A Commentary on Catullus

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H the University of Oxford

February 1890

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A COMMENTARY ON CATULLUS ELLIS

HENRY FROWDE

Oxford University Press Warehouse

Amen Corner,

E.G.

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^cvus

A

COMMENTARY ON CATULLUS

BY

ROBINSON

ELLIS, M.A., LL.D.

FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD UNIVERSITY READER

IN

LATIN LITERATURE

SECOND EDITION

'

Oyfof5

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS MDCCCLXXXIX ^All rights reserved

"^

PA tu

^1}^ \if^

W'

^

TO

GEORGE GRANVILLE BRADLEY DEAN OF WESTMINSTER I

THIS IN

DEDICATE

COMMENTARY ON CATULLUS

GRATEFUL RECOLLECTION OF THREE YEARS PASSED AT RUGBY

UNDER

HIS UNRIVALLED TUITION

PREFACE. As

far

back as 1859

I

designed a commentary on Catullus, and only

But the earlier from the first I had accumulated a considerable store of materials, had never been abandoned, and after the publication of my edition of the text in 1867 became the principal object to which my studies were directed. As compared \\ith Vergil ^ and Horace, or even with TibuUus and Propertius, Catullus may almost be said to have been during the past century a neglected book. While each of those poets has found an interpreter of first-rate ability, Doering's edition of 1788 remained without a rival for interrupted

it

to reconstitute the text as a preliminary.

plan, for which

ninety years. How imperfect that edition is is known to every one. Doering's chief merit was his brevity. He carefully avoided all discussion where discussion was more than usually interesting, and when the student was asking for information on the numerous points where the poems touch on the personal or public history of the time, was contented to illustrate his author by quotations from the elegiacs of the ill-fated and interesting, but now forgotten Lotichius. This neglect was certainly not justified by the history of the poems in From Parthenius and Palladius at the end of the preceding centuries. the fifteenth century, to Vulpius and Conradinus de AUio in the former half of the eighteenth, Catullus was edited and reedited by a series of scholars including

some

of the greatest

names

in philology.

The

sixteenth

century alone produced no less than four commentaries of primary importance, those of Alexander Guarinus in 1521, of Muretus in 1554, of Of these the three former Achilles Statins in 1566, of Scaliger in 1577, were published at Venice, with which city Catullus may in modern times Guarinus' edition is now known claim an almost special connexion. No doubt modern but it is for all that a most valuable book. to few taste is offended by the plainness, not to say grossness, of his explanations ; which indeed perpetually suggest that he was illustrating ;

the corruptions of Catullus' time

But

the accident of

in 1

his own. absence of irrelevant matter,

by observations drawn from

in fulness, in general correctness, in the

I

have adopted

its

authorship ^ lastly in

this spelling of the

to the arguments of the ratione, Romae 1594.

Roman

name

its

very

rarity,

the

book

mainly in deference Vergili nominis scribcndi recta

for the present edition

jurist Castalio,

De

^ Alexander Guarinus was the grandson of Guarinus of Verona, one of the most prominent scholars of the Renaissance, and the son of Baptista Guarinus, whose MS of Catullus, as well as his corrections and interpretations, are several times quoted in According to the Hiographie Univcrselle Alexander was himhis son's commentary. self the father of the well-known author of the Pastor Fido.

;

PREFACE.

