A Prosopography to Catullus

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A PROSOPOGRAPHY TO CATULLUS

IOWA STUDIES

IN CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY

GERALD

F.

ELSE,

Editor

State University of Iowa

A PROSOPOGRAPHY TO CATULLUS

By CHESTER LOUIS NEUDLING

OXFORD 1 9 SS

Printedin Gr,lll Britain by StephenA.ll.ltin& Son.t,Ltd., H,rtford

Paper-bound copies at 2.7s.6d. each ($4.00 in U.S.A.) may be obtained from the author at the Department of Oassics, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, U.S.A.

PREFACE If Catullus is one of the most biographical of ancient writers, he is also one of the most perplexing. Of the scores of names which appear momentarily or frequently in his poems-the pimps and prostitutes, young-men-about-town, wits and wastrels, poets, dilettants, politicians, orators great and small, who statesmen, ward-heelers, scoundrels, pose11rs, people his dazz1iog and decadent world in the capital-some are only names ; others are shadowy figures slightly known in the history of their times but given life and blood for us by Catullus' characterization or caricature; a few are the great household-names of Roman history. The problems posed by these names have fascinated scholars from ancient times through the humanists and the great classical minds of the nineteenth century to the present : from Ovid and Apuleius to Raphael Regius, Muretus, Victorius, Scaliger ; Ludwig Schwabe, Lucian Mi.iller, Robinson Ellis, H. A. J. Munro, Bernard Schmidt, Carlo Pascal, Tenney Frank, and many others. The problems concerning the people in Catullus are represented by the three chief groups of people found there : ( 1) those of whom, in general, little is known, where the main problem is one of identification ; (2) those whose identity is reasonably well established but whose relationship to Catullus is not too clear ; (3) prominent figures, well-known from other sources, toward whom Catullus expresses friendship, an:.ff ~nism, or amused tolerance. In d · g with. these three groups of names I have accordingly varied my treatment. Among the first group I have noted previous attempts to identify these persons and adduced additional evidence where possible, especially from epigraphy or nomenclature, to support existing identifications or suggest new ones .. With the second group, whose identity is reasonably clear, I have attempted to give a resume of their activities with special emphasis on their personal, social, political, and literary affiliations in order to illustrate the precise character of their relationship to Catullus and others of his circle. In the case of the third group-men like Ocero, Caesar, Pompey, M. Caelius Rufus, and L. Manlius Torquatus -it is unnecessary to add to the abundant literature about their careers, and I have contented myself with examining certain particular aspects of their activities and associations in hope of further explaining and documenting the attitudes, generally political or literary, expressed toward them by Catullus and his circle. To this end I have given rather extended treatment to some well-known persons-notably to Caelius and Torquatus -with the purpose of pointing out in them certain characteristics which appear with some frequency among the associates of Catullus ·(in these cases, a drift towards Epicureanism and a certain bravado coupled with the sophisticated worldliness of their generation). In each article of the T

prosopography I have followed a general order of topics as follows : identification (where applicable), coupled with documentation of name and dates ; activities and political career ; literary works ; and relationship to Catullus. I have varied this schemain a number of cases, particularly where identification rests upon the career or literary work of the person. My method, like that of other prosopographers, has been to draw heavily upon ancient literary and historical sources, but I have made more frequent use of inscriptions and Roman nomenclature in establishing the geographical distribution, social class, and legal status of the less well-known persons in Catullus. My aim throughout the prosopography has been to provide a useful reference tool for the student of Catullus, supplanting the scattered and incomplete studies of Catullan personalities which have appeared in articles, monographs, studies of Catullus, and the commentaries in editions of his poems. For the scholar, I hope that I have indicated some useful lines of research and provided a firm basis for their pursuit. It will be noted that I have omitted Catullus himself from this study, though in strict faith I was bound to deal with all those who appear in the poems, and the mournful or mocking Catullemay rise to haunt me ; but I could see little point in adding to the already vast literature on the poet himself, especially since this prosopography is itself a mirror of Catullus' image seen in the persons of those he knew. It is beyond the scope of a pure prosopography to state general conclusions about the group of persons studied ; but certain observations may be made in summary which will be exemplified and documented in the various articles. These are ( 1) that I have been unable to justify the assumption often made that many of the names in Catullus are cryptonyms, apart from the demonstrable examples Lesbia, Lesbius, and probably Socration ; (2) that a very considerable number of Catullus' acquaintances were Epicureans or had Epicurean leanings or associates (e.g. Quintilius Varos, L. Manlius Torquatus, C. Memmius, Cornelius Nepos, Q. Cornificius, and possibly others) ; (3) that the continuity of poetic tradition during the difficult period of transition from republican to Augustan poetry is confirmed by the survival of a few Catullan littlrate11rs,such as C. Asinius Pollio, Quintilius Varus, and Valerius Cato, through the Civil War and into the Augustan Age. It is superfluous to state that I am greatly indebted in this study to the many scholars, editors, commentators, and writers of articles on the persons in Catullus. I have acknowledged my debts at the appropriate places in the text, but must here mention certain works which I have frequently used, together with the short titles (in parentheses) by which I have referred to them : Editions of Catullus by Emil Baehrens, Robinson Ellis, Gustav Friedrich, Wilhelm Kroll, and Elmer T. Merrill (Baehrens, Ellis, Friedrich, Kroll, and Merrill). vi

Baehrens, Emil, FragmentaPoetarumRomanorum(Baehrens, FPR). Ellis, Robinson, A Commentaryon Catul/us(Ellis, Comm.). Keil, Heinrich, GrammatiriLatini (GLK). Munro, Hugh A. J., Criticismsand Elucidationsof Catullus (Munro, Crit. and Blue.). Pauly, A., Wissowa, G., Kroll, W., Realenzyclopiidie der Altertumswissenschaft(PW). Schanz, Martin, and Hosius, Carl, Geschichteder romischenLiteraftlf' (Schanz-Hosius). Schulze, Wilhelm, Zur Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen (Schulze, LE). Schwabe, Ludwig, QuaestionesCatullianae(Schwabe, Q. C.). Full bibliographical data for these works will be found in my bibliography, which contains also a number of other works ; its purpose being to list only those volumes which have been frequently used in my research or which are of central importance for the general problems with which I have dealt. Books and articles concerning individual persons or special aspects of the prosopographical problems appear at their appropriate places in the text. I hasten to recognize the absence in both text and bibliography of at least two works which might be expected there : Mauriz Schuster's new Teubner text of Catullus (Leipzig, 1950) and T. Robert S. Broughton's TheMagis-trates of the RomanRepublic,Volume II (American Philological Association, 1953). I have consulted Schuster regularly but found little new material in what is after all an editiominor not intended to deal with prosopography. The second volume of Professor Broughton's important work appeared too late to be used in my study. Finally, I should like to express my appreciation to the persons and institutions concerned in my work. This prosopography is a much expanded and largely rewritten form of a dissertation entitled The Personalities of the CatullianCircleand submitted in August, 1948, to the faculty of the Graduate College, the State University of Iowa, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. To Professor Gerald F. Else, Professor of Classics at The State University of Iowa, I owe superlative thanks for his stimulating instruction and indispensable criticism as my major professor and adviser. To him also, as Editor of the Iowa Studiesin ClassicalPhilology,the greatest credit is due for his kindness and perseverance in helping me bring the present work to publication, in reading and criticizing the manuscript and proof, and in securing aid toward publication from the Graduate College of the State University of Iowa, to which my sincere thanks are also due. The work of enlarging and completing this study was undertaken at Brasenose College, Oxford, England, between June, 1951, and July, 1952. For the opportunity to study at Oxford I must thank Dean G. D. Nichols of the College of Arts and Sciences, The University of Arkansas, who secured leave of absence for me ; Professor Ronald Syme, Camden vii

Professor of History in Brasenose College, Oxford, for my recommendation to that College, for many excellent lectures, and for much useful advice as my supervisor of study ; the Bodleian and Haverfield Libraries, Oxford, for providing the instruments of research ; H. M. Last, Principal of Brasenose College ; Mr. and Mrs. Michael Holroyd of that College; and all others of the faculty, staff, and students of Brasenose who made me welcome and helped me in my study. I must also record here my gratitude to the late Mr. G. F. Bate, of Four Oaks, Warwickshire, England, for his kindness and generosity, which made possible the completion of this work.

