BZCS 29 (1982) 49

A MISCELLANY ON LATIN POETRY

E. Cour tney

LUCRETIUS

5.1442 iam (Weil; tum OQ) mare velivolis florebat propter odores OQ florebat navibus pontus Servius Aen. 7.804.

The reading of OQ cannot stand because of the lack of a noun for velivolis; that of Servius supplies this noun, but his pontus is incompatible with mare, which Housman (Coll Papers 437) accordingly altered to mari’, though maris pontus is an unconvincing phrase. Apart from this objection we must account for propter odores in OQ (2.417 does not account for it), and I would suggest that the divergence between them and Servius in the last words of the line is due to the fact that they are not actually quoting the same words; Lucretius, that is, wrote something like

iam mare velivolis florebat navibus, pontus <quas transmittebat peregrines) propter odores.

A simple lapse of memory would have caused Servius to forget that pontus is not the subject of florebat. For odores as a motive for navigation see Sen. Ep. 73.5 Neptuno plus debere se iudicat . . . qui plura et pretiosiora ill0 mari vexit. . . et ex ipsis mercatoribus effusius gratus est qui ODORES ac purpuras et auro pensanda portabat. Those who have objected to this have not, I think, recognised its satirical tinge; see 1434 idque (ignorance of the nature and limits of true pleasure) minutatim vitam provexit in altum

CATULLUS

63.9 typanum, tubam Cybebes, tua, mater, initia.

This is usually altered nowadays, but seems sound to me. It is an expression of the type discussed by Aristotle Poet. 21.1457b 16ff., where he adduces description of a cup as “the shield of Dionysus” and a shield as “cup of Ares” (alluding to Timotheus fr. 21 Page PMG, where other references to Aristotle are quoted; the dithyrambic style of Timotheus is not unlike that of Catull. 63). The rationale of the expression is that the tambourine’s noise starts off the rout of Cybele just as the trumpet starts off that of battle. Compare Tymnes AP 6.15 1 ’Euuahiou @ p b a&& (that is, the trumpet, as the following T u p o ~ v o u peX13~pa shows; it is in the “rites” of Ares what the abAk is in ordinary rites); this is imitated by Archias AP 6.195 kpiflpepPTau abhb ’Euvahhu, which says Archias, was sounded at altars and in battle (see Cow/ Page, Garland of Philip 439-440).

66.91 unguinis expertem t n o n uestrist esse tuam me, / sed potius . tuam Avantius, -urn V, -i Fleischer.

This is usually altered to non siris (Lachmann), but that raises a serious problem, because Quintilian (1.1.50) declares that non feceris instead of ne feceris is a solecism. Editors of Catullus seek defence in Ovid AA 1.389, where texts usually present non temptaris; but that is not the reading of the manuscript

50 BICS 29 (1982)

tradition, and I have argued (CR n.s. 20 [1970] 10) that it should be emended otherwise. Just as editors of Catullus seek defence in Ovid, so editors of Ovid seek defence in Catullus, and the merry-go-round goes merrily around. HofmannISzantyr, Lat. Syntax 337, in discussing these passages quote Cic. Ad Att. 11.9.3, where there is no perfect subjunctive; the other instances which, following up their references, I have found adduced are Verus to Fronto p. 131 N = 125.17 van den Hout non contempseris, which seems, as the Loeb version (2 p.196) has it, to be a future perfect indicative, and Gellius 13.21.1 nonfinitiones illas. . . spectaveris, sed aurem tuam interroga, where in the “not A but B” formula of contrast non is preferred because it goes closely with the noun rather than the verb; I do not deny that this latter instance has a surface similarity to Catullus, but contend that there is a vital difference. I conclude that the solecism should not be accepted either in Catullus or in Ovid, and here advocate that we follow Baehrens in reading ne siris; this was corrupted to iiuestris by easy slips.

