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LUTATIUS CATULUS, CALLIMACHUS AND PLAUTUS' BACCHIDES*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2015

S.J. Heyworth
S.J. Heyworth*
Affiliation:
Wadham College, Oxford
*
[email protected]
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Extract

Aulus Gellius records an epigram of the Roman consul Q. Lutatius Catulus (Noctes Atticae 19.9.14 = fr. 1 Blänsdorf/Courtney):

      Aufugit mi animus; credo, ut solet, ad Theotimum
      deuenit. sic est, perfugium illud habet.
      quid si non interdixem, ne illunc fugitiuum
      mitteret ad se intro, sed magis eiceret?
      ibimu' quaesitum. uerum ne ipsi teneamur
      formido. quid ago? da, Venu', consilium.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , May 2015 , pp. 390 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2015 

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Footnotes

*

In addition to Peter Brown, to whose keen eye and informed mind I owe many improvements in this note, I owe thanks to CQ's referee and the editorial team.

References

1 (Cambridge, 2012), 210–12. Unfortunately their translation of verses 3–5 of the Catulus poem confuses the runaway animus with Theotimus, who provides the refuge.

2 Pascucci, G., ‘Praeneoterica: Lutazio, Callimaco e Plauto’, Studi di poesia latina in onore di A. Traglia (Rome, 1979), 109–26Google Scholar. On pp. 123–6 he explores the Plautine aspects of the diction of the epigram as a whole; similarly Perutelli, A., ‘Lutazio Catulo poeta’, RFIC 118 (1990), 257–81Google Scholar, at 259–69 [= Frustula poetarum (Bologna, 2002), 31–58Google Scholar, with small changes and addenda] and Maltby, R., ‘The language of early Latin epigram’, Sandalion 20 (1997), 43–56Google Scholar, at 53–4. The discussion of Morelli, A.M., L'epigramma latino prima di Catullo (Cassino, 2000), 164–77Google Scholar concentrates on the influence of Hellenistic epigram on Catulus' poem.

3 There are allusions to the Bacchides also in Amores 2.12 (as registered in the commentaries of J. Booth [Warminster, 1991] and J.C. McKeown [Leeds, 1998]): Ovid reprises Chrysalus' repeated equation of his success in an erotic campaign with the Greek victory in the Trojan War (925–78, 1053–75); note especially 925–30/Am. 2.12.9–12; 1070–1/Am. 2.12.5–6, 27; Ovid transforms the play with curare in 1066–7 into a pun on cura (= ‘love’ as well as ‘care’) in Am. 2.12.16.

4 Perutelli (n. 2), 263–6 traces the name back to Theognidea 881, where it occurs in a sympotic (but not erotic) context; he goes on to explore the etymological aptness of the name employed by both Menander's Syrus and Plautus' Chrysalus to make their story more believable.

5 Unless Schneider was right to conjecture Θεύτιμον at the start of verse 4 (accepted in Gärtner, T., ‘Zur späthellenistichen und frührömischen Rezeption von Kallimachos AP 12.73 = HE 1057–62 = Epigr. 41 Pfeiffer’, Mnemosyne 63 (2010), 438–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; but see 438 n. 2). However, Gow (Gow, A.S.F. and Page, D.L., The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams, 2 vols. [Cambridge, 1965)]Google Scholar, 2.159) objects to the violence of the change and points out that we are hardly entitled to assume that Catulus retained the name. This note will show that the name is more likely to be drawn, along with the verb, from Plautus than from the original; the vagueness of the rest of Callimachus' final couplet also argues against reference to an individual. See further Pascucci (n. 2), 125 n. 46.

6 For example, the very phrase ut solet is used with this implication at Ovid, Ars am. 3.144, pointing the allusion to the picture of Diana at Callimachus, Hymn 3.11–12, and at Met. 5.606 ut solet accipiter trepidas urguere columbas, where it recalls Virgil's dove similes at Ecl. 9.13 and Aen. 11.721–4, and Ovid's own at Ars am. 1.117 and Met. 1.506.

7 One attraction for Catulus may have been that the Greek name not only distances the homoerotic element but in recalling this made-up story lends an air of comic fantasy.

8 The phrase appears only six times in Plautus, acccording to a PHI search.

9 Is it possible that Plautus wrote bonum (i.e. τὸ καλόν) in 133, not bene? He regularly uses the neuter substantive with this force when it accompanies aequom, but OLD s.v. bonum, 6 cites also Capt. 45 prudens boni, where it occurs alone.

10 Peter Brown points out that this is also a version of Prodicus' Choice of Heracles (Xen. Mem. 2.1.21–34).

11 See e.g. Barsby, J., Plautus, Bacchides (Warminster, 1986), 105–10Google Scholar. Lefèvre, E., Plautus' Bacchides (Tübingen, 2011)Google Scholar, esp. 84–6, shows that some elements here are Plautine innovations. Menander has since antiquity been linked with Theophrastus (Diogenes Laertius 5.36) and the Peripatetics (see Gaiser, K., ‘Menander und der Peripatos’, Antike und Abendland 13 [1967], 8–40Google Scholar, with earlier bibliography); awareness of the Phaedrus would not be surprising.

12 But not as promptly as he claims: verse 374 quae ut aspexi, me continuo contuli protinam in pedes (‘When I saw this, I immediately took to my heels’) is at odds both with the time that has elapsed since his entry at 169 and the extended and prurient account he gives of his pupil's lovemaking at 477–88. But see the discussion of Lefèvre (n. 11), 63.

13 So Lefèvre (n. 11), 142. Pistoclerus' acknowledgement of Bacchis's blanditia is likewise matched by Nicobulus's Vt blandiloqua est! (1173).

14 The phrase recurs in Plautus, but only five times in total, four of them deliberative (Epid. 693, Persa 666, Trin. 1062 being the others).

15 Morelli (n. 2), 176 n. 168 reports that V. Tandoi, on p. 148 of his article ‘Gli epigrammi di Tiburtino a Pompei, Lutazio Catulo e il movimento dei preneoterici’, in Quaderni dell'A.I.C.C. di Foggia (1981), 133–75 compares Ter. Hec. 715 quid ergo agam, Phidippe? quid das consili?

16 According to the edition of C. Questa (Sarsina and Urbino, 2008), none of the three prime descendants of P has any original identifications of speakers in this line, so the manuscript evidence is particularly tenuous – and we should in any case probably give no weight to it for speaker attributions. The rubricating hand in B and the third hand in D, who make the attribution to Philoxenus, also give him the final words in the line (quid metuis?), which editors follow Merula in attributing to Bacchis. On the other side of the argument, Peter Brown points out that quid agas? rogitas etiam? does match what Philoxenus has said at 1189–90.

17 NB De or. 3.187 atque haec quidem ab eis philosophis, quos tu maxime diligis, Catule, dicta sunt.