YIU

AEMILIUS The Aemilius who is the subject of that exceedingly coarse and abusive epigram, Catullus 97 : Non (ita me di ament) quicquam referre putavi utrumne os an culum olfacerem Aemilio.... is hardly identifiable, since there is too little information about him in the poem. Aemilius was, however, a notorious ladies' man and uncommonly vain (vs. 9). Obviously he travelled among the same circles as Catullus, was of about the same age as those young blades, and had :possibly attempted to steal one of Catullus' current loves, as Baehrens (ed. 1, ad loc.) suggests. That the girl who was apparently involved was not Lesbia is clear from the oblique and almost disinterested reference to her (97, nf); and the poem is therefore to be dated c. 56-54 B.c. For similar poems of invective or threat on such grounds cf. Catullus 69 and 40. The coarseness of this epigram does not rule out the possibility that it is political slander against some unpopular public figure : cf. the poems on Caesar and Mamurra (e.g. .29, 41, 57, 94). The implications of the satire, at any rate, coincide with the chronology and character of M. Aemilius Lepidus, the triumvir. He was born about 89 B.C. and therefore in his early thirties at the date of the epigram. His family was connected with L. Manlius Torquatus, a friend of Catullus ; and his character is universally reported as lazy, trifling and vain (cf. Veil. Pat. 2, So, 1 : vir omniumvanissimus); on his socordia,cf. Tac. Ann. 1, 9; apyfa, App. B. C. 5, 1.24, cf. 3, 84; voo&fa, Dio 48, 4, 1, cf. 49, 1.2, 1. The nature of Catullus' invective indicates that Aemilius inspired no respect-a view of Lepidus shared by Cicero even when he supported Lepidus at the height of the latter's career (Phil. 13, 43). The Aemilius of Catullus 97 might also be identifiable with L. Aemilius Paullus, who was a witness against P. Sestius in 56 B.C. along with two other victims of Catullus' satire, L. Gellius Poplicola and P. Vatinius (cf. Cic.Q. Fr. 2, 4, 1; Catullus So, 88-91, 5.2). The coarseness of Catullus' description of Aemilius, however, is perhaps an indication that he was a person of no account ; and there were many Aemilii of non-senatorial rank in Republican times (cf. e.g. CIL 1 2, 1016f, 123 I, 1018f, 2074, 2669, 2670).

This epigram is probably another example of Catullus' adaptation of a Greek original for a specific occasion : cf. Anth. Pal. I 1, 241 and 4IS.

B

2.

ALFENUS VARDS It is probable that the Alfenus immemor of Catullus 30, as Tenney Frank argued (Catullus and Horace,65f), was P. Alfenus Varos, the jurist and juridical writer (cf. Pomponius, Dig. 1, 2., 2.,44: Gell. 7, 5, 1), who was consul sujfectusin 39 B.C. He was a student of Servius Sulpicius (Pomponius, foe. cit.), the noted jurist and friend of Cicero.1 His social and literary aspirations are implied in Horace's reference to him (Sat. 1, 5, 130) as the Alfenus vaferwho, after putting aside the tools of his lowly trade (cobbler or barber, depending on a textual emendation), rose to a position of importance. Porphyrio (ad foe.) identifies this vafer as Alfenus Varus Cremonensis,mentions his connection with Sulpicius, and refers to the fact that he plied his trade in Cremona. It is probable that this is the Alfenus who, as legatusof Octavian, handled the distribution of land in Transpadane Gaul in 41 B.C. (" Probus," Vita Vergili, p. 53, 59 Reiff.). The Vita (ibid.) says that he protected Vergil's farm, and that Vergil in gratitude dedicated the sixth Eclogueto him (cf. also Servius on Eel. 6, 6) and mentioned him with praise in Eel. 9, 2.6-2.9. Frank (Vergil, 12.5f)shows that the statements of the Vita and Servius, that Alfenus had done Vergil a favour, are based on the assumption that Eel. 6 is addressed to him, rather than, as is more probable, to Quintilius Varos. Further, Frank argues (ibid.),the reference in Eel. 9 is undoubtedly to Alfenus, but is a plea to him, as legatusin charge of land distribution, to spare Mantua, not a recognition of past favours. The Veronese Scholia (on Eel. 7, 9) and Servius (on Eel. 6, 13) also state that Alfenus was a fellow-student of Vergil at the Epicurean school of Siro. This statement is possibly another instance of confusion with Quintilius Varos, also an associate of Vergil, whose connections with the school at Naples are well established ; but perhaps both Quintilius and Alfenus Varos were there, since Alfenus' knowledge of Epicurean doctrine is clearly shown in a reference to the atomic theory (Pomponius, Dig. 6, 76 Jin.). Tenney Frank's suggestion (CQ 15 [192.0] 16o) that Alfenus Varos was the Suffenus of Catullus 14 and 2.2. has only the evidence of Alfenus' birth in Cremona to support it. The name Suffenus is unexampled, though similar names occur (cf. Schulze, LE 2.39); but it is perhaps a corruption of Sufenas (see "Nonius "). 1 For Alfenus' juridical career and digests, see Jars, PW 1, 1473f. His literary career is discussed by K.lebs, ibid., 147zf.

3

AMEANA Very little is known of this woman, the mistress of Mamurra, who is the deeoetorFormianusof Catullus 41, 4, and 43, 5 (cf. 57, 4). Both of these poems (41 and 43) are attacks upon her, though she is named only in 41, 1. Here the MS. readings are a meana (0) and a mean a (GRBVen). Ameana is a strange and unexampled name, posing a problem to which Ellis' answer (Comm. 145f) is obviously correct: i.e. that the MS. reading is either a genuine name perhaps slightly altered by a rustic or archaic spelling, or a corruption of the original reading. Some editors have accepted the latter alternative and emended : Schwabe to Anniana, Haupt to Ametina, Conrad de Allio and K. P. Schulze to Anne sana, while Ellis suggested Anneiana, citing Anneia11Nm oppidumnear Ateste, Ouver, /ta/. ; 14, Antiq. 155. Anniana is supported as a cognomen by CIL 3, 2.92.2. 2.482.b(Dessau 5 598, 8488); and 12., 1892.. But the MS. reading can be explained as it stands ; an argument for Ameana as an orthographic variant of Ammiana is given by W. Frohner, "Zu Catull (Miscellen)," Rh. Mus. 13 (1858) 149 (see also Ellis, Joe.cit.). The retention of e for i in many words was an archaism found in rustic language of Catullus' time: cf. Varro, R. R. 1, .2., 14; 48, .2.; and Livy still wrote sibe and quase,according to Quintil. 1, 7, 2.4. The earlier Latin orthography which avoided double consonants persisted in Cicero's time (cf. e.g. Cic. Att. 6, 1, 13 : de Amiano). It is possible therefore that the woman's name was actually Ammiana and that Catullus used the archaic and rustic spelling to heighten the contrast of this " provincial beauty " with the urbane Lesbia (cf. 43, 6f). A further possibility is that Ammiana is a possessive (cf. Sestianus. .. eonviva,Catullus 44, 10) and that she was originally the slave or /ibertaof an Ammius or Ammia, in which case her real name might have been Ammia. It is interesting that the cognomen Ammia occurs in several Republican inscriptions at Rome (cf. CIL 12, 1239, 12.64,1330, 1398)and in every case belongs to a slave or freedwoman. Ameana was a meretrix-though an expensive one-who did not restrict her favours to Mamurra (cf. Catull. 41, .2.); her propinqrliof 41, 5, need not be blood-relatives, as Ellis, Comm. 146, thinks, but may be merely members of her f ami/ia, whether that of a /enoor not. Although it is possible that Ameana was a Veronese, as Baehrens (ed. 1, 22.8) and Ellis (Joe.eit.) believe, she was more likely a Roman courtesan. If her name was Ammia or Ammiana the evidence points to Rome; and in 43, 6-8, the praise of her by the provincia-probably Cisalpine Gaul, since Caesar and Mamurra could easily have been there (cf. Caes. B.G. 5, 1) as well as Catullus-sounds more like a local reaction to the presence of a newcomer than a long-standing opinion in the woman's homeland. Catullus' greeting to Ameana (43, 1) also suggests that he arrived after her in the province and there heard of the impression she had made; for (a) if she had lived long in Cisalpine Gaul he would not have been surprised by her repute there, and (b) he always uses words of

4

greeting and farewell, such as salveand vale,on his own arrival or departure (with 43, 1, cf. 31, 12). Ameana was almost certainly with Mamurra in Cisalpine Gaul (Ellis says Transalpine Gaul, Comm. 145f) after the beginning of Caesar's proconsulship and before Catullus' disillusionment with Lesbia; the date of Catullus 43, and 41 as well, is therefore most probably 58 B.c. 1 Editors have pointed out that in addition to the two poems known to refer to Ameana, the forty-second poem, to a shameless moechaputida, may also refer to her ; but the fact that it separates two poems about her suggests that its subject is different, and its content does not fit a meretrix as well as it does a free and perhaps married woman. For these reasons, the Aufillena of Catullus 100 and I xof is more probably the moechaputida of 42. Finally, the identity of the sums mentioned in 41, 2, and 103, 1, suggests that the latter, on a transaction with a leno,may concern Ameana as well. 1

B. Schmidt, Proleg. 1 z.f, says the date is , , /, 4 B.c. and that Catullus had already broken with Lesbia, comparing 11, 1,, where Catullus in renouncing her still calls her m,a pm/la; but in that poem (u) the words carry the nostalgia oflost love, while in 43 there is no hint of trouble-in fact, quite the opposite.