viii

has a permanent interest literary no less than philological. The commentary of Muretus is slighter, and less minute in the explanation of particular words; but IMuretus possessed what Guarinus did not, a considerable knowledge of Greek ; in spite of which his work is, if weighed by his reputation, disappointing. He did very little for the elucidation of passages where the MSS fail us, or where the allusion is really recondite. Far more important is the commentary of the Portuguese Estago (Statius). In the accumulation of really illustrative passages, drawn from the stores of a most extensive reading, he anticipates the learning of a later period his notes too contain frequent references to inscriptions, a branch of classical archaeology then in its infancy, now perhaps exalted to a position beyond its real importance in philological investigation. The value of Esta^o's labours may be estimated by the use which subsequent editors have made of them; even Scaliger seems sometimes to be merely repeating him, perhaps unconsciously. Scaliger's own Castigationes are rather a series of notes on disputed or corrupt passages than a commentary he disdained to linger over what he thought easy or trivial, and contented himself with the discussion of difficulties. Sometimes his critical sagacity has cleared up what had been dark to all before him, as notably in LXI. 189; often his wide knowledge of the whole range of classical antiquity has traced allusions which had escaped even Statius. But his archaeological learning was out of proportion to his critical delicacy and his castigations, valuable as they are, are at times defaced by outbursts of childish self-conceit or reckless infelicities of correction. Partly perhaps this is attributable to the exaggerated estimate which he formed of Cujas' MS, which since Professor Arthur Palmer's^ discovery can no longer be thought a lost treasure. Only as compared with other late MSS of the fifteenth century can the famous Cujacianus be considered a ]MS of firstrate importance for the criticism of Catullus: its readings where they differ from the IVISS of the fourteenth century differ for the w'orse; a single instance is in VIII. 1 5 Scelesta rere, an obvious correction of the genuine reading 7ie te, and as obviously wrong. Even Scaliger's so-called restitution of LXXXVII to its supposed proper place before LXXV, based as it was on the Cujacianus which had Nunc in LXXV. i for Hue of most MSS, plausible though it undoubtedly seems, and accepted though it is by Lachmann, can hardly be considered more than an ingenious guess, in the enlarged knowledge which we now possess not only of the MSS of Catullus, but of the omissions and lacunae of JNISS :

;

generally. Scaliger's edition was supplemented before the close of the century by the Praecidanea of the elder Dousa, and the Conicctanea of the younger. The Commentaries of Passerat (1608) and Voss (1684) have experienced a singularly different fortune. Passerat's work is little known Voss is quoted more than any other editor. For this there are many reasons. Passerat's Praelectiones were not a set commentary on the whole of Catullus most of the shorter poems are omitted altogether, on others he has left only a few scanty notes even the longer poems are treated un:

;

:

agree with Prof. Palmer in thinking it beyond doubt that the MS of Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, and the Priapea, now in possession of Mr. Henry Allen of Dublin, is identical with Scaliger's Cujacianus. See our combined article in Hermathena iii. 124-158. '

I

;

PREFACE.

ix

and the Coma Berenices have each barely a column omitted entirely only LXI, LXII, LXIV, are treated at The work was published after his death, and we may conjecture length. But where his notes are full they are valuable, that he never finished it. He especially on the two Epithalamia, which require more illustration. is particularly great in accumulating passages which illustrate the meaning but he rarely throws much new light on corrupt or of special words This was the merit of Voss. His notes hitherto unexplained passages. abound with recondite learning. Of all Commentaries on Catullus his is Hence his diatribes have a substantial value indepenthe most erudite. dent of their goodness as explaining the difficulties of Catullus' text; Not that hence too they were and are quoted and read by learned men. Voss is an ideal expounder his learning is often wrong-headed, as for instance on LXIV. 178, where he has a long note on the Thracian Idomene, or again on XXXIV where he tries to show that the Hymn to Diana was written for the ludi saeculares : sometimes he does defiance to metre, as in LXIII. 85, where he rejects Ferns ipse scse adhortans for the impossible Ferns ipse ardore talis. But Voss, besides his abstruse learning, was a great collector of manuscripts, and supplemented his knowledge in one department of philology by his experience in another. To him therefore we are indebted for some of the happiest emendations ; e. g. XXIV. 4 Ulidae dedisses, LXIV. 55 qtiae uisit tiisere credit, the first since confirmed by the Bodleian IMS, the second a wonderful example of happy divination. To the beginning of the same century belong the Asterisms of jNIarcilius (1604), a scholar whose figure has become familiar to Engequally

;

LXVIII

the Attis

is

LXV

;

;

;

lishmen

in

INIr.

