Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T15:40:57.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A STICHOMETRIC ALLUSION TO CATULLUS 64 IN THE CULEX: AN ADDENDUM*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2015

Dunstan Lowe
Dunstan Lowe*
Affiliation:
University of Kent
*
d.m.lowe@kent.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

I am grateful to Edward Courtney for observing that the stichometric correspondence between the Culex and Catullus 64 is close but not exact, since Culex 132–3 really echoes not 132–3 but 133–4. The conventional line-numbering of Catullus 64 conceals the half-line 23b, progenies saluete iter<um> …, which is invisibly missing from the manuscripts but was salvaged by Francesco Orioli from the Scholia Veronensia on Verg. Aen. 5.80 and is universally accepted. Emendations vary, but all assume a haplographic error caused by an instance of the patterned repetition so typical of Catullus (which indeed is what the Culex author is imitating at 132-3). Consequently, the perfide … perfide correspondence becomes a partial and not complete overlap, belonging together with many of Knauer's Virgilian examples in the category of ‘near misses’.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , December 2015 , pp. 891
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

D. Lowe, ‘A stichometric allusion to Catullus 64 in the Culex’, CQ 64 (2014), 861–4.

References

1 F. Orioli, Epistulae in C. Valerium Catullum (Bologna, 1822), 17–20; discussion in R. Ellis, A Commentary on Catullus (Oxford, 1889), 344.

2 Peerlkamp's iter<um saluete bonarum> is the most popular supplement, recently followed by Trappes-Lomax. Others include iter<umque iterumque uocanti> ( Agar, T.L., ‘Emendationes Catulli (continued)’, Mnemosyne 53 [1925], 273–82Google Scholar, at 281); progenies, saluete iter<um gens o bona patrum> ( Tucker, T.G., ‘Catullus: notes and conjectures’, CQ 4 [1910], 1–10 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 4): and uos o bona patrum ( Bettini, M., ‘La stirpe degli eroi (a proposito di Catullo 64, 23b)’, MD 1 [1978], 195–9Google Scholar). On Catullus’ repetitious style, see J. Évrard-Gillis, La récurrence lexicale dans l’œuvre de Catulle (Paris, 1976).

3 On Knauer and ‘near misses’, see Lowe, D., ‘Women scorned: a new stichometric allusion in the Aeneid ’, CQ 63 (2013), 442–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 443 n. 5.

4 These testimonia are discussed by J.L. Butrica, ‘History and transmission of the text’, in M.B. Skinner (ed.), A Companion to Catullus (Malden, MA, 2007), 13–34. The Culex is probably of Tiberian date: see S. Seelentag (ed., trans. & comm.), Der Pseudovergilische Culex (Hermes Einzelschriften 105) (Stuttgart, 2012), 9–17.

5 Kennedy, D.F., ‘Gallus and the Culex ’, CQ 32 (1982), 371–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.