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ANTIUS In 44, 10-15, Catullus wittily relates how he caught a cough and chill from reading Sestius' " frigid " oratio in Antium petitorem, and so was prevented from attending a banquet to which Sestius had invited him (44, 10; id. 21). The identity of Antius must bear some relationship to the identity of Sestius, and the latter was very likely P. Sestius, whom Cicero defended on a charge of vis in 56 B.c.; for the evidence see " Sestius ". Sestius was an orator of poor taste and a writer of meagre ability (cf. Cic. Fam. 7, 32, 1 ; Alt. 7, 17, 2); an intemperate and headstrong young coxcomb (id. Att. 4, ;, ; ; Q. Fr. 2, 4, 1); and therefore not surprisingly the giver of luxurious banquets in Catullus 44, 9f and 21. Voss first suggested that Antius was the C. Antius C. f. Restio who appears on coins of 49-45 B.C. (see Mommsen, Rom. Munzw. 651), and who, according to Macrobius, ;, 17, 13, and Gellius 2, 24, 14, was author of a Jex sumptuariaa few years after the similar law of Lepidus in 78 B.c. This Jex Antia had the unusual feature that magistrates and magistrateselect were forbidden to dine out excepting with designated persons ; and Macrobius adds that the conscientious Antius refrained for the rest of his life from dining out, to avoid the appearance of flouting his own law which was openly disregarded by others. There are indeed few Antii known in this period, and Restio, the suppressor of luxury, is the most likely of these to have stood in a position of personal enmity to the immoderate and luxurious Sestius. It is doubtless correct, as B. Schmidt .. observes (Proleg. 42), that the oration here mentioned does not refer to the Jex Antia, but there would surely be ill-feeling between such men. Some observations can be added to those already made by others about the identity of Antius. First, that a Republican inscription, a tit11Jus cons11Jaris found at Rome (CIL 12, 744 = Dessau 5800), names the tribuni pJebisof 71 B.c., and among them a C. Antius. This is certainly C. Antius Restio, and the year is that in which, as tribune, he brought forward his law, a" few years ",paucis ... annis(Macrob. Joe.cit.), after the Jex AemiJia of 78 B.c. Secondly, the C. Antius C. f. Restio on coins of 49-45 B.C. may have been the son of the tribune of 71 B.C. The author of the Jex Antia, however, must have been nearly the same age as Cicero, and it is also possible that, like Cicero, he was recalled to service by the Pompeian law requiring a lapse of five years between magistracy and governorship of a province. Thirdly, the senator Antius named by Cicero, Alt. 4, 17, 4 (54 B.c.), may easily be the same as the tribune of 71 B.C. The Antii may have come to Rome from Mintumae : at least one family of the name was there in Republican times and is represented by four inscriptions (CIL 12, 2688, 9; 2688, 12; 2679, ; ; 2689, 9). The term petitorwhich Catullus (44, 11) uses of Antius probably means "candidate (or public office", as in Horace, Odes ;, 1, 1of (cf. Macrob. 13, 14, 7)-for what office, we do not know, but if he was tribune in 71 B.C. he had doubtless attained the· age for the consulship. Baehrens (ed. 1, ad loc.) interprets petitor as "accuser" (of Sestius, on grounds of violation of Antius' anti-luxury law).

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AQUINUS The poet Aquinus of Catullus 14, 17-19 : Nam, si luxerit, ad librariorum Curram scrinia, Caesios, Aquinos, Suffenum, omnia colligam venena, represents, along with other pessimipoetaesuch as Caesius, the crowd of poetasters against whom Catullus never tired of name-calling (cf. 2.2. and 36). The plurals (see Merrill's ed., n. ad loc.) are doubtless intended to include all the poets of their class, while Suffenus, the caprimulgusautfossor of 2.2., is singled out for spec:al mention. Calvus had sent Catullus a waggish gift of bad poems, which Catullus suggests he received for services from a client of his, one Sulla litterator. If we are to take this suggestion seriously, the litterator may be Cornelius Epicadus (see Suetonius, De Gram. 12.), the freedman of Sulla. Probably, as B. Schmidt supposed (Proleg. 69) the "Caesii" and " Aquini " were archaistic poets in the Ennian tradition, perhaps minor annalists (cf. the annalesVolusi, Catullus 36). They are at any rate typical of the vulgar taste in poetry which Catullus abhors. Possibly Aquinus is identical with the Aquinius of whom Ocero (Tusc. 5, 63) says: adhuc neminem cognovi poetam (et mihi fuit cum Aquinio amicitia) qui sibi non optimus videretur. If this identification and the MS. readings are correct, the name may have been shortened by synizesis to fit its metrical position in Catullus 14, 18 ; on the poet's selfassurance compare the conceit of Suffenus in Catullus 2.2.. The name Aquinius suggests the town of Aquinum, south-east of Rome, and may indicate the origin of the family. Concerning Cicero's relation to this Aquinius, it is quite possible that his amicitia extended to a common admiration of the old poets ; certainly Cicero was fond of them. Moreover, if we apply a technical meaning of amicitia(that is, as " patronage "), 1 Aquinus appears as a client of Cicero. This, of course, is only conjecture. Whether the poet Aquinus is the same as the Aquinus mentioned by Appian (B.C. 2., 119) who consorted with the liberatores,or the Aquinus referred to in Plutarch, Sertorius 13, is uncertain. There is an Aquinius, a homo novusparvusquesenator,who was a legatusof the Po~peians and was pardoned by Caesar after the battle of Thapsus (Bell. Ajr. 57, 89). Possibly he is identical with the poet-friend of Ocero; but our information is too meagre to give a certain identification. 1

CT.W. Allen, Jr.," On the Friendship of Lucretius with Memmius,'' CP H (1938)

167-181.

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ARRIUS The gens A"ia is well represented in republican inscriptions in Italy. 1 Its geographical distribution is rather wide, but there is a noticeable concentration of Arrii in northern Campania and southern Latium 2 which, coupled with Cicero's reference to a C. Arrius as proximus . .. vicinus to his villa at Formiae (Att. 2, 14, 2; 2, 15, 3), indicates that this may be the area from which the family originated. The fact that one of the oldest Arrian inscriptions is that of aQ. A"i. Mj. liberteis sueis (CIL 12, 1568), seen by 11ommsen at Cicero's Formian villa in 1845 and now lost, tends to confirm this provenance. Nothing certain is known of the gens A"ia before Cicero's time, when it first produced magistrates at Rome. 3 The most comprehensive work on the Arrii is the monograph of Borghesi, Sulla genie A"ia, published in 1817 and reprinted in his OelllJf'esCompletes, vol. 1, 41-132, but now largely superseded. Two, or perhaps three Arrii of the Ciceronian period may be identifiable with the Arrius of Catullus 84. First is the C. Arrius who was a rather trying neighbour of Cicero at Formiae (Att. 2, 14, 2; 2, 15, 3). The others-if we follow Mommsen (on Borghesi, OelllJf'esCompletes 1, 68ff), E. Herzog (PW 1, 1757), and Klebs (PW 1, 1252-4), in distinguishing two persons-were both named Q. Arrius and had similar careers. One of these men (Arrius 7, PW 1, 1252) was praeter in 73 B.c. and was assigned the province of Sicily for the next year, succeeding Verres (Cic. Ve". 2, 37; 4, 42), but did not actually take command of it. During that next year Arrius was busily engaged in the slave war, according to Livy, Ep. 96: Q. Arrius praetor (erroneous, as Klebs, PW 1, 1252, points out, for pro praetore) Crixum fugitivorum ducem cum XX hominum cecidit. Cn. Lentulus cos. male adversus Spartacum pugnavit, ah eodem L. Gellius cos. et Q. Arrius praetor acie victi sunt. The Scholia Gronoviana, on Cic. Diu. in Caecil. 3, p. 382 Or., remark on the length of Verres' governorship : Triennio Verres egit praeturam in Sicilia, unum annum suum, alterum propter Arrii mortem, qui successurus V erri iter faciens in Siciliam in via decessit, tertium propter fugitivos ; alii autem dicunt secundum propter fugitivos et tertium propter Arrium. The scholiast is obviously not to be trusted, for he was unaware that 1 2.000. 1

a. CIL

12, 1801;