68.90 Troia virum et virtutum omnium acerba cinis

attulit. tque uetet id? nostro letum miserabile fratri

Heinsius proposed quaene etzizm, and nowadays is almost universally followed; but what is the ne? This particle can indeed be added to the relative pronoun when that asks a question, as at 64.180 and 183; but where is the question here? It takes extraordinary agility for Fordyce to evolve one. The grammatical point is discussed by Hofmann/Szantyr 461 and 558, and by Kuhner/Stegmann, Lat. Gramm 2.506. Some dubious examples which may be quoted in defence of a usage like that postulated here can be dismissed; Plautus Amph 1038 (where the reading which might supply a parallel is not accepted by Leo, Lindsay, Palmer or Sedgwick), Truc. 534 (where it is a conjecture not accepted by Leo or Lindsay), Rud. 963 (where it is not accepted by Leo, Lindsay or Sonnenschein, and if it were accepted would be close to an interrogative). Out too goes Verg. Aen. 10.672-3 quid manus ilh virum, qui me meaque a r m secuti / quosque fnefas) omnes infanda in morte reliqui?, where MR rightly read quosque, PM2 and DServius quosve, Asper and Donatus quosne. We are left with Ter. Ad. 261-2 quin omnziz sibi post putarit esse prae meo commodo, and Hor. Sat. 1.10.21 o seri studiorum, quine putetis / diffi i le et mirum, Rhodio quod Pitholeonti / contigit, These hang together as a kind of halfway house between causal relative clauses (note the subjunctive verbs) and exclamations; neither can have any relevance to Catullus. I conclude that we must look elsewhere for emendation, and, while retaining the excellent etiB for etid, suggest that we replace the remaining queuet, of which uet may well be due to dittography, with (nam)que.

VERGIL

BUC. 4.60 incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem (matri longa decem tulerunt fastidia menses).

Norden, Geburt des Kindes 64, quotes John Laurentius the Lydian De Mensibus 4.26pniyiyvdo~ew ri)v pvripa to illustrate line 60. It is odd that three pages before, in discussing the decem menses, he did not adduce a sentence which comes earlier in the same chapter of John: (oi rC;v ‘Popaiov ri)v qvuwr)v i u r o p b uvyy&ovr& cpaui ~ n i p p ~ . . . ) end 70; h.’uarou pqvdq navreXc3c anapri&o8ar mi n p k itoSw uned&w. mi ei p i v h i 6$w, mra rilv Evvarw piva, ei SP K P E ~ T T O V , mrd rdv GK~TOU hpx6pevov. Whatever the identity of the Roman biologists, all John’s lore of this type is of strongly Pythagorean character, and could therefore well have been known to Vergil. The recurrence of the two main elements of these lines within a short compass in John seems to me to make the deduction inevitable that Vergil and he are drawing ultimately on the same source, and therefore that Vergil must be interpreted on lines consistent with this. He cannot therefore mean, as has recently been suggested, “ten months bring long weariness to a mother”; he must mean “begin, little boy, to recognise your mother with a smile; ten months (because you are a boy, not a girl) have brought long weariness to your mother” (the point of 61 being the implication that the ten months are just over, so the baby is smiling virtually

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as soon as born, which is notoriously a supernatural thing to do. Vergil is projecting hmself from the marriage of Octavia and Antony, as I believe, into the future and imagining its natural sequel, the birth of their son, as taking place).

APPENDIX VERGILIANA

EL Maec. 8 illa rapit iuvenes prima florente iuventa non oblita tamen t sed t repetitque senes.

The subject is Charon’s boat. It has long been suspected that there is some relationship between the writings of Seneca and the Elegiae in Maecenatem; full references will be found in M.C. Miller’s edition of the Elegiae (Philadelphia 1941) 45-6, to which add Enk (Mnem 9 [1941] 235), and the tragedies are particularly discussed by R.B. Steele, The Nux, Maecenas and Consohtio ad Liviam (Nashville 1933) 59, with one especially convincing parallel (Herc. Fur. 472-6 and EL Maec. 57-68). Now at Herc. Fur. 769-770 we read

hic (Charon) onere vacuam litori puppem applicans repetebat umbras.

This use of repetere is exactly the same as at El. Maec. 8, and confirms my defence of the word (Phoenix 21 [1967] 49).

Dirae 82 o male devoti, Parcarum crimina, agelli.

