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The Waters of the Satrachus (Catullus 95.5)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
In lines 5–8 of his 95th poem Catullus contrasts the everlasting world-wide fame which P. Helvius Cinna's Smyrna will enjoy with the quick death which Volusius' I Annales will suffer before they get beyond the Po:
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References
1 With Goold, G. P. (ed.), Catullus (London, 1983), pp. 261–2Google Scholar, I follow Priscian's authority (GL 2.23 and 2.41–2) in spelling the name with an S even though the MSS spell it, as it was pronounced, with a Z.
2 Nisbet, R. G. M., PCPhS 204 (1978), 110–11.Google Scholar
3 As noted by Solodow, J. B., CPh 84 (1989), 317 n. 15Google Scholar. However, I do not share Solodow's acceptance of Clausen's, W. V. explanation (GRBS 5 [1964], 189Google Scholar) of ‘cauas Satrachi…undas’. As Nisbet observed, at Lucan 2.41–2 ‘dexteriora petens montis decliuia Thybrim unda facit Rutubamque cauum’ ‘the adjective [cauum] suggests the channel of a mountain torrent’; i.e., the gorge cut by the unda is deep, but the unda itself is not deep. One could, I suppose, posit a transferred epithet, but I see no compelling reason to do so when the transmitted ‘canas’ almost surely arose from the next verse and what Catullus actually wrote could well have had little resemblance to it.
4 Τινς δ δι το 
γρφονσι Στραχον, as noted in the scholion to Lycophron, Alexandra 448 (Scheer, E. [ed.], Lycophronis Alexandra, ii (Berlin, 1908), ad loc.).Google Scholar
5 See Munro, H. A. J., Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus (Cambridge, 1877), pp. 211–12Google Scholar, and Solodow, J. B., CPh 82 (1987), 143–4, especially n. 10Google Scholar: ‘Although we have no proof that [Volusius] hailed from Hatria, line 7 (ipsam in particular) makes sense only if the Paduan mouth of the Po is close to his home: Hatria, now inland Adria, lay on the coast in Roman times and looks to have been no more than three kilometers distant from its mouth’.
6 See Solodow, , CPh 82 (1987), 144–5, especially n. 15.Google Scholar
7 Another possibility which had occurred to me is ‘meras’, but this would mean ‘pure’ in the sense ‘unmixed’ rather than ‘undefiled’, which a Roman would have rendered with ‘puras’.
8 I would like to thank George Goold, Stephen Heyworth, Ian Rutherford, and Richard Thomas for their reactions to this note.