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The scansion of pharsalia (Catullus 64.37; Statius, Achilleid 1.152; Calpurnius Siculus 4.101)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
In reviewing Ellis' OCT of Catullus, Housman scorned the ‘diction and metre’ of Carm. 64.37, ‘Pharsaliam coeunt, Pharsalia tecta frequentant’. Yet several subsequent editors have agreed with Ellis and have also refrained from emending Pharsaliam. Even if there has not been enough discomfort with the MS reading to put some editors off retaining it, they might yet welcome a piece of positive evidence to support this decision. I will make the case that a passage in Statius' Achilleid may indicate that the later poet was familiar with the line as the MSS have it.
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References
page 588 note 1 Classical Papers 627 = CR 19 (1905), 123.
page 588 note 2 ‘… as shown partly by the omission of any preposition (Kraft), partly by being combined with Crannon and Larissa, partly by the word coeunt which could scarcely apply to any place larger than a town’; thus Ellis ad v.
page 589 note 3 The OLD's metrical note on this passage appears mistakenly s.v. Pharsaliu
page 589 note 4 Catullus probably died in the late fifties B.C. (thus Wiseman, T. P., Catullus and his World: A Reappraisal [Cambridge, 1987], p. 206). Here Pharsalia is a learned variant; this is sufficient to warrant its appearance here. There is no need to infer that Catullus must have written after 48 B.C. when the hamlet became famous in its own right.Google Scholar
page 589 note 5 Bruere, R. T., ‘Palaepharsalus, Pharsalus, Pharsalia’, CPh 46 (1951), 111–115.Google Scholar
page 590 note 6 For examples see Hopkinson, N., ‘Juxtaposed Prosodic Variants in Greek and Latin Poetry’, Glotta 60 (1982), 162–177.Google Scholar
page 590 note 7 In a different but related device Theocritus avails himself of two different scansions of 
in line 51 (Munro ad Lucr. 4.1254 calls it a ‘crime’):‘…
…’
page 590 note 8 Postgate, J. P., ‘Pharsalia nostra’, CR 19 (1905), 257–260: ‘this trio of cripples’, p. 260.Google Scholar
page 590 note 9 More generally, such a precise reference to a^pecific and traumatic event in real history is out of character in the world of bucolic poetry. One of the challenges of following in Vergil's footsteps is precisely to make events in that timeless world resonate in a political sense for contemporary readers without violating generic decorum. While Pollio, Gallus, and others may exist in the Eclogues under their own names, Vergil's treatment of the political upheaval of the time is allusive and allegorical. Similarly, when Calpurnius does venture into the real world, such as in describing a wooden amphitheatre (7.23-34), the contemporary references are vague and elusive, and even the amphitheatre belongs to the traditional bucolic antithesis of the big city and the countryside. Indeed, the seemingly endless controversy over Calpurnius' date, or even century, is a testament to his obliquity.
page 591 note 10 This is the text printed by Baehrens in Poetae Latini Minores (Leipzig, 1880); sonuerunt and Amat's soluerunt are both found in the MS
page 591 note 11 Amat explains how this putative allusion to civil war works:‘… les sibila des roseaux sont l′image des sifflements des spectres tues dans la plaine de Pharsale qui trouvent enfin l′apaisement’ (p. 111 n. 91). She does not adduce any parallels for this striking metaphor.
page 591 note 12 Dilke, O. A. W., CR 63 (1949), 5Google Scholar
page 591 note 13 In fact, all other literary evidence gives Pelion as the site of the wedding. For the numerous sources, see Bloch in Roscher, Lexicon, s.v. ‘Peleus’, col. 1837, lines 11-56, supplemented by R. Vollkommer in LIMC, s.v. ‘Peleus’, p. 251. Vollkommer, however, is mistaken in his claim that Pherekydes (FGrHist 3 F 1), Phylarchos (FGrHist 81 F 81), and Euripides (Andr. 16-23) actually place the wedding in the Thetideion near Pharsalus. Pherekydes and Euripides are rather following a tradition in which the Thetideion received its name from the fact that Thetis and Peleus lived there, or in nearby Phthia or Pharsalus, after they were married; cf. F. Jouan, Euripide et les Legendes des Chants Cypriens (Paris, 1966), pp. 68-71. When Euripides is explicit about the site of the wedding, he places it in Chiron's cave, on Pelion (I.A. 704-7 and 1040). The only other suggested sources for a wedding taking place at a venue other than on Pelion are vase-paintings, but these actually show the 
of the day after the marriage banquet; thus E. Simon and M. and A. Hirmer, Die griechischen Vasen (Munich, 1981), p. 70. Either Catullus was on his own in situating the wedding in Pharsalus, or he might possibly have been alluding to some obscure source, such as Stesichoros, which has left no other trace in surviving literature; thus Stewart, A., ‘Stesichoros and the Francois Vase’, in Moon, W. (ed.), Ancient Greek Art and Iconography (Madison, 1983), p. 71 n. 25. Either way, given the weight of tradition which supported Pelion as the venue for the wedding, readers like Statius who were familiar with it would surely have been struck by Catullus' departure from that tradition.Google Scholar
page 592 note 14 Nisbet-Hubbard ad Hor. carm. 1.37.19f.
page 593 note 1 E.g. Coleman, R., Vergil: Eclogues (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 194 and 205 (‘abrupt’);Google ScholarWilliams, R. D., Virgil: the Eclogues and Georgia (London & New York, 1979), p. 114 (‘startling’) and p. 117 (‘extremely striking’);Google ScholarWilliams, G., Figures of Thought in Roman Poetry (New Haven & London, 1980), pp. 223–224 (‘inappropriate and bizarre’).Google Scholar
page 593 note 2 To Coleman and Williams, R. D. (above, n. 1) add Mynors, R. A. B., P. Vergili Maronis Opera (corrected edition, Oxford, 1972);Google ScholarGeymonat, M., P. Vergili Maronis Opera (Turin, 1973);Google Scholar and Clausen, W., A Commentary on Virgil Eclogues (Oxford, 1994).Google Scholar