753; 1H4;

1607; 15.20; 615£; 1568; 2.353; 1707; and

CT. esp. CIL 11, 675£ from Capua; 1574 from Cales; 1607 from Volturnum; 1568 from Formiae ; and 10, 6122., also from Formiae. On Arrii at Minturnae cf. F. Munzer," Zu den Magistri von Minturnae," Mitt. d. de11tsch.Arch. Inst., Rom. Abt. so(11 9n) 3.24f. An Arrius, however, was consul on 1 June of an unknown year: cf. CIL 1, 757.

8

Arrius was engaged against the slaves in 72.B.c. ; and as Bruner, Nipperdey, and Schmidt suggest,1 the death of Arrius was manufactured to explain his failure to follow Verres as governor of Sicily. Moreover, Cicero's statement of the fact that Arrius did not succeed Verres can hardly be taken as supporting the scholiast's explanation; for Ocero does not even imply that Arrius had died, as he would surely have done in view of the dramatic circumstances, and in fact his words would be a strange way of reporting Arrius' death. The passage (Ve1T. 4, 42.): postea vero quam intellexerunt isti virum fortem, quern summe provincia exspectabat, Q. Arrium non succedere, statuerunt ... rather indicates that Arrius was simply diverted to another command ; and this conunand, as Borghesi (Oeuvres1, 66) saw, was undoubtedly the command of an army in the slave war to which Livy referred. It is therefore impossible to fix the death of this Q. Arrius in 72.B.C. The other Q. Arrius-if there were two-is best known from the sketch of his career in Cicero, Brut. 2.42.f. Cicero, after discussing the moderate success of C. Cosconius Calidianus, a man of " few ideas and many words ", says : Quod idem faciebat Q. Arrius, qui fuit M. Crassi quasi secundarum (sc. partium). Is omnibus exemplo debet esse, quantum in hac urbe polleat multorum oboedire tempori multorumque vel honori vel periculo servire. His enim rebus infimo loco natus et honores et pecuniam et gratiam consecutus, etiam in patronorum sine doctrina sine ingenio aliquem numerum pervenerat. Sed ... ille, cum omni iam fortuna prospere functus labores etiam magnos excepisset, illius iudicialis anni (i.e. 5z. B.C., date of the /ex Pompeialimiting the length of speeches in court) severitatem quasi solem non tulit. Arrius' close connection with Crassus must have a bearing on the fact that in 63 n.c., when Crassus and his friends called upon Cicero in the dead of night with the anonymous letters announcing Catiline's plot, this information was followed immediately by the arrival of Arrius from Etruria with news of the Manlian forces gathering there tPlut. Cic. 15). Plutarch here calls him avrip o-rps purpose in mentioning them is to justify his own poetry of the same sort, which might have been considered unbecoming in a man of serious political and philosophical habits like Pliny. There is more direct evidence of Nepos' rapport with the literary ideals of the poetaenovi in his Life of Cato (3), where he appraises Cato's Origineswith the comment: mu/ta industria et diligentiacompare/,nu/la doctrina. This condemnation of the Originesfor their lack of learning is entirely in harmony with the literary ideals of the neoteroi,and Hartmann 2 has convincingly shown that Nepos had in mind the criterion of the doctuspoeta, and should be included among the proponents of the " new " poetry. For a history of the question see Ellis, Comm. 1-5. The thorough and scholarly study of A. L. Wheeler, Catull11Sand the Traditionsof Ancient Poetry, vol. 9, Sather Classical Lectures, Berkeley, Univ. of Calif. Press, 1934, 1-32., is of great value for the composition and history of the collection of Catullus. 1 J. J. Hartmann," De Cantoribus Euphorionis et de Quibusdam Allis,'' Mnemosyne 48 (1915) 245-267. 1

CORNELIUS II Catullus 67, 34-36, on the escapades of Balbus' wife: .. Br1X1a. . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . • . . . de Postumio et Cornell narrat amore, cum quibus ilia malum fecit adulterium. sums up all that we know of the Cornelius there mentioned. He was one of at least four men who had seduced the wife of Balbus in Verona or Brixia. Since she had been grossly immoral before her marriage (cf. 67, 19-2.8) and was little more than a meretrix, there is no reproach here for Cornelius. This is the argument of Cicero, curiously enough, in defence of Catullus' former friend M. Caelius Rufus in 56 B.c. against imputations of adultery with Clodia (cf. Cic. Cael. 49f). This Cornelius can hardly be Cornelius Nepos, to whom Catullus' libel/11s is dedicated (1, 1-3), though he may be a kinsman of Nepos, who was also a Cisalpine Gaul (cf. Pliny, N.H. 3, 12.7). The passage quoted above from 67, 34-36 suggests that Cornelius was a native of Brixia 1 ; and inscriptions tend to confirm this supposition, though there were many Cornelii in both towns. In Verona there is a Republican inscription (C/L 12, 2.163) of a L. Cornelius L. f. Sula as well as 33 later inscriptions of Cornelii from Verona in C/L 5. But 44 inscriptions of Cornelii in C/L 5, other than Roman magistrates, occur in Brixia ; and since inscriptions confirm that Postumius, the other named adulterer of Balbus' wife, was from Brixia, Cornelius too undoubtedly belonged to that town. Catullus 102. is also addressed to a Cornelius, who may be the same person as the Brixian of 67, but is more probably the Cornelius of 1 (Nepos); for the friendly address of 102. is like that of 1, and 102. has no hint of Brixian or Veronese affairs (see" Cornelius Nepos "). 1

So F. 0. Copley, TAPA So (1949) z5z; Ellis, Comm. 388-90, also thinks the adultery took place there.

Q. CORNIFICIUS The name of the family is Comuficius on coins, Cornificius on his inscription (see below). The Cornificius of Catullus 38, as one of the erotic "new poets", has a place along with Catullus, Calvus and others of the circle in Ovid, Trist. 2.,43 5f: Cinna quoque his comes est Cinnaque procacior Anser Et leve Cornifici parque Catonis opus. He is further mentioned by Jerome's Chronicleunder the Year of Abraham 1976 (41 B.c.) : Corniftciuspoeta a militibus desertus interiit, quos saepe f11gientes galeatosleporesappellarat. It is likely that the Cornificius of Jerome's Chronicleis identical with the Q. Cornificius who, in the same year, was killed at Utica while fighting the forces of the triumvirate. He was the son of that Q. Cornificius (see Wissowa, PW 4, 162.4)who was tribmzusplebis in 69, praetor in 67 or 66, and in 64 a candidate, along with Cicero, for the consulship of 63. Cicero (Att. 1, 1, 1) speaks slightingly of the elder Cornificius' candidacy and indicates that he is a novushomo. In 63 the elder Cornificius was entrusted with the guarding of C. Cethegus, one of the Catilinarian conspirators (Sallust, Cat. 47, 4); and in 62.it was he who brought into the Senate the charge against P. Clodius of violating the rites of the Bona Dea. From Cicero, Att. 12., 14, 2., it appears that he died in or before 45. He seems to have belonged to the senatorial party, according to Cicero, Fam. 12.,2.8, 2.. The younger Cornificius, as we are told by Caelius Rufus in a letter to Cicero (Fam. 8, 7, 2.),was betrothed to the daughter of Aurelia Orestilla, the widow of Catiline, at the end of April, 50 B.C. He was then, according to Caelius, still adulescens. He entered public life shortly thereafter ; we hear that he was quaestor in 48, and that Caesar sent him in the summer of that year to Illyricum with propraetorian imperiumand a force of two legions, where he distinguished himself by securing the province for Caesar and capturing most of the Pompeian ships which had fled there after the battle of Pharsalus (Bell. Alex. 42., 2.f; cf. also Caesar's speech in Plut. Caes. 43, 1). Caesar, apparently distrusting either the administrative powers or the sympathies of Cornificius, dispatched A. Gabinius to take command. However, Gabinius was killed while besieged at Salonae. Cornificius again took command and sent for help to P. Vatinius at Brundisium (Bell. Alex. 43, 4, and 44, 1). Vatinius arrived with a fleet and defeated the remainder of the Pompeian fleet at Tauris early in 47. This victory enabled Cornificius to regain control of the province, and in the summer of 47 he returned to Rome. There, according to Plutarch (Caes. p, 2.), he took possession of the house of Pompey. It was probably in 47 that he received from Caesar the titles of praetor and augur which are listed in C/L 6, 1900a(his coins bear only the title augur) ;

