitablyappreciation also. Its merits, if one compares the new with the old, areso great as to be above praise. Yet, though Robinson Ellis was an eccentriceditor, we ought not to allow Housman's denunciation of his editorshipof texts to obscure the fact that he was a superlative scholar. The vastand unborrowed learning of his commentary (first edition 1876) and hisdelicate feeling for Latin-which he wrote with matchless verve andfluency-demand and have always claimed the respect of every seriousstudent. Now that advances in knowledge and greater awareness of itsdeficiencies suggest that the time has come for another commentary onthe same ample scale, the timely appearance of the lepidus nouus libellusunder discussion encourages in this reviewer not only the conviction

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    A NEW TEXT OF CATULLUSthat the Corpus Professor is the fittest person to undertake the opuslaboriosum, but also the hope that the patrona virgo has already inspiredits inception.

    APPENDIXTHEname of H. A. J. Munro is'absent from the list of nineteenth-centuryemendators on p. 100, and it must be stated that in view of the highreputation he enjoyed his Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus2(Cambridge 1905) is a disappointing work. Though he scored many aneasy victory in contraverting Ellis' less circumspect novelties, his ownattempts at original exegesis and emendation were unimpressive. Still,he was a considerable scholar and critic, and was not frightened out ofa reasonable opinion just because an overwhelming majority of the learnedchose to cling to an unreasonable one. A case in point is his approval ofan early correction at 69.10, which, as the present editor ignores it, isworth discussion. The mss of Catullus say to Rufus: either spruce your-self up when you go looking for girls,

    aut admirari desine curfugiunt.Now the indicative in an indirect question is a solecism, a usage in-compatible with the essence of the language Catullus spoke. Instancesof it are apparent only, and fall into two groups.The first group embraces direct questions and exclamations whichoccur in parataxis to an imperative (dic, uide, etc.) or its equivalent(rogo, scire uolo, etc.). Of many examples of the idiom I select: Plaut.Curc. 543 scire uolo, quoi reddidisti? Verg. Aen. 6. 780 uiden, ut geminaestant uertice cristae! Observe that the imperative can always be omittedwithout detriment to the sense, and that logic excludes a negativeimperative. Within this group fall examples of direct quotation, which thefundamental rules of speech permit in any language (the principle beingthe same as in Prop. 1.18.31 resonent mihi "Cynthia" siluae). If Catullushad wished to quote Rufus' own words (he did not, else he would havemade more of them), and if admirari meant rogare (which it does not),he could have said: aut admirari desine "cur fugiunt?"! Schuster'spunctuation reveals that he so interpreted the verse (which wouldaccordingly mean "Or cease to pose the wonder 'Why do they flee?'!").The second group covers clauses which are grammatically relative,though, apart from the mood of the verb, they are indistinguishable frominterrogative clauses owing to the identity of various relative and interro-gative words. For example: Plaut. Aul. 63 metuo ne persentiscat, aurumubi est absconditum (i.e., locum persentiscat, ubi). Ter. Hec. 90 non dicipotest, quam cupida eram huc redeundi (i.e., tantum . . ., quam). Here,if anywhere, is the grammar of Cat. 69.10 to be defended, for of thetwo meanings of cur, quo fine proposito and qua causa efficiente, the

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    116 THE PHOENIXsecond, its meaning here, might possibly allow one to understand anantecedent causam. Or so one might have supposed. But the Romansdo not so use cur: introducing subordinate clauses it is strictly interro-gative and is always followed by the subjunctive.Such expressions are practically confined to Plautus and Terence andmay be taken as reflecting with reasonable accuracy the colloquial usageof Catullus' day. Now Cat. 69.10 falls under neither group: it is nota paratactical construction like the first group, nor a relative constructionlike the second. In short, admirari desine cur fugiunt is not Latin-atleast, not the Latin of Catullus. Of course, after si, quod, or cum, theindicative would be permissible. However, Catullus has in verses 1 and2 "noli admirari quare ... uelit . .." established both his point and hisgrammar, and both necessitate the correction of fugiunt to fugiant. Asif to settle all argument, fate has contrived that on the very same pageof text we should espy the almost identical corruption 71.2 secat r, edd.:secunt 0. In 69.10fugiant is from 1, was read by Avantius3, was con-jectured anew by Heinsius, and approved by Munro.