Pattison's graphic

man, was not contemptible

life

but it is that is new. ;

The work,

like the

and can hardly be

said to

of Casaubon. slight,

bring into the field much The seemingly exhaustive commentary of Vulpius (1710) added really very little to our knowledge. It is true he rarely omits anything of consequence in the notes of his predecessors, and that he is always decorous and sober in his interpretations. Anything like ingenious fancy or recondite learning is foreign to his dull, pedantic, over-clerical temperament even his antiquarianism has failed to clear up any of those points which are peculiarly the province of the antiquarian. His notes are made up of piles of citations, generally of the most commonplace kind, and in unnecessary profusion. The defects of Vulpius seem to have prompted the edition of Conradinus de Allio (Venice, 1738), a book now become scarce. Conr. de Allio had a supreme contempt for almost all his predecessors, and a most unbounded confidence in his own discernment. In coarseness he almost equals Alexander Guarinus, in gross prurience of suggestion actually surpasses him. He is over-fond of quotations from Italian poetry, and he is never tired of giving advice to the undoubtedly insufficient lexicographers of his time. Yet he has the merit of seeing that Catullus is his own best expositor instead of heaping quotations from Cicero on quotations from Vergil, he compares Catullus with himself. This naturally led him to the attempt, so common in modern times, of reconstructing the personal history of the poet, a task in which, as might be expected, he has failed. Still it was something to be as much in advance of the mode of his contemporaries as he ;

;

was

;

whence,

in spite of

numerous

absurdities, his

commentary

is still

PREFACE.

X

In one passage (XXXIX. 17) modern criticism has univeradopted his suggestion. The specimen of an intended edition of Catullus which Santen published in 1788, a monograph of 64 pages on LXVIII, is sufficiently copious to make us regret that he did not leave more. Probably the publication of Doering's edition prevented the completion of his design. Of Doering something has been said already: his commentary is so meagre as to make us marvel how it can so long have retained exclusive possession of the field. In the Peleus and Thetis he availed himself of an excellent monograph by Mitscherlich (1786); Valckenaer's disappointing edition of the Coma Berenices did not appear till 1799. Little was done for Catullus at the beginning of the present century. In 1803 Ugo Foscolo published an edition of the Coma Berenices, with a lengthy commentary; Hand discussed some of the disputed passages in his Observationes Criticae (1809); and Sillig gave a collation of the Dresden MS in 1823. With Lachmann's edition of the text in 1829 began a new era. Haupt, in his Quaestiones Catullianae 1837, Observationes Criticae 1841, emended, sometimes with success, the interesting. sally

corrupt tradition of the archetype, as displayed with lucid clearness by Lachmann. The simplicity of Lachmann's apparatus criticus and the admirable style of Haupt's two disquisitions awoke once more the long dormant interest of philologists. The programmes and disquisitions of every kind, all based on Lachmann's text, which now began to multiply, show how many scholars tried their skill on the corrupt passages of Catullus, and how very few achieved anything. In 1855 appeared the admirable translation of Theodor Heyse '; in 1857 lungclaussen's Zur Chroiiohgie der Gedichte des Q. Valerius Catullus; in 1862 the Quaestiones Catidlianae of L. Schwabe. The latter work contains the results of the most minute investigation which has yet been bestowed on the life and chronology of Catullus. Schwabe aspires to fix the period of every important event in the poet's fife, and to tabulate the poems into a historical series. In this attempt he has, I think, only partially succeeded in spite of undeniable devotion and scrupulous care. Not seldom the reasoning is unsubstantial, and the result inconclusive. To estimate the real value of Schwabe's Quaestiones, they should be compared with works like Westphal's CatulTs Gedichte, the extravagance of which at times reaches romance. On the other hand Bruner's dissertation de ordine et temporibus carnmium Catulli published in the Acta Societatis Fennicae for 1863, and quite independent of Schwabe's examination of the same questions, is marked by equal, perhaps greater, soberness of judgment, and must always rank among the best contributions to the history of the poet's life. Ribbeck's C. Valerius Catullus eine literarhistorische Skizze (Kiel, 1863) hardly adds any fact of importance, but contains a fresh and genial criticism of Catullus' poetry; much of it is repeated in Vol. I of the same author's Geschichte der Romischen Dichtung (1887). Couat's Etude sur Catulle is mainly interesting as exhibiting Catullus in his relation to the poets of Alexandria. These works were all written before 1876, when I published my Co)ii^

opportunity of mentioning my own similar work Metres of the Original; Murray, 1871.

I take this

in the

—Catullus

translated

PREFACE.

xi

mcntary on CatiiUus, seventeen years from the time when it was first At that time (1859) ^Ir. Thomas Clayton, of Trinity College, was preparing a school edition of the poems the notes for which, short, as might have been expected, and not extending beyond LXIV. no, he made over to me. To these notes, wherever they have been used, I have appended their author's name. But as my purpose was to write a completely new commentary on Catullus, such as might suit the requirements of matured philologists, and as my reading ranged over a very wide field of literature, Greek and Roman indifferently, the stores which I was thus continually accumulating from 1859 to 1876, became so copious that not the least part of my task was to select from this vast number of And, as my references those which illustrated each passage most aptly. aim was to produce a book which in its citations and parallels should projected.