In CR 17 (1967) 43 I defended this reading (so M) against pratorum (SL) and various conjectures. For whatever it is worth I can now quote Dracontius Orestes 453 iners, Parcarum crimina, pastor.

PROPERTI US

3.1 1.57 septem urbs alta iugis, toto quae praesidet orbi, femineas timuit territa Marte minas?

timuit PA, om. FL. 5 8 om. N

“58 is unsatisfactory as it stands and not much improved by the correctionfemineo, adopted by Butler and Barber. minas needs an epithet as much as Marte and the combination timuit territa is unprepossessing” - Shackleton Bailey, Propertiana 175, quite rightly. Now whatever problems remain in detail, there is little doubt that the basic relations of the main manuscripts of Propertius can be represented thus:

It is an all but inevitable deduction from this that the line was transmitted as femineas territa Marte minas without timuit, and that this word was interpolated at a point in the transmission which can be clearly identified; N or its source doubtless omitted the line for the very reason that in the transmitted form it can neither be construed nor scanned. Contemplation of this form will suggest that perfect sense and style can be restored if Mizrfe be given an epithet that can govern minas, that is, a participle; and that

5 2 BICS 29 (1982)

leads to a reconstruction on these lines

femineas (auso > tem’ta Marte minas ?

Better still palaeographically, and a very acceptable aid to comprehension, would be femineas<ne auso >.

JUVENAL

There is some material not directly relevant to the interpretation of Juvenal’s own text, and therefore excluded from my commentary, which nevertheless should be put on record; in particular I wish to make some additions to our knowledge of Juvenal’s interesting Nachleben.

In his commentary on Satire xv Mayor quotes abundantly from the pseudo-Quintilian Greater Declamation 12, on the theme cadaveribus pasti in a famine. How can we tell whether the similarities are due to imitation, as I stated briefly on p. 591, or independent use of stock topics of the rhetorical schools? Because the same declamation has drawn on other poems of Juvenal too; compare and 5 28 quotiens facta reputavi, flagella mentis sonant. . . habitat nescioquae in pectore meo poena with 13.193-5. I have voiced the suspicion that the very title cadaveribus pasti may be derived from a scholium on Juvenal (BZCS 22 [1975] 161).

23 cum tempestate decide with 12.33

In 2.83 ff. Juvenal describes a secret society which carried out a parody of the rites of the Bona Dea in which the participants dressed as women. There is a striking parallel in Salvian De Cub. Dei 7.19.82: cum muliebrem habitum viri sumerent et m g i s quam mulieres gradum frangerent, cum indicia sibi quaedam monstruosae impuritatis innecterent et femineis tegminum illgamentis capita velarent (see Juv. 84-5), atque hoc publice in civitate Romana . . . shows clear resemblances to Juv. 17 (80 convertisse in muliebrem tolerantiam viros . . . vultum, incessum, habitum) and 78 (82 mollities paucorum labes est plurimorum). A phrase elsewhere in Salvian (Ad EccL 4.6.33 natant triclinionrm redundantium pavimenta vino, Falerno nobili Iuturn faciunt, mensae eorum ac toreumata mero iugiter mdent) enables us to date a corruption in Juvenal to the fifth century or earlier: 6.429 ff.

But this too is due to imitation, for Salvian in the same context

(sextarius alter) redit et loto terram ferit intestino. marmoribus rivi properant, aurata Falernum pelvis olet .

Here PR read loto, 0 lotio, but virtually all other manuscripts luto, which AKLTU evidently took as the perfect participle of luo, but other manuscripts which interpolate to et terramque luto or simply terramque luto (omitting et) derived from lutum. How Salvian construed Juvenal I do not know.

Among imitators of Juvenal Apuleius is not normally listed; but with 10.1 9-22 compare Met. 1.15 ianitor . . . “quid? tu ” inquit “ignoras latronibus infestari vias, qui hoc noctis iter incipis?”. . . “non longe” inquam “lux abest. et praeterea quid viatori de summa pauperie latrones auferre possunt? an &noras, inepte, nudum nec a decem palaestritis despoliari posse?” Compare also 1 1.10 antistes sacrorum with Juv. 2.1 13.

