Catullus 107
Removing the Hiatus and Other Textual Suggestions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3938451 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John Trappes-Lomax (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2001 |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 3/4 |
| Pages | 304 |
| Publication date | 2001-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Phoenix (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8299 • E-ISSN: 1929-4883 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1089123 |
| OpenAlex | W2314113088 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
In the first couplet quicquam is a fifteenth-century conjecture for the quid quid or quicquid of the tradition, and Ribbeck suggested quoi quid; cupidoque is a conjecture of the Aldine of 1502; O offers optigit, GR offer obtigit; Heinsius suggested insperati. In the second couplet there are various conjectures including Haupt's nobisque est. In the last couplet the tradition offers hac or me; there are numerous conjectures including Lachmann's hac res optandas and Guarinus' hac quid optandum. That the surviving MSS of Catullus depend on a single grossly corrupt archetype is notorious;2 the text of 107 is particularly bad and proportionately lacking in authority to persuade us of anomalies.3 The anomaly in line 1 is of course the purported between cupido and optanti. Proper consideration of the admissibility of this or of any other must begin with the plain fact that there is a rule against in Latin verse; the onus of proof, therefore, lies on those who would justify any individual exception or any class of exceptions to that rule. Catullus was not an Augustan elegist, but he was (in part) an elegist, and was not far removed from the Augustan era; if caesural was acceptable to the Augustans, it would admittedly strengthen the case for caesural in Catullus. Platnauer (1951: 57-58) lists three classes of in the Augustan elegists: (1) after the interjections o, heu, and a; (2) Greek hiatus before a quadrisyllabic word at the end of a hexameter, for example, in Maenalia I Atalanta; (3) at the caesura. So far as the first two classes of exception are
Hiatus · Linguistics · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |