Main Text
Editor’s NoteEditor’s Note113
- Editor’s Note Link 1 Consvle Pompeio primum duo, Cinna, solebant
- Editor’s NoteCritical Apparatus2 Maeciliam: facto consule nunc iterum
- Editor’s Note3 manserunt duo, sed creuerunt milia in unum
- Critical Apparatus Link 4 singula. fecundum semen adulterio.
Editor’s Note
Written in 55 b.c. In Pompey's first consulship Maecilia had two lovers; now, fifteen years later, when he is consul again, she has two thousand. On Catullus' friend Cinna see on 10. 29 f. and on 95.
Editor’s Note
1. solebant : for the euphemistic ellipse of a verb cf. Plaut. Cist. 36 'uiris cum suis praedicant nos solere'.
Critical Apparatus
113. 2 Meciliam G: mecilia V
Editor’s Note
2. Maeciliam : Maecilia is unknown, but the name is a well authenticated gentile name. Pleitner's Mucillam is meant to be a disparaging reference to Pompey's third wife Mucia (the lawyer Scaevola's daughter and half-sister of Clodia's husband Metellus), whom he divorced in 62 b.c., on his return from the East, on the ground of misconduct with Caesar (Suet. Iul. 50, Plut. Pomp. 42). That was a notorious scandal at the time (Cic. Att. i. 12. 3), but when this poem was written, it was an old story; Pompey had been four years married to Julia, and Mucia was the wife of M. Aemilius Scaurus. Pompey's repeated consulship is enough in itself to give the epigram its point.
Editor’s Note
3 f. manserunt … singula : the sense is made clear by the 'prolific growth' of l. 4—'there are still two, but a thousand has accumulated for each one'. in unum and singula both convey the distributive notion: there has been an increase of 'a thousand per one'. For the distributive use of in cf. Livy ix. 41. 7 'binae tunicae in militem exactae' ('two tunics per soldier'), Suet. Nero 30. 3 'quadringenis in punctum sestertiis aleam lusit' (of Nero's high stakes, 'four hundred sesterces a pip'). It is not implied that Maecilia's original pair of admirers has remained constant over fifteen years (though duo can mean 'the two of them': cf. Sen. Dial. ii. 16. 2 with Gertz's note): duo is 'the number two', 'the 2'.
Critical Apparatus
4 singulum V: corr. 1472