One of the few Greek writers to mention (De Mag. 1.41) and quote (ibid. 1.20; see my commentary p. 26) Juvenal is John the Lydian. When therefore we read in him (ibid. 3.62) aKohaarawwv 7d npci~rew &pa mi nciqyew, kg ircar4pac cjxpiCjvv6t~ou, we will ascribe this to imitation of Juv. 2.50.

The use of Juvenal by the writer(s) of the Augustan History is now well established. One of the passages used is the Figaro-like list of 3.76 ff.; see SHA 1 (Life of Hadrian) 16.10grammatims, rhetores, musicos, geometras, pistores, astrologos, 29.7.4 mathematici, haruspices, medici (Aegyptii) and 8.3 (the letter of Hadrian) nemo . . . non mathematicus, non haruspex, non aliptes The same passage combined with 217 lies behind the Epitome of Aurelius Victor 14.2 canendi psallendi medendique scientia, musicus geometra pictor fictorque ex aere vel marmore proxime Polycletus et Euphranoras This refers to Hadrian, who

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acquired the nickname Graeculus (recorded by the Epitome in the previous sentence); and the passage of Juvenal is directed against the Graeculus esuriens

Juvenal’s passage about the miser (14.130-2) also made an impact on late historiography; see SHA 8 (Life of Pertinax). 12.2-4 erat inliberalis ac prope sordidus, ut dimidiatas lactucas et cardus in privata vita conviviis adponeret . . . si autem plus aliquid missum esset, etiam in alium diem differebat and Epitome de Caesaribus 24.5 (on Severus Alexander) ut illa ipsa permodica, si mensae prandioque superessent, quamvis semesa alteri convivio reponerentur. Since in the former case the Epitome (with the reference to Graeculus) and in the latter the Historia Augusta (in wording) stands closer to Juvenal, it seems natural to infer that these reminiscences come to them from a common source, which may not be without interest to Quellenforscher.

In view of the well-known expression of disapproval of Juvenal by Ammianus Marcellinus (28.4.14), it is interesting to note that he was not above reading this deplorable author. At 28.4.24 he imitates Juvenal’s passage (6.574ff.) about the lady who directs all her actions by her astrological almanac (ephemeris), and at 28.4.16 si aquam calidam tardius attulerit servus, trecentis adjligi verberibus iubentur plainly recalls 6.475 ff. All these are in the same context in Ammianus. Compare also 14.6.13 agnitus vero tandem. . . si te salutandi adsiduitati dederis with Juv. 1.99, and 30.5.10 mgistro Leone. . . ips0 quoque praefecturam, ut e celso scopulo caderet, adfectante with Juv. 10.105-7 (showing a similar blurring between a purpose and a consequence; see my note); finally 29.1.1 1 quoted in my note on 3.78.

I should like to remark that at Juv. 6.287 the notes of Knoche and Jahn give the misleading impression (it misled me, BZCS 14 [1967] 50 n. 43; ibid. n. 20 I inadvertently confused the two Cyprians) that two ancient authorities agree in quoting servabat. The Lucan scholium there mentioned is merely the casual note of a Renaissance scholar quoting from memory; it is reproduced in Weber’s indiscriminate collection of Lucan commentators, and it may be as well to remark that this collection is a snare and pitfall for the unwary; one of my companions in the pit is H. Jacobson, h i d ’ s Heroides 183 n. 19.

Among the literary influences on the Latin Anthology some attention should be paid to that of Juvenal (there are a few rather confused remarks on the subject by Highet, Juvenal the Satirist 188 and notes), who was also sometimes imitated by Dracontius; for Luxorius see the edition by M. Rosenblum (1961) 302. w h e t mentions 224.6, and Riese notes 178.5. See also 127.1 Graecule, consueta lenandi callidusarte with Juv. 1.123 hic petit absenti nota iam callidus arte; 190 contains two reminiscences discussed in my review (CR n.s. 31 [1981] 41-2) of D.R. Shackleton Bailey’s Towardsa Text o f Anthologia Latina; with 206.3 f w t o subducis ofellas compare Juv. 11.144 furtis imbutus ofelhe. There is a particularly interesting case in 181, a poem de catto qui comedens picam mortuus est. After the cat eats the bird, poena tamen praesens praedonem plectit edacem (5) ; the cat is choked. The poet has in mind the man to whom Juvenal says (1.142-3):

poena tamen praesens, cum tu deponis amictus turgidus et crudus pavonem in balnea portans

