Editor’s Notepg 8Editor’s Note11

For his final repudiation of Lesbia Catullus deliberately returns to the form of poem 51, the lines translated from Sappho, in Sappho's own metre, in which he had addressed her in the early days of their love. The poem opens with three stanzas of highly allusive romantic writing; in the fourth the tone changes to cold realism. The catalogue of the lands of adventure in the first three stanzas, and particularly the reference to Gaul and Britain, point to a date not earlier than 55 b.c. Caesar crossed the Rhine in the summer of that year and reached Britain in the autumn; in the spring Gabinius had entered Egypt to restore Ptolemy to his throne; and in November Crassus set out on his ill-fated expedition to the tempting East.

  Furius and Aurelius, who are given this last message to deliver, appear separately or together in six other poems (15, 16, 21, 23, 24, 26); in almost all of them the tone is abusive. Furius has been identified with the poet Furius Bibaculus (see on 26); to the identification of Aurelius we have no clue. Most interpreters have concluded (the view is most strongly put by Wilamowitz, Hell. Dichtung, ii. 307) that the stately opening is ironical. Catullus chooses Furius and Aurelius to take his contemptuous message because he despises them also; perhaps they had brought overtures from Lesbia to him and he prefaces his rejection of these by denouncing her envoys and their grandiose protestations of life-long devotion. The elaborate development of the address to Furius and Aurelius is certainly meant to contrast with the scathing simplicity of the message to Lesbia. But if these lines are ironical, they are a very complicated kind of irony, containing as they do what can only be a genuine compliment to Caesar. Horace did not recognize irony in them, if, as seems more than likely, he was thinking of them when he wrote the opening of his Sapphic ode to Septimius (ii. 6), Septimi, Gades aditure mecum. We do well to be cautious about taking light-hearted abuse, however coarse and outrageous, at its face value as evidence of animosity. Catullus' society is not the only one in which convention has permitted friends to call one another names and write scurrilous verses at one another's expense.

2. extremos … Indos : 'the Indians at the end of the world': the same phrase in Hor. Ep. i. 1. 45, 1. 6. 6.

3. ut : 'where', as in 17. 10. The local use is very rare, and the Catullan instances are the only certain ones. In Plaut. Amph. 241 'quisque ut steterat iacet' and Bacch. 815 'in eopse adstas lapide ut praeco praedicat' ut can be given its normal modal sense and Virg. Aen. v. 329 can be similarly explained. The only other examples adduced are from the two translators of Aratus, Cicero (Arat. 2), and Germanicus (Arat. 233), who both use ut where their original has ἧχι‎ (Arat. Phaen. 231). Hence Löfstedt (Synt. ii. 415) regards the use as a Graecism: but if the translators were influenced by ἧχι‎, they might have been expected to represent it by the exactly corresponding qua rather than by ut, and their use of ut may be the normal one.

longe resonante : cf. Virg. Georg. i. 358, 'resonantia longe litora'. Hence Statius proposed resonans to avoid the double epithet with unda: if change were needed, Eoum would be more likely, but it is not needed.

4. tunditur unda : note the effective adaptation of sound to sense, borrowed by Horace (see on 1 above).

Arabas : the Greek form is the normal one in Latin for the accusative plural of Arabs.

molles : the standing epithet for these peoples in Latin poetry, due to an assumption that those who produce luxuries are themselves luxurious; so Manil. iv. 654 f. 'in mollis Arabas terramque ferentem / delicias', Tib. ii. 2. 4 'tener Arabs', Virg. Georg. i. 57 'molles Sabaei'.

Parthos : at this time the Parthian kingdom, with its capital at Ecbatana, extended from the Euphrates to the Indus. As Crassus found to his cost, the Parthians were a warlike people, with a highly developed military technique, using mobile archers and heavily armoured cavalry in combination; for Parthian archers cf. Hor. Od. ii. 13. 17, Virg. Georg. iv. 313.

colorat : the verb normally means 'darken' and its use of bright colour (e.g. Ov. Am. ii. 5. 35 of the morning sky, Sen. N.Q. i. 5. 10 of the rainbow) is rare; so Col. vii. 8. 7 has fumo coloratus, Sen. N.Q. ii. 21. 2 fuligine colorantur, and colorari is regularly used of sunburn (e.g. Cic. de Or. ii. 60, Prop. iii. 13. 16, Sen. Ep. 86. 8, 108. 4).