53

Wissowa (PW 4, 162.5) considers 4 5 a more probable date, but a letter of Cicero to Cornificius (Fam. 12., 17), dated September, 46, bears the salutation Cicero S. D. Cornificio Collegae,indicating that he was an augur at that date. About this time we first hear of friendly relations between Cornificius and Cicero. The series of letters addressed by Cicero to him (Fam. 12., 17-30) extends from September, 46 B.C. (12., 17) to June, 43 B.c. (12., 30), and runs in roughly chronological order. 0. E. Schmidt 1 suggested that Fam. 12., 2.0 is the earliest of the series if it refers to Cornificius' journey through Sinuessa, Cumae and Pompeii on his way to Cilicia in 46 ; but as Ganter suggested, 2 the route would apply equally to Cornificius' trip to Africa in 44, and would preserve the chronological order of the series which all the other letters follow. Two letters (Fam. 12., 17-18) refer to Cornificius' voyage to the East in 46 on an expedition for Caesar-apparently, as Ganter (Joe.cit. 134,ff) showed, to strengthen Cilicia. On the death of Sex. Julius Caesar, governor of Syria, he assumed charge of that province as well as Cilicia and prosecuted the war against Q. Caecilius Bassus (Fam. 12., 19, 1). He probably returned to Rome early in 4 5, as Sternkopf 3 suggested, since there is no further mention of him after· that time in the campaign against Bassus. Cicero (Aft. 12., 14, 2., written 8 1\1arch,45) mentions a debt of Cornificius which his creditors were trying to collect. Cicero himself is not clear whether the debtor is the elder or younger Cornificius, but possibly the son was then engaged in settling the affairs of his father who appears to have died about this time. In 44 the Senate, apparently with the approval of Antony (see Ganter, Joe. cit. 142.), awarded Cornificius the province of Africa vetus with proconsular imperi11m. The influence of Cicero, and probably the death of Caesar, had by now altered his allegiance; and soon after he took charge of his province Cicero reports that Antony was attacking him in the Senate (Fam. 12., 2.2., 1) and attempting to stir up trouble in his province (Fam. 12., 2.3, 1). Cicero exhorted him (Fam. 12., 2.2.,4, and 12., 2.4, 1) to stand fast for the Senate. He did so, and in 42. refused to hand over his province to T. Sextius, who had been appointed governor of" New" Africa by the Third Triumvirate. In the struggle which ensued Cornificius, owing to the desertion of some of his troops, was finally defeated and killed at Utica in 41. It is doubtless this event to which the Chronicle of Jerome refers. His followers fled to Sextus Pompey in Sicily (Appian, B.C. 6, 56), and we have two Sicilian inscriptions (CIL 10, 8314 and 8 31 5) which probably belong to freedmen of Cornificius. Another inscription (CIL 8, 1441) of a Q. Corni/icius Q. f. Arn(ensi tribu), who built a temple in Africa, is quite possibly to be connected with him. 1

Der Briifwechseldes Cicero,Leipzig, 189h ZF. F. L. Ganter," Q. Cornificius," PhilologusH, N.F 7 (1894) 132.-146, esp. 141f. 3 W. Sternkopf, " Die Verteilung der romischen Provinzen vor dem mutinensischen Kriege," Hermes 47 (1912.) H x. 2

54 Comifi.cius belonged to the same tribe as the inhabitants of Rhegium (see PW 4, 162.4), though it is not certain whether he was born there. For a detailed treatment of the military and political career of Comificius see the article by F. L. Ganter, cited above. We see clearly from Cicero's letters to Cornificius that he was an orator and a man of literary tastes. In Fam. 12., 18, 1, to Comificius, 1 In Fam. 12., 17, .2., Cicero says to him: Cicero speaks of vosmagnosoratores. pro:xime scripsi de optimo genere dicendi (the Orator), in quo saepe suspicatus sum te a iudicio nostro, scilicet ut doctum hominem ah non indocto, paullum dissidere ; huic tu libro ma:xime velim ex animo, si minus, gratiae causa suffragere. Dicam tuis, ut eum, si velint, describant ad teque mittant ; puto enim, etiamsi rem minus probabis, tamen in ista solitudine, quidquid a me profectum sit, iucundum tibi fore. Since the Orator is Cicero's principal polemic against the Atticists, the deference shown by him in this passage to Cornificius' oratorical opinions, which clearly differ from his own, indicates that Cornificius, like Calvus, was an important member of the Atticist school. Cornificius appears certainly to have known Vergil, but the nature of the connection is disputed. Our information comes from the commentators on V ergil, in the form of allegorical interpretations of certain of the Eclogues. As Wissowa points out (PW 4, 162.8), only the later Vergilian commentators speak of Cornificius as an obtrectatorVergilii, while the earlier commentators, such as Servius and the Veronese Scholia, either mention him as a friend of Vergil or omit him from the poet's enemies. On Eel. 7, 2.1-2.3, where Corydon says: Nymphae, noster amor, Libethrides, aut mihi carmen Quale meo Codro concedite (pro:xima Phoebi Versibus ille facit), the Veronese Scholia comment : Codrum plerique Vergilium accipiunt, alli Comificium, nonnulli Helvium Cinnam putant, de quo bene sentit. Servius, on Eel. 7, .2.1, says : multi volunt in hac ecloga esse allegoriam, ut Daphnis sit Caesar, Cory.don Vergilius, Thyrsis vero, qui vincitur, V ergilii obtrectator, scilicet aut Bavius aut Anser aut Mevius. The late Bernese Scholia (Eel. 7, arg.), on the contrary, identify Thyrsis as CorniftciusinimicusV ergilii. The Bernese Scholia also suggest Comificius as the Codrus of the seventh Eclogueand the Amyntas of Eel. 2. and 5 (Schol. Bern. on Eel. 7, 2.6 ; .2., 39 ; 5, 8 and 1 5), both detractors of Vergil, according to the allegorical interpretation. The late scholia to Servius 2 mention Cornificius as an obtrectatorand connect him with Antigenes in Eel. 5, 89. In all these cases the earlier commentators speak only of Bavius, Mevius and other known obtrectatores, never of Cornificius. 1 1

A. Cima, in Riv.di Filo/. Class. 16 (1888) 301, rejectsvosagainstall the manuscripts. G. Thilo and H. Hagen, Servii in Vergili Carmina Co111111entarii, 3 vols. Leipzig, 1880-1902, Apparat. 24, 23, and 54, 39.