:

represent the philological epoch in which we live, I was careful to draw, if possible, from the predecessors or contemporaries, rather than from the followers of Catullus ; from the less hackneyed writers, such as Plautus, Lucilius, Varro, rather than such as have become insipid by familiarity

;

Whatever

from Greek its

merits

at least as

much

or defects,

as from Latin.

my commentary

elicited

numerous

from the Continent or my own countrymen. Besides a variety of reviews and dissertations on particular points connected with the poems, among which I signalize the ardcles of K. P, Schulze, and a hostile but suggestive critique by Dr. Magnus of Berlin, it criticisms, favorable or unfavorable,

occasioned at least

five

works, each of distinct value for the study of

The first of these is the Cn'tki'sms and Elucidations of Catullus by H. A. J. Munro (Cambridge, 1879). Accepting Bahrens' hypothesis Catullus.

MS

Oxford {0) and the Paris {G) practically represent all that necessary for constituting the text of Catullus, Munro bases upon these his own recension of some of the poems, generally such as are of a shorter or lyrical character; only in two cases of any length (LXVII, LXVIII). This is accompanied by discussions or dissertations on special points of language or idiom; in many cases suggested by my volume, of that the is

which indeed the Criticisms and Elucidations may be said to form an extended review. IMunro wrote nothing without stamping on it the impress of a mastermind, and this is as true of his Catullus as of his Lucretius and Aetna. I have weighed all his observations with care, even his emendations, which form the least able portion of his volume. Wherever he speaks of grammar or metre, his remarks have the gravity which belongs in all ages to the greatest masters in their respective lines England has produced but one Bentley, and (though in a somewhat more restricted sphere) but one ;

Munro. It may seem strange, therefore, that I so often dissent from his conclusions, even on points of syntax, where he might be expected to speak with absolute authority. I have done so with diffidence ; elsewhere, e.g. in the interpretation of certain disputed passages or, occasionally, of entire that

poems (notably LXVIII),

our views are divergent,

it

must be palpable

to

my

readers

not irreconcileable. The German commentary of Riese (1884) does not exceed the dimensions of a school-book. Though considerably based on my two volumes, it contains many remarks of originality and value. I feel some hesitation in speaking of the Latin commentary of Bahrens if

PREFACE.

xii

Any one who

takes the trouble to examine this work, will see author is indebted to my pages, and how little acknowledgment he has made of his debts. If he mentions my name it is more often to depreciate than to praise. His own commentary is lengthy and not too attractive in style; crowded too with impossible emendations, which waste many pages and much time. As an interpreter, Bahrens often begins with discarding the views of all his predecessors as unlikely, and ending with a suggestion which either as diction or conjecture is impossible in a choice of interpretations he sometimes singles out for preference the least plausible in poems of chronological or historical difficulty, e.g. the Co7na Berenices, neither his knowledge of Greek nor his command of historical information was competent to clear up what Nor can he bear comparison with his predecessors had left unsolved. any of the really great interpreters, with the many-sided erudition of Mayor's Commentary on Juvenal, the inductive richness of W. L. J. E. B. Newman's Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle, or, to take an example from Bahrens' own countrymen, with the profound learning and fine feeling of language which mark Otto Jahn's unique Conwientarins in Persinm. Yet, though German thoroughness will hardly acquiesce in his commentary as final, it will doubtless remain for many years a largely read and often-quoted book. The edition of Eugene Benoist (1882) follows me so very closely that it might almost seem a reproduction of my work in the French language. but the introductions, Its accomplished author left it only half completed critical and metrical, which are prefixed to each poem, have a special value partly as containing M. Bonnet's careful re-collation of the Paris Gy partly as a re'siime' of most that is critically important for the constitution of the text of the poems. Benoist accepts, Uke IMunro, the Bahrensian hypothesis of the unique position of G and O as adequate representaa view which I have never accepted, and tives of the whole body of INISS to which the present volume will be found to raise many objections. That hypothesis however gives a simplicity and clearness to Benoist' s, as In regard to explanation of difficult passages, I to Bahrens', edition. confess, not without regret, that I have found very little that is new. Of more consequence as contributing many fresh points of view and bringing into revived prominence some questions which had too lightly

