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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2015

Dunstan Lowe*
Affiliation:
University of Kent

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
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2015 

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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], 110 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.