55 Moreover, Asconius, in his work Contra ObtrectatoresV ergilii, did not know Cornificius as one of that group. The scholium of Philargyrius on Eel. 3, 106, indicates that Cornificius was on good terms with Vergil, though there is a textual question in connection with the name : the Bernese Scholia read Corn11t11s, and Hagen, thinking with Ribbeck 1 of Cornelius Gallus, would read Corneli11s. The parody (Morel, p. 105): Ordea qui dixit superest ut tritica dicat, based on Vergil, Eel. 5, 2.6, is ascribed to cc Cornificius Gallus " by the late grammarian Cledonius (GLK 5, 43, 2). The name is possibly due to confusion with Cornelius Gallus. 2 Ribbeck (op. cit., p. 96) accepts the verse as Cornificius', but Wissowa (PW 4, 1629) is probably right in believing that the verse circulated anonymously, like other verses of the obtrectatores,so that Servius (on Georg. 1, 210) ascribed it to Bavius or Mevius, the chief obtrectatoresknown to him ; while Cledonius, sharing the later view of Cornificius as an enemy of Vergil, assigned the verse to him. It is in keeping with the late origin of this view of Cornificius as an obtrectatorVergilii that he plays a large part in the late interpolated version of Donatus' Vita V ergilii, while the original Vita does not mention him. The evidence of the earliest Vergilian commentators, therefore, seems to indicate friendly relations between Cornificius and Vergil ; and the elegiac verses of Vergil's friend C. Valgius Rufus to Cinna (Morel, p. 105, fr. 2.)show cc Codrus ", whom the Veronese Scholia on Eel. 7, 22, identify as Cornificius, to be a respected member of Vergil's circle and a poet well known to Cinna. Tenney Frank 3 identifies Cornificius as the Daphnis of Eclogue5, and considers that Ecloguea eulogy in necessarily veiled language of Cornificius' death while fighting the triumvirate in 41. Macrobius (6, 4, 12, and 6, 5, 13) quotes two fragments of Cornifi.cius which he says were imitated by Vergil ; and Frank, in the article cited above, considers Cornificius the leader of the neoteric movement after Calvus. A further question in connection with Cornifi.ciusis that of the authorship of the Rhetoricaad C. Herennium. Most manuscripts name Cicero as author of the treatise ; but since the dissertation of the humanist Raphael Regius 4 that ascription has been discredited. Many writers have been suggested as the author, although there is still no general agreement. However, Regius suggested Cornifi.ciusamong others ; and more editors have accepted Cornificius than any other proposed author. 5 The most H. Hagen, Jahrb. f11r Philo/., Suppl. 4, 7u ; 0. Ribbeck, P. Vergili Maroni.r Op,ra, Leipzig, 1894-1895, Proleg. 97. 1 This is the view of R. Unger, D, C. Valgii RM/i Po,mati.r,Halle, 1848, ~92.. 3 T. Frank, Virgil, n5-u8; id.," Cornificius as Daphnis?" CRH (192.0)49-p. 4 Utr11111 Ars Ri:Jetorica ad Hereni11111 CiceroniFalso /nscribaltlr,Venice, 1491. 6 For a history of the question of authorship see Brzoska, PW 4, 1605 and 1622f: also F. Marx, Ad C. Her,nni11111 Libri IV, Leipzig, 1894, Proleg. 61-69. 1

56 cogent argument for Cornificius as author of the Rhetoricais that Quintilian (9, 3, 98) cites from a Cornificius a series of rhetorical "figures,, which correspond exactly in order and exposition to those in Rhet. ad Herenn. Bk. 4, 2.0, 2.2.,2.5, 2.6, 30, 35, 40 and 48. Quintilian (3, 1, 2.1)also specifically names Cornificius among writers of rhetorical works, and (9, 3, 89) of special essays on figures. 1\farx, who rejects Cornificius' authorship of the Rhetorica,maintains (op. cit., p. 7of) that the work of Cornificius which Quintilian knew was only a special treatise on figures, not an ars rhetorica. Thiele 1 considers the treatise on figures mentioned by Quintilian a part of the rhetorical work mentioned in 3, 1, 2.1 : that is, the Rhetoricaad Herennium. However, the observation of Marx (op. cit., p. 70) that Quintilian uses only a part of the material in Book 4 of the Rhetorica,and nothing from Books 1-3, though he might well have used other parts (cf. e.g. Rhet. ad Herenn. Bk. 2. and Quint. 5, 10, on argumenta),seems to indicate that Quintilian did not have the Rhetoricaad Herenniumbefore him. Ammon and Kamarath 2 have argued that Comificius wrote both a special treatise on figures and an ars rhetorica. It is unlikely in any case that the author of the Rhetoricaad Herennium is the poet Cornificius. :tvfarx(op. cit., pp. 153-155) fixes the date of the work, on internal evidence, as between 88 and 82. B.C. Hence if a Cornificius is the author, he may be the poet's father, who, as we have seen, was an associate of Cicero and apparently an orator. The possibility remains that the poet-orator was the author of the work on figures and perhaps an ars rhetorica; but the connection of both with the Rhetoricaad Herenniumis not clear. A further identification of the poet with the Comificius Longus, author of De Etymis Deorum, who is mentioned by Servius (on Aen. 3, 332.), Priscian (GLK 2., 2.57, 6), Macrobius (1, 9, 11; 1, 17, 9 and 33, 1, 2.3, 2.), and Festus (12.3, 166, 170, 194, 2.82., and 359) is uncertain but possible. The subject of the De Etymis Deorumdoes have an Alexandrian flavour and possible connections with an Epicurean work (cf. Lucretius 2., 6ooff) ; and neither of these facts would be incompatible with Comificius as a member of the Catullan circle. It is true that the poet is never mentioned with the cognomen Longus ; and some apparently Stoic characteristics which Macrobius (1, 17, 61f) attributes to the work seem inconsistent with the poet. However, Macrobius does not distinguish between the Comificius of the De Etymis Deorum and ·the Cornificius to whom the Glaucusbelongs ; and the latter is certainly the Cornificius of Catullus' circle. According to Macrobius (1, 9, 11), the De Etymis Deorum quoted Cicero's De Natura Deorum, which was published in 44 B.C.; so that the poet, as governor of Africa in 44-41, must have written the work, if he was the author, during his governorship. The sister of the poet, Cornificia, appears with her brother in their 1 Colling. Gel. Anz. 1895, 72.3f. 1

Ammon, BI. fiir d. bayrisch. Gymn.-Wes. B (1897) 409f; Kamarath, De Libr. Rhet. ad C. Herenn• .AJKtore,Progr. Holzminden, 1858, 2.9ff.

57 inscription (Cl L 6, 1300a) as the wife of a Camerius-perhaps the Camerius of Catullus 55 and 5Sb (see " Camerius "). The Chronicle of Jerome, after mentioning the death of Comificius, refers to his sister as a poetess : huius soror Corniftcia,cuius insigniaexstant epigrammata. It is not certain whether the reference of Cicero (Aft. 13, 29, 1) to a CorniftciaQ.f., vetula saneet 11111/tarum nuptiarum,is to this Cornificia, as there are three Cornificias, all Q. f., mentioned in this period (see Munzer, PW s.v. Cornificia 12). Of the poetry of Cornificius we have two, or perhaps three, fragments (Morel, p. 90 ; Baehrens, p. 32 5). One is a hendecasyllable : Deducta mihi voce garrienti, another, part of a hexameter, from the G/aucus,according to I\1acrobius (6, 5, 13) : ... Centauros sedare bimembres. The G/aucus was apparently an epyllion. There is further a fragment quoted by Servius (on Georg.1, 55) but not included by Baehrens, which, if it belongs to a poem as we have it, seems to be an irregular catalectic dacty lie trimeter : Ut folia, quae frugibus arboreis tegmina gignuntur. Possibly it is a paraphrase of a poem, or perhaps a prose quotation from the De Etymis Deorum,though Morel (p. 90) includes it as fr. 3 of Cornificius' poetry, and suggests a probable emendation and transposition: . . . ut folia haec, quae Frugibus arboreis gignuntur tegmina ... The only mention of Cornificius by Catullus is in the thirty-eighth poem ; but that mention, with its plea for pau/um quid libel adlocutionisevidently a request for consolatory verses " sadder than Simonides' tears " in some extremity of suffering which may have been Catullus' last illness, or perhaps an unknown personal tragedy ,-argues much for the intimacy of the association. The friend on whom Catullus would call in such an extremity, though he is mentioned nowhere else by him, must have been one of his most cherished comrades. Comificius must have been nearly the same age as Catullus, perhaps somewhat younger, if our identification of him is correct; possibly, taking meos amores (38, 8) literally, there was a relationship between the two poets similar, though more mature, to that of Catullus and Juventius. The possibility of a connection between Cornificius and Catullus as to their place of origin is suggested by the reference of Cledonius (GLK 5, 43, 2), mentioned above, to a" Cornificius Gallus" as the author of a parody of V ergil. The classing of Comificius among the obtrectatores V ergilii,as pointed out above, is doubtless wrong, and the verse quoted by Cledonius probably circulated anonymously ; but since the name Cornificius Gallus is otherwise unknown, perhaps Gallusis a true adjective, referring to the poet's place of origin. If this theory is true, Cornificius may have been another in that group of brilliant young men who came from the north of Italy.

