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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
The verb consisto (‘stop’) can be used in the context of stopping to exchange greetings and conversation with an acquaintance accidentally encountered: ‘confabulatum consistere’, as it is defined in the Thesaurus (IV, 464.67–76). That this sense of consisto was common parlance in the late Republic is clear from its occurrence five times in Plautus and three times in Cicero, both in the speeches and in a letter.
1 Cic. QRosc. 66, cited in ThLL, is irrelevant.Google Scholar
2 Discussed most recently in Perutelli, A., ‘Lutazio Catulo poeta’, Riv. Fil. 118 (1990), 257–81, and in H. Dahlmann, ‘Das Rosciusepigramm des Q. Lutatius Catulus’, Gymnasium 88 (1981), 24–44.Google ScholarThere is a new commentary on the poem in E. Courtney, The Fragmentary Latin Poets (Oxford, 1993), 77–8. These works are cited below by their author' name.Google Scholar
3 Interpreted otherwise in ThLL IV, 469.61–2. Mistranslations of this word are legion, e.g.Google ScholarMcGregor, H. C. P., trans., Cicero: ‘The Nature of the Gods’ (Harmondsworth, 1972), 101.Google ScholarPerutelli p. 272 subscribes to Dahlmann's thesis that line 1 refers to the allegedly widespread observance of salutatio solis; but Tac. Hist. 3.24.3 (‘ita in Syria mos est’) and Hdn. 4.15.1 (uis ios avrois, referring to non-Romans) only confirm the impression left by the other sources cited by Dahlmann, which are fairly extensive for barbarians, but scanty for Greece, and essentially non-existent for Rome (Dahlmann pp. 35–6): salutatio solis was a non-Roman custom and thus would be alien to so thoroughly Roman a context as that of the Roscius epigram (ibid. p. 32). Courtney p. 77 also posits ‘morning adoration of the sun’.
4 There is a familiar example in Hor. Sat. 1.9. This satire begins Ibam forte via sacra, whereupon Horace's encounter with The Pest ensues two lines later.
5 That Aurora is to be included among these is clear not only from the first line of Catulus' epigram, but also from Lucr. 4.538, Catull. 64.271, Amm. Marc. 20.3.1, 27.2.5, and Martianus Capella 9.902. In all of these, exorior or its noun exortus is applied to Aurora.
6 Of an actor impersonating Arcturus, and hence an exception that proves the rule. Ribbeck actually took exoritur of Roscius literally (sc. in scaenam) and concluded from Catulus' lines that performances of Roman tragedy must have begun at dawn (Dahlmann pp. 36–7, n. 21).Google Scholar
7 For exorior used of the sun, see the citations in ThLL V.2, 1571.12–31.Google Scholar
8 In A.P. 12.127, the rays of the sun are no match for the sunbeams in Alexis' eyes. In A.P. 12.59, Myiscus outshines his peers as the sun obliterates the stars. See Dahlmann p. 42, Perutelli p. 272.Google Scholar
9 Dahlmann devotes five dense pages (36–40) to arguing for an eastern advent; but quot homines tot sententiae.Google Scholar
10 Roman writers perceive stars and constellations as also rising on the left (see Man. 1.380 and the additional sources cited inGoogle ScholarHousman, A. E., M. Manila Astronomica [London, 1903–1931] I 37–8 [ad 1.380]). So too is exorior regularly used of their rising, not to mention the long tradition of comparing a beautiful young person to a star (see Dahlmann pp. 41–2). All this notwithstanding, stars and constellations do not come up after dawn, but the sun and Roscius do.Google Scholar
11 So Dahlmann pp. 37–40, Courtney p. 77.Google Scholar
12 The formal ramifications of the epigram's argument are detailed in Dahlmann p. 32 and Perutelli p. 275.Google Scholar
13 Reitzenstein, R., s.v. ‘Epigramm’, RE VI. 1.96, where the comparison with Aurora is termed ‘recht ungeschickt’.Google ScholarThe referee calls my attention to Pfeiffer, R., Callimachus (Oxford, 1949–1953), I 73 (ad fr. 67.13): it is beautiful girls whom Callimachus and later poets compare to the dawn.Google Scholar
14 See, for example, Dahlmann pp. 33, 40.Google Scholar
15 After completing a first draft of this paper, I found in Perutelli p. 271, n. 1 that the possibility of a play on words between Roscius and roscidus had also occurred to Gabriella Moretti. That she and I have independently reached the same conclusion would seem a point in its favour.
16 For retrieving these data from the PHI computer concordance, I wish to thank Philip Forsythe of the Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies at the Ohio State University.
17 This is predicated on the assumption that Roscius, born c. 135 B.C., is unlikely to have been pulchrior deo much later than 115 B.C.; so Dahlmann pp. 24–5, Courtney p. 78.Google Scholar
18 SeeBomer, F., Ovidius Naso, P.: Metamorphosen (Heidelberg, 1969–1986), IV 387;Google Scholar VI360. For dew and the dawn in Latin poetry, see, in addition to the citations in n. 15 above, Cic. Arat. Progn. 4.7 Soubiran; Ov. Met. 13.621, Fast. 3.403; Sil. 3.332; and Stat. Theb. 2.135–6, Silv. 5.1.34–5. On the Greek side, in Boedeker's, D. monograph Descent from Heaven: Images of Dew in Greek Poetry and Religion (Chico, CA, 1984), mention of the dawn is confined to p. 49.Google Scholar
19 J., Soubiran, Ciceron: ‘ Aratea’, fragmentspoetiques (Paris, 1972), 233.Google Scholar
20 For the same etymology implied centuries later in a Christian epigram, see E., Diehl, Inscriptiones Christianae veleres (Berlin, 1925–1931), III 585 s.v. ros. In this paragraph I have relied on the references cited in Bomer, op. cit. (n. 18), IV 387.Google Scholar
21 Attested ancient etymologies derived aurora from aurum (Varro), aura (Priscian), and *eorora (Isidore); references in ThLL II, 1522.66–76 and in R., Maltby, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (Leeds, 1991), 68.Google Scholar
22 For this aspect of Catulus' life, see the documentation in H., Bardon, La litte'rature latine inconnue (Paris, 1952), 1 115–17;Google Scholar alsoRoss, D. O. Jr, Style and Tradition in Catullus (Cambridge, MA, 1969), 142–3, 151–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23 Fraenkel, E., Aeschylus: ‘Agamemnon’ (Oxford, 1950), II 83;Google Scholar see also Henderson, J., The Maculate Muse (New York and Oxford, 2 1991), 145, n. 194 (‘dewiness is frequently associated by the Greeks with freshness and innocence’).Google Scholar