(1885).

how

greatly

its

:

;

;

MS

:

been treated as settled is the recent (1888) Tauchnitz edition of Bernhard Schmidt. This is not a commentary, but the text of the poems, with Prolegomena (pp. i-cxxxvi) discussing (i) Catullus' Hfe, (2) the textual criticism The life is probably the best which has yet appeared. of the poems. Schmidt has worked up the Qiiaestiones of Schwabe and the comparatively little known treatise of the Scandinavian Edward a Bruner into a studied monograph of great practical utility. He is however at times open to the charge of building upon insufficient or unsubstantial proofs as if they solid foundation. I must, here, once again express to M. Schmidt my grateful thanks for the more than courteous manner in which he has

formed a

spoken of my own labours. It is unnecessary here to mention particularly the smaller treatises which I have used for my new edition. In every case where I have taken anything from them, they are quoted with the author's name. The present edition differs from the former, as in other points, so

PREFACE.

xiii

particularly in recalling the attention of scholars to the earliest period of Catullian criticism, the latter half of the fifteenth and beginning of the

sixteenth century.

how much we owe

In the Introduction to his Lucretius Munro has shown to Niccolo Niccoli, Avancius, Pius, Marullus, for the

right understanding of that difficult poet.

Hardly

less signal is the service

rendered by the Guarini, Poliziano, Avancius, Aldus IVIanutius, to the criticism and elucidation of the Veronese. In 1496 Avancius, himself a native of Verona, published his in Val. Catidhun el in Priapeias emendaiiones, a copy of which work, now excessively scarce, is in the possession of my friend, Mr. Ingram Bywater, and has been throughout at my disposal. This little book in eight short folio pages proves how well Catullus' diction and metre were already studied and understood in A very large number of Avancius' the last decade of the fifteenth century. corrections are indisputably right.

His

later

and

little

known

edition

dedicated to the youthful Cardinal Farnese early in the pontificate of Pope Paul III (circ. 1 534-1 540) contains among many emendations which are unnecessary or improbable (see Vol. I. pp. Ixviii-lxxv), several anticipations of later scholars, e.g. XVII. 24 Si pole siolidis, XXIX. 8 Adofiius, XXIX. 17 Paterna p7-i7na, LVII. 9 Riuales JcaV, LXI. 102 Lenta qui?i, LXII. 63 Tertia pars patri, pars est data tertia matri, LXIIL 4 Stimiilatiis ibi, 49 Patriain allocuta maesta est ita uoce miser iter, LXIV. 13 Tortaque, LXVI. 2^ at te ego, 92 affice, LXVIII. 81 noni, not to mention others which are less certain. It is strange enough to find a contemporary of already emending XXIX on the assumption that none but pure Leo iambi could be admitted in any part of the verse: it is even more strange to reflect that this indubitably right assumption has been questioned by several modern critics of authority. But in fact, as early as the middle of the fourteenth century, when the Renaissance under Petrarch and Boccaccio begins, the scholars of Italy, whether ranking themselves under the banners of the Church, or in declared opposition to it, had entered on that course of Classical Research which, as its first fruits, brought to light so many Latin authors long buried and lost, and in its later stage, not only after the taking of Constantinople in 1453 but before that date, revived the study of Greek, and re-endowed the exiled professors of Greek culture. Hence it is that before the close of the fifteenth century Italy had attained to an exactness and a refinement in its knowledge of Latin which other countries could only claim much later. Hence it is that Constantius^ of Fano in his Hecatostys published 1507, and his In Ibin Ouidii Sarritiones 1508, could correct the corruptions of Latin, occasionally even of Greek texts, with a felicity which after the lapse of 400 years is still admirable. This however is not the place to enlarge on a topic to which ]Mr. J. A. Symonds' History of the Rejiaissance in Italy has called new attention, and on which my own researches in editing the Ovidian Ibis enable me to speak with more knowledge than most of my contemporaries. It is introduced here with one purpose, and one only. I wish to contrast the amount of certain gain obtainable from these early Italian correctors of the text of Catullus (most of them before 1540) with the emendations of later critics, French, German, Dutch, or English. In comparison with Italy, how little that is certain can even France claim to

X

'

In Ciris 165 Constantius anticipated the conj. of Scaliger gelidis Edoiiiim for Sidonwn of MSS, in 169 Sicyonia, the conj. of Leopardus, for sic omnia.