EGNATIUS In Catullus 37 a certain Egnatius is satirized as one of the hangers-on of the salax tabernawhere Lesbia now met her lovers ; in fact Egnatius is singled out as foremost among them (37, 17: tu praeter omnes,me de capillatis). In Catullus 39 he is the owner of a constant and boorish grin, which shows teeth whitened by the unsanitary Celtiberian habit of deaning them with urine. In both poems the real basis of Catullus' satire is that Egnatius is a foreigner, a Celtiberian (37, 18; 39, 17) whose appearance and habits are ridiculous to a Roman. Who is this Egnatius ? The name is a common gentilici11m which 2 appears very early in Rome and central Italy (cf. e.g. C/L 1 , 2.103, an inscription from Tuder [modem Todi] in Latin and Umbrian; 12, 2.113; 2.119f,from Assisium; and 11, 3647, from Caere). It is apparently Samnite in origin, since one of the earliest bearers of the name, Gellius Egnatius, was dux or imperatorof the Samnites (cf. Livy 10, 18, 1 ; 10, 19, 14; 10, 2.1, 2.; 10, 2.9, 16). Many representatives of the gens Egnatia are found in Italy during the republican period and later : Skutsch, PW 5, 1993-2.004,lists forty-six, and Dessau, vol. 3, 1 (Index), pp. 59f, gives the inscriptions of forty-three. 1 There is, in fact, a P. Egnatius at the end of a list of slave-owners in an inscription of 59 B.C. which derives from Sabloneta in the territory of Mantua (CIL 1, 602.= 5, 4087, cf. 5, 4044). Skutsch (PW 5, 1995) is attracted by the coincidence that the inscription was found near Verona, Catullus' home, and that its date is approximately that of the poems where Egnatius is mentioned. But as we have seen, the name was rather common in Italy ; and we should need a good deal more than a mere name on a minor inscription to identify this P. Egnatius with the person known to Catullus. The evidence of the poems, in fact, is against Catullus' Egnatius having ever been a resident of the Transpadane region : for the locale of Catullus 37 is obviously Rome (cf. 37, 1f, referring to the temple of Castor and Pollux) and in the other poem (cf. 39, 13-17) Catullus expressly contrasts Egnatius' habits with those of his own Transpadane countrymen. There are several other members of the gens Egnatia who might be the Egnatius of Catullus 37 and 39 : a Cn. Egnatius whom the censors of 70 B.C. removed from the list of senators (Cicero, Cluent. 135), though he is doubtless too old to be one of Lesbia's lovers c. 60-59 B.C.; an Egnatius who fought under Crassus at Carrhae in 53 B.C. and survived the disaster to lead a cavalry unit back to safety (Plut. Crass. 2.7, 7£); and two Egnatii, father and son, proscribed and killed in 43 B.C. (Appian, B.C. 4, 2.1). For all these persons, however, we lack sufficient evidence to make an identification. A much more probable identification is that made by Baehrens (AnalectaCatulliana,Jena, 1874, 45 ; Comm. 2.19)and supported by Bergk 1

For Egnatii in the Republican period cf. C/L 13, 2342; 2119£; 1992; 2113; 752.; 1519 ; 1943 ; App. 308 (449).

59 (KleinePhilo/. Schriften,Halle, 1884, 1, 430) and others. Baehrens argued that the Egnatius of Catullus 37 and 39 is the poet Egnatius (cf. PW 5, 1993 ; Schanz-Hosius 14, 314) who wrote a De &rum Natura in at least three books, of which two fragments, both from the first book, are preserved by Macrobius (6, 5, 2.; 6, 5, 12.). These two fragments show a close relationship to the style of Lucretius. The first : denique Mulciber [et] ipse ferens altissima caeli tcontingunt (contigna or cum tigna Pontanus) parallels the Lucretian tendency to begin a verse with deniquein introducing the last phase of an argument (cf. e.g. Luer. 1, 471; 3, 157; 4, 2.2.0and 4 51). The second fragment : roscida noctivagis astris labentibus Phoebe, pulsa loco cessit concedens lucibus altis, is marked by the archaistic suppression of final s in the fifth foot of the hexameter, again a familiar occurrence in Lucretius. 1 Moreover, the rare compound adjective noctivagusis found twice in Lucretius (4, 5So and 5, I 189 ; for his borrowing of such words from Ennius see Bailey, LIICf'etius, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1947, vol. 1, Proleg. 2.9f). The form labentibus does not occur in Lucretius, but the metrically equivalent labentiais found four times (1, 2.and 1004; 2.,362.; 5, 12.16)and always in the same position (fifth foot dactyl) as in the second fragment of Egnatius. Next, the three complete verses of Egnatius all begin with dactyls, while the corrupt beginning of the fourth verse was apparently a spondee. It is interesting that Lucretius (Book 2.) prefers dactylic first feet in nearly the same ratio (363 dactyls to 153 spondees), while Ennius prefers spondaic first feet, 111 to 92..2 Finally, the strong pattern of assonance and alliteration in the second fragment (noctivagisastris, lococessit concedens lucibus)suggests very common Lucretian arrangements. Admittedly it is risky to base conclusions upon such meagre fragments ; but the fact that these fragments correspond in several important ways with Lucretian usage ought not to be disregarded. This evidence, together with the fact that both poems bear the same title, indicates not only that Egnatius was probably an Epicurean poet but that there was in fact some literary borrowing between him and Lucretius-either by one from the other or by both from the common fund of Ennian poetic tradition. Skutsch (PW 5, 1993) believes that Egnatius was an imitator of Lucretius following shortly after him in time; and he bases this assumption upon the claim of Lucretius (1, 92.6f,and 4, 1f): avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante trita solo ... Of 49 examples of suppression of final s in Lucretius, 2.6are in the fifth foot dactyl ; cf. Luer. 5, 82.4,with two such cases in successive lines. 30 of the 49 examples are third declension dat.-abl. plural endings. For complete tables showing comparisons with Ennius and Cicero see Bailey, Lwretius, vol. 1, Proleg. 12.3-12.6. 2 For tables, see Bailey, Lwretius, vol. 1, Proleg. 110. 1

60 But we can hardly accept too literally Lucretius' claim to be the first Roman philosophical poet : for, leaving Egnatius aside, there was at least one such poet contemporary with or earlier than Lucretius. Cicero (Q. Fr . .z, 9 [11], 3), in the same letter of 54 B.c. where he makes his non-committal appraisal of Lucretius, says : virum te putabo, si Sallustii Empedoclealegeris,hominemnon putabo. This Empedoclea(it is uncertain whether the author was the historian or Cn. Sallustius) was therefore published during Lucretius' lifetime or soon after his death, and was obviously a major, if uninspired, philosophical poem ; yet Lucretius either was unaware of it or wilfully ignored it. Egnatius' floruit, therefore, may be earlier or later than 55 B.C. A possible terminus ante quem can be fixed for his poem from Cicero's statement in 46 B.C. (Orator 161) that the suppression of finals in poetry was then regarded as subr11stic11m; but we shall see more of this below. The order of quotations in 1iacrobius-generally chronological-seems to indicate an early date for Egnatius' De RerumNatura ; the first fragment of Egnatius falls between quotations from Accius and Lucretius, the second between Accius and Cornificius. There is a possibility that Lucretius' poem was not actually published before 43 B.C. 1 ; if so, Egnatius' De Rerum Natura was widely known before that of Lucretius, as Macrobius implies, and may have borrowed its title and some of its Lucretian characteristics from a manuscript copy. An apparent difficulty in identifying Catullus' Egnatius with the Epicurean poet is the fact that Catullus seems to regard him as a barbarian from the wilds of Celtiberia (in Northern Spain), marked out from his Roman companions by his dark beard (Catullus 37, 19) and his gleaming teeth "scrubbed with Spanish urine" (id. 37, 20; cf. 39, 17-21). We should hardly expect a native fresh from the interior of Spain at this time to be a philosophical poet whose work would be read centuries later. But Catullus was one of the noble Valerii ; and we certainly have here another expression of the Roman dignitas,with its outward disdain for everyone not of Roman birth, which is so common in this age when provincial influence was beginning to be felt at Rome.2 If there is as little basis in Catullus' allegations about Egnatius as there is in the charges of some of his contemporaries, we can almost disregard them. Oddly enough, Catullus and these other defenders of " pure Roman blood " have in their origin or family the same municipal taint which they decry. The younger L. Manlius Torquatus, in the trial of P. Cornelius Sulla in 62.B.c., called Cicero " the first foreign king at Rome since the Tarquins " (Cic. Sul/. 21-24)-because Cicero came from Arpinum, barely 75 Roman miles from the capital and in the Latin territory. Cicero retorted that Torquatus was also a foreigner; his mother came from Asculum in 1

Such is the argument of van Berchem," La publication du DE RERUM NATURA et la Vie Eglogue de Virgile," M11.Ie11111Hel11etiet1111 3 (1946) 26-39. 2 On this prejudice, which did not prevent Roman nobility from marrying into municipal families, see R. Syme, The Roman R.evol11tion, 3s7£.