(I quote the reading which is advocated in my commentary on Juvenal; the manuscripts have portas, and are divided between crudus and crudum); a bird has proved fatal both to man and cat. Now Luxorius has a poem (375 = 89 Rosenblum) de catto qui, cum soricem miorem devorasset, apoplexiam passus est. It runs thus:

immensi soricis cattus dum membra vorasset,

pertulit adsuetae damnum per viscera praedae; deliciis periit crudior ille suis.

per vitam moriens concipit ore necem. Luxorius, I suggest, caught the reminiscence of Juvenal in 181 and used the passage in a different way. He makes his cat die not from suffocation, but from apoplexy, like the man in Juvenal, though this is made explicit only in the title (and these titles are in some cases demonstrably erroneous); the poem itself merely hints at the mode of death by crudior (Luxorius evidently read crudus in Juvenal), which of course means “suffering from indigestion”, and has nothing to do with cruelty, as Rosenblum imagines.

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CLAUDIAN De Raptu Roserpinae

A perusal of Dr J.B. Hall’s edition suggests a few gleanings.

1.19 ebria Maeoniis figit vestigia thyrsis

Here figit is virtually universally transmitted; Hall’s method of reporting makes it impossible to see how much support Maeonius . . . thyrsus has as against the ablative plurals printed above. Anyhow the above text is probably correct; the ablatives are rather easier than Val. F1.4.434 (Phineus) primas baculo defertur ad undas. Val. F1.4.394-5, which Hall quotes to illustrate figit vestigia, is irrelevant since the phrase there means “halt”.

1.67 vix ille pepercit erubuitque preces, animusque relanguit atrox quamvis indocilis flecti.

So the manuscript tradition, correctly; when it is punctuated as above neither of Hall’s objections has any cogency. Hall follows Barth in reading vix ilh; perpercit with insignificant manuscript support, but the pause is illegitimate in Claudian. None of the examples quoted by Birt ccxvi is anything like t h s except the one adduced by Hall, and that is of a pause before at ilh, which is a long-established set ending for a hexameter and must be considered a special case.

2.344 Eumenides cratera parant et vina feroci crine bibunt, flexisque minis iam lene canentes extendunt socios ad pocula plena cerastas.

The point of this is that the snakes which compose the hair of the Furies share the love of their species for wine; see my note on Juvena16.43 1.

3.357 non tamen hoc tardata Ceres. accenditur ultro religione loci vibratque infesta securim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .; succidere pinus aut magis enodes dubitat prosternere cedros exploratque habiles truncos rectique tenorem stipitis et certo praetemptat bracchia nisu.

In these lines Ceres is practising as a wood-cutter in preparation for cutting down trees as torches for herself; this she finally does with two cypresses in 370 ff. In the intervening 363-9 we have a simile of a shipbuilder picking out (but not cutting down) appropriate timber. This context strongly favours the variant praetemptat printed above over pertemptat, adopted by Hall; compare IV Cons. Honor. 534.

3.414 quae non mihi pignus ob unum cedebat numerosa parens!

So Hall punctuates, not realising that this could mean only “what a mother of many children failed to yield to me!” What he wants it to mean is “every mother of many cluldren yielded to me”, and that means that there must be a mark of interrogation, not of exclamation; see Housman, Collected Papers 121 1. The ability to distinguish between relative, interrogative and exclamatory pronouns is one of the best criteria for distinguishing a competent editor of a Latin text from one who does not know his business, and here we have even a competent editor nodding. I will mention another passage in which I find the meaning obscured, and even a misguided emendation provoked from Bucheler, by false punctuation: Dracontius Rom 10.15

haec vatem nescire decet; quae nosse profanum est, quod fuerit vulgare nefas!

The exclamation mark is absent from Vollmer’s editions, and clearly neither he nor Bucheler realised that the meaning is “what a sin it would be to proclaim what it is sacrilegious to know!”.

King’s College, London