§elidi

;

PREFACE.

xiv

have contributed in that splendid period of classical learningwhich produced Muretus, Turnebus, Scaliger, Lambinus, Passerat, Casaubon, Salmasius. In extent of knowledge, it is true, in the amount they had read and remembered, these giants of learning tower high above their earlier rivals; this was natural and inevitable when printed books took the place of MSS. But in nice perception of language, and sometimes even in delicate feeling for what was probable in metre, the earlier generation much outstript their successors. Only two conjectures of Scaliger's (LXI. 196, LXIII. 78) can be thought certain some few are probable the remainder forced and without verisimilitude. Voss made three emendations which are accepted as final (XXIV. 4, LXIV. 55, 211) one of these is now found to have the support of the Oxford MS of Catullus, and may have been thus suggested ;

;

:

None

of Bentley's conjectures on Catullus (even in LXVI) and the same may be said of those of Heinsius. It may be doubted whether any eighteenth century correction of Catullus will stand, except perhaps Nunc Celtiber es in XXXIX. 17. In the present century Hand's MelUtus XXI. 11, Lachmann's Grata LXVI. 58, resiihdt LXVI. 70, Haupt's anxiis LXI. 46, Frohlich's aes imaginosum XLI. 8, perhaps A. Palmer's Perspecta est igjii ttivi C. 6, approximate, though only Graia attains, to certainty. I say nothing of my own restitutions, though I believe myself to have divined the truth in LXXVI. 11, perhaps to is

in

its

author.

more than probable

LXVIII.

;

55. calculation goes to prove that for the recovery of Catullus'

The above

has been effected since the Renaissance was best which was the first.' This philological fact, which I regard as indisputable, will be palpable on any examination of the critical editions of the poems and, if I mistake not, many will agree with me in rejecting (at least as in any sense conclusive) several emendations which the authority of Lachmann, or Haupt, might seem to stamp with finality. The foremost of these is Heinsius' Qtiaene etiatii for Quae tietet id of MSS (LXVIII. 91). This has been accepted by Santen, G. Hermann, Haupt, L. Miiller, Bahrens, Schwabe and B. Schmidt Lachmann, however, does not notice it in his edition Its incongruity with of 1829, and it never commended itself to Munro. the general style of the poem, an elaborately wrought series of tableaux, which never pass into familiar or conversational language, has always condemned it to my judgment, though the right reading is difficult to recover. Another conjecture of a very questionable kind is Haupt's Nereine LXIV. 28. It is adopted by almost all German critics: yet it is open to many For the word Nereine, whilst in Greek it is confined to late objections. writers like Oppian and Quintus Smyrnaeus, cannot be shown even to exist in Latin, in which the only form known is Nerine (Verg. Eel. vii. 37), and to which the hiating vowels e z are comparatively strange. IMoreover the MS reading nee tine or 7ieptine points to a word not beginning with ner, whilst the occurrence of Nepitinine in a Latin lyric of the poet Pontano is very probably owing to its being written as a marginal Another guess of Haupt's variant in some of the lost codices of Catullus. horribile aeqiior ultimosqtie Britannos (XI. 11) has found very general acceptance, and I have been severely censured by Dr. IMagnus for not giving in my adhesion to so 'convincing' a conjecture. To me its easiness not only is its has always appeared in inverse ratio to its probability tiera mantis,

and

disappointingly

that in this sense,

'

little

that age

;

;

;

PREFACE.

XV

occurrence in 1 1 improbable after acguora in 8, but tbe word is hardly strong enough for horrihilc with which it is combined ; while the MSS do not all agree in horrihilesque, some giving Jiorribiles. I shall only add

one more instance.

(LXXVI.