8. aequora Nilus : 'the levels that are dyed by the seven streams of Nile'. The reference is to the alluvial deposit of the river: cf. Virg. Georg. iv. 291 'uiridem Aegyptum nigra fecundat harena', Cic. N.D. ii. 130 'Nilus … mollitos et oblimatos agros ad serendum relinquit'.

9. gradietur : 'marches'.

magni must be seriously meant: magnus, like praeclarus, egregius, unicus, bonus, can be used ironically (cf. Cic. Fam. ii. 14, Ov. Her. 19. 90) but the tone of Caesar magnus is quite different from that of the mischievous unice imperator of 29. 11, 54. 7.

11 f. horribile aequor ulti-mosque : The manuscripts have horribilesque ultimosque, but the hiatus—as Bentley pointed out on Hor. Od. iii. 14. 11, there is no instance of a short final vowel in hiatus where there is no break in sense—and the coupling of two disparate epithets both point to corruption, but none of the many suggested remedies is entirely satisfactory. Bentley approved of horribiles et (et being postponed: see on 51. 11), but that leaves the awkwardly paired epithets. Haupt's horribile aequor is both palaeographically plausible and apt; Caesar had his troubles in the Channel (B.G. iv. 28), and any sea is horribile to a Latin poet, and while aequor properly refers to a smooth sea (Varro, L.L. vii. 23), it is often loosely used of a rough one (cf. 64. 179 truculentum aequor, 205 f.). The repetition aequora–aequor strikes a modern reader as awkward, but repetitions of this kind, which a careful writer of our day might try to avoid, are not uncommon even in the most finished Latin writing; even if Aen. x. 382–93 (where discrimina appears in two quite different senses) or iv. 406–14 'cogunt … cogis … cogitur' be disregarded as due to lack of revision, Virgil has such examples as Ecl. 6. 62–68 amarae … amaro, Georg. i. 69–74' laetis … laetum, 404–10 liquido … liquidas. (For accidental repetitions in Propertius see Shackleton Bailey, Propertiana, p. 9.) A more serious objection is that aequor might be expected to have a particularizing epithet to match all the other items in the series. Palmer's horribilesque uitro (woad) in / usque Britannos perhaps deserves mention for its ingenuity; see Caes. B.G. v. 14. 3 'omnes uero se Britanni uitro inficiunt quod caeruleum efficit colorem atque hoc horridiores sunt in pugna aspectu' (cf. Prop. ii. 18. 23 'infectos Britannos', Ov. Am. ii. 16. 39 'uirides Britannos'). But in is uncalled for and, whatever is wrong in the text, ultimos agrees too well with the regular description of Britain in Latin poetry to be suspect; cf. 29. 4 'ultima Britannia', Hor. Od. i. 35. 29 'ultimos orbis Britannos', iv. 14. 47 'remotis Britannis', Virg. Ecl. 1. 66 'toto diuisos orbe Britannos'.

14. caelitum : the solemn archaic word (cf. 61. 49, 190) is in keeping with the stately manner of the preceding lines.

temptare : 'venture': cf. Hor. Od. iii. 4. 30 (quoted on 1 above), Virg. Georg. i. 207 'ostriferi fauces temptantur Abydi'.

16. non bona dicta : so Plaut. Amph. 25 'dictis bonis', 'kind words'.

17. uiuat ualeatque : 'let her live, and good luck to her': the formula (Hor. Ep. i. 6. 67, Sat. ii. 5. 110 'uiue uale') is here contemptuous; cf. Ter. And. 889 'ualeat uiuat cum illa'.

21. respectet : 'look to my love': there is no implication of looking back: cf. Lucr. v. 975 'taciti respectabant … dum …', Cic. Planc. 45 'ne par ab eis munus in sua petitione respectent'.

23. Virgil was perhaps remembering this simile of the 'flower on the edge of the meadow' when he wrote of the death of Euryalus (Aen. ix. 435), 'purpureus ueluti cum flos succisus aratro / languescit moriens'.