It is

Lachmann's Hei

inihi stirrepcns for

Sen mihi

venture to assert that Catullus could not have tlius written and I will go a step beyond and declare my conviction that neither Poliziano nor Constantius Fanensis nor Avancius nor Marullus could ever have believed it possible that he should thus have written. These remarks are offered not from any wish to detract from the greatness of critics so justly eminent as Haupt, Lachmann, or Heinsius, liut to remind readers of Catullus of a fact they are too apt to forget, I mean, that philology is a progressive science, and that the gratitude which in these last years of the nineteenth century we naturally feel to the scholars whose labours have in successive ages purified the text of this great poet, should be extended to every period alike ; that we must not in our admiration for our own century, with its enormously improved facilities for research, its easy access to early MSS, its schools of Epigraphy, be oblivious of the equally great, and in actual result even greater, epoch of the Italian Revival. It is indeed not often that the wild growths which during the Middle Age gathered round the fairest monuments of an earlier world have been removed so soon and with such success as in the case of Catullus. For my own part I do not doubt that there was some careful, if still groping, study of his poems even in the fourteenth century and from 1400 onwards this must have been steadily on the increase. From one of the Elegies of Beccadelli's HennaphrodHus, written it would seem early in the fifteenth century (Forberg thought circ. 1410-1415), we learn that even women were beginning at that time to be interested in Catullus, and were eager to procure copies of his poems. About 1430 Xicco Polentonus describes the liber Calnlli and quotes its very words. Three generations of Guarini concerned themselves with the preservation, correction, or explanation of Catullus. Guarinus of Verona (1370-1460) repeatedly cites him in his Epistles, though the latest editor of these, Sabbadini, makes it doubtful whether he emended any passage (Schwabe, Testimonia p. xix, ed. 1886). His son Baptista (14 25-1 513) is said to have presented an emended Catullus to the poet's mother-city Verona, and Schwabe makes it probable that he was occupied with this task between 1450 and 1470 (Testimon. p. xx). Baptista's son Alexander published in 1521 at Venice an edition of Catullus with a commentary containing some of his father's criticisms a work which I have several times had occasion to refer to. Cynthius Cenetensis cites XXXIX, 12,11. 13 in his commentary on the Aeneid. Poliziano collated all the MSS of Catullus he could procure and found them all equally corrupt (Schwabe, Testimon. p. xxiii). By his knowledge of Greek he was able to restore the right reading in LXVI. 48, XCVIII. 4, and to defend the tradition in LXVI. 94 to his collation of the unique fragment of Festus (see De Nolhac, 13ibliotheque de Fulvio Orsini pp. surrcpcns

21).

I

;

;

;

MS

:

MSS

213-216) we owe the rare word siippernata in XVII. 19 where the wrong]}- gives stipcrata or seperata. In one of his Miscellanea (xix) he describes how, whilst still a youth (probably before 1470), he corrected the

MS

lonios ;

reading of

and

LXXXIV.

2,

12 by adding the letter h to visidias, learned men in Florence, the Italian

this before a grouj:) of

PREFACE.

xvi

Athens of Lorenzo de Medici. Doubtless the disputed passages of Catullus would often relieve the sublimer and more abstruse discussions for the very on Plato which were part of the fashion of that time immoralities which marked the whole of the fifteenth century and were preparing the way for the iron hand of the Catholic reaction would con;

tribute to

make poems

like those of Catullus

more read

;

just as

when

had fully set in, it was attended at least in Italy by a marked and notable change in the direction of learned studies generally, as well as by an almost complete abandonment of this particular portion of the It is true that both Muretus (1554) and Statins (1566) classical field'. but though each lived at Rome and under the eye of the Papal court What is more, the edited Catullus, they were foreigners, not Italians.

that reaction

;

severer tone of Catholicism

is

perfectly perceptible in their commentaries,

from which the broad allusions to contemporary hcentiousness which mark Alex. Guarinus are as a rule quite absent. Though I do not, with my friend Mr. Symonds, deplore this eff'ect of the revival of clerical strictness in Italy, it is noticeable that most of what will remain as permanently valuable in Italian criticism on Catullus' text is before this date. With Statius commences a period in which the explanatmi of the poet's meaning and the illustration of it by a far wider range of reading than had been possible in the first age of printing, became the main object to which an editor aspired. Scaliger did but supplement Statius, and so for his far as he dealt with MSB added htde or nothing of importance codex Cujacianus, as I have stated before, is now known to be deeply Isaac Voss, removed by half a century from Scaliger, interpolated. possessed a rare collection of MSS, and might have been expected to give something like a detailed account of the codices of Catullus from the knowledge which his own library furnished. He has done nothing of the kind, though some of his emendations are so admirable as to Even Heinsius, to whom suggest that he got them from a good IMS. Ladn poetry owes so vast a debt, the friend and correspondent of princes, the indefatigable explorer of IMSS in every library of Europe, rarely Bentley, whose Manilius shows what he throws much light on Catullus could do for restoring Latin poetry where a thoroughly good MS served him as a guide, cannot be said to have cleared up any of the deep-seated corruptions of the one Catullian poem which he had studied minutely, the Cojiia Berenices ^; it was only in the last quarter of the eighteenth century that the first step towards the formation of a really critical basis was How large was the scale on which Santen had protaken by Santen. jected his edition, we learn from the preface to his specimen, the Elegy to Manlius (LXVIII). No fewer than twelve scholars are named who had :

;

'^

Fnlvio Orsini seems to have designed a Catullus illustratus on the model of his M. de Nolhac is right in drawing this inference from the Orsini m_ whose edition annotated by Orsini now in the Angelica library at Rome. inscripstudies Epigraphy formed a great part has there illustrated Cat. X. 16 by an The intimate connexion of tion which he had seen in S. Cecilia in the Trastevere. Orsini with a long series of Popes during the very strictest period of the Catholic reaction would be quite enough to divert him from any such design of an illustrated Catullus. (De Nolhac, La Bibliotheque de F. Orsini, p. 271 note.) 2 The codex Gemblacensis, recently collated again by M. Thomas, Gand 18S8. ^ Neither Thiae for phitie, nor Locridos for docridicos, nor Vnguiiiis for Sangwms is more than probable. 1

Virj lia^aura ktjKojv

Hav IltKaayiKov "Apyos

efiParfva/V

where Westphal 62 writes Xalp' w XP^'^^'^^P'^^^ The epigram in Phalaecian hendecasyllables ascribed to Phalaecus, A. P. contains three trochees in the

first

foot.

xiii. 6,

:

PROLEGOMENA.

xlii

3.

Iambic

4.

Choliambus or Scazon, VIII XXII

trimeter, only once, LII,

XXXI XXXVII XXXIX XLIV

LIX LX. Ascribed to Hipponax, of

whom many

an iambus as

Diphilus Herodas (in his

fifth

foot

not invariably

is

spondee, as in the INIenippean satires

in Catullus, but often a

choliambus was used by Ananius

Besides Hipponax, the

of Varro.

See Bergk

fragments remain.

In him the

Poetae Lyr. Grace, pp. 751-785.

Cercidas Aeschrion (Bergk 785-804)

Mt/ito/n/3ot)

Among

as well as by Callimachus, and by Theocritus in his Epigrams.

Romans Cn. Matius

the

employed

metre;

this

popularized

it

hence

:

specimens are found logue of Persius'

in

•

Mimiambi, Laevius, and

his

(Fam.

Catullus, Calvus

became a

it

seems

to

is

and Martial.

A

have been before him.

why

poets

seems to have gone out of

It

(L. Miiller, Catullus p. Ixx.)

management of

very dainty in his

Varro's shows

Varro

and Cinna

Roman

metre with the

fashion in the second century of the Empire. Catullus

i),

Catalepta and Priapea, in Petronius, the Pro-

in the

satires,

favorite

24.

vii.

INI.

the scazon, as Cn. Matius

comparison of

his

scazons with

Catullus and his school were held pre-eminently docti:

they rejected, no doubt unanimously, any of the varieties allowed by

Hipponax and retained by Varro hence the metre preserved the form by them in all subsequent writers. Catullus has three resolutions of a long syllable, all in arsi, XXII. 19 in aliqua, XXXVII. 5 Con/utuere, LIX. 3 Ipso rapere. The scheme as drawn from the actual poems is as ;

fixed

follows

:

— /

V>

—

— /

/

\J

\J

— w—

— /

/

/

\J

\^

\^ \^ \J

— \^ but

it is

foot, 5.

perhaps a mere accident that the tribrach in the third and fourth

both found in Martial, do not occur.

Iambic tetrameter \^

— /

1^

spondee

is

is

XXV. — w — w vy —

catalectic,

— /

-^ The iambus

1^

/

'

'

II