61 Picenum (Sull. 25) I In another case Cicero further embroidered the facts about a certain Calventius, the father-in-law of L. Calpurnius Piso (cos. 58 B.c.). Calventius was a prosperous businessman from Placencia, a long-established colony in Cisalpine Gaul (cf. Pis. fr. 9=Ascon. 2 [p. 2f]); but Cicero describes him as an Insubrian (Transalpine) Gaul (Pis. fr. 11= Ascon. 4 [p. 5]), adding for good measure that he is a praeco, and refers to the "disgrace" of Piso's "trousered kinsmen" (Pis. 53 : bracataecognationisdedecus).The case of Egnatius is closely paralleled by that of L. Decidius Saxa, tribune of the plebs and one of Caesar's " provincial " senators (Cic. Phil. 11, 12 ; 13, 27). We are led by the invective of Cicero (Phil. 8, 9 and 26; 10, 22; 11, 12 and 37; 12, 20; 13, 2 and 27; 14, 10) to believe that Saxa too was a wild Celtiberian (cf. esp. Phil. 11, 12; 13, 27), an ex-centurion and" surveyor of camps" (Phil. I 1, 12 ; 14, 1o). But as R. Syme has demonstrated, 1 not only was Saxa's military status hardly as Cicero describes it, but the gentilicium Decidius is of Central Italian origin, and it was quite possibly this man whom Caesar defended in his speech pro Deci(di)o Samnite (Tacitus, Dial. 21 : Deci(di)o John, cf. Tac. Ann. 4, 13 Carsius pro Carsidius). Decidius can hardly be considered a newly-enfranchised native of Celtiberia, but more probably a Roman citizen by birth, descended from a Central-Italian family emigrated to Spain. Such is doubtless the case with Egnatius. Catullus, like Cicero, had his own reasons for making much of the " foreign " origin of a man as Roman as himself; whether the charges were true mattered really very little. 'We know that there were Spanish-born poets at this time (cf. Cic. Pro Archia 26), and Cicero's words about them (ibid.), Cordubaenatis poetis, imply that they did not remain in Spain. Now let us examine the evidence upon which rests the identification of the Epicurean poet Egnatius with Catullus' " Celtiberian ". First, it is anything but surprising to find a poet as an acquaintance of Catullus ; in fact, the one common element in the diverse personalities of Catullus' circle is their interest in poetry. They flourished in an age when it was the mark of a cultivated gentleman, whatever his profession, to find pastime in the criticism and composition of poetry. In the lists of such poets in Pliny (Ep. 5, 3, 5) and Ovid (Trist. 2, 431.ff)are many of the names which we find in the pages of Catullus : not only the poet Cinna, but orators and politicians like Calvus, Hortensius, Cicero, C. Memmius, and the Torquati. This does not mean that every poet of the Ciceronian Age belonged to Catullus' circle ; it does mean that in identifying members of that group one must look first for an interest in poetry, which will serve in nearly all cases to explain the connection with Catullus, whether it is one of friendship, acquaintance, or disagreement (cf. e.g. Catullus 14, to Calvus; 22, on the poetaster Suffenus; 36, on Volusius; and 95, with its criticism of Hortensius). But it is as a member of the company at the salax tabernathat Catullus 1

R. Syme, "Who was Deciclius Saxa? "JRS

2.7 (1937) 12.7-137.

62. (37, 1f) condemns Egnatius. The explanation of this salax taberna. .. a and Horace 36f; pilleatis nonafratrib11spila by Tenney Frank (Cat111/11s cf . .z.8of,n. 11) is an ingenious and plausible one : that it was in fact the house of M. Caelius Rufus on the Palatine, recently rented by Caelius from P. Clodius Pulcher, and located at the ninth doorpost (nonapila)that is, the fifth house-from the temple of Castor and Pollux (apilleatis ... Jratrib11s)on the Clivus Victoriae. It is clear from Cicero's Pro Caelio that Caelius had enjoyed the favours of Oodia not too long before Catullus (in 58) remonstrates to Caelius that " Lesbia " has virtually become a bawd. The ducentisessoresof the salax tabernaare therefore the magnanimiRemi nepotesof Catullus 58 : in both cases, the crowd of young wits and wastrels who had surrounded Caelius and Clodia (cf. e.g. Cael. 32. on the wild parties of this company). It is natural that Egnatius should have been a prominent member of the circle, just as Catullus was of his own group ; for like Catullus he was a poet, not a dilettante. Caelius had cultivated his talents with wide literary studies (cf. Cic. Cael. 4,4f; Fam. 2., 10, 3) and was familiar with quotable poetry (cf. e.g. one of his letters to Cicero, Fam. 8, 2.); Clodia, on Catullus' testimony (36, 1-10), had a fine taste for poetry; and Caelius' remarks about Clodia (cf. Quintilian 8, 6, 53) and his opponentprobably Atratinus (cf. Quintilian 1, 5, 61)-in the trial to which Oodia brought him in 56 B.c. suggest that he was playing to a witty and wellread audience of his friends. 1 The poet Egnatius was quite at home in such company, and it is not surprising that Catullus should single him out (37, 17-2.0) for special mention ; for he was probably in at least two senses the poet-laureate of this group. In the first place, if he was an Epicurean he could have been the high priest of a " practical " Epicureanism which appears to have pervaded the group. Caelius himself was interested in philosophy : in a letter to Cicero (Fam. 8, 2., June 51 B.c.) he refers to his pleasure at spending an idle day in discussions with Cicero, and proceeds to ask Cicero to write something dedicated to him-apparently a philosophical treatise-" of some appropriateness to me " and containing " practical instruction ". Caelius was hardly the man to take philosophy very seriously ; but the ethical code by which he and his comrades lived certainly had its basis in Epicureanism. His correspondence with Cicero of 51-50 B.C. (Fam. 8) shows a hearty materialism and a self-centred view of friendship 2 such as Cicero himself later decried in De Finibus I and 2., Cf. R. G. Austin, Pro Caelio,2nd ed., Oxford, 1952, Introd. viif; "his remarks, akin as they are to the spirit of Catullus' lampoons, point to the existence of a circle of wits who would understand and relish such allusions (cf. also Alt. 1, 18, ~)." 2 Cf. e.g. Caelius' repeated petulant requests, based upon Cicero's friendship, for Cilician panthers and prisoners for his games as aedile (Fam. 8, 2, 8 ; 8, 6, 11 ; 8, 9, 1 f; 8, 4, 2); and the request mentioned above (Fam. 8, 2) for a work dedicated to him so that his name would be widely associated with that of Cicero. On Epicurean friendship cf. De Fin. 1, 6j-70. 1

63 while his revels with Clodia and their companions (Cael. 3s) are the sort of Roman perversion of Epicurean voluptas discussed at length in De Finibus I, 2.s ; 1, 32.; 1, 43 ; and 2., 6-14. 1 I have mentioned, in the Preface to this study, the question of Epicurean influences in the young men of Catullus' acquaintance, including Caelius, who was once Catullus' friend (cf. 77, 1-6) ; and while there is no certainty that they constituted a formal Epicurean group, considerable evidence exists that Epicurean ideas, more than those of any other philosophy, dominated their ethical pattern as well as their literary creed. In the case of Caelius' circle, additional evidence may lie in the cryptic remark of Cicero (Att. 1, 16, 11, June 61 B.c.) explaining that the public thinks him a favourite adviser of Pompey : usqueeo,ut nostriisti comissatores coniurationis barbatuliiuvenesillum in sermonibusCn. Ciceronemappellent. The demonstrative isti can hardly have its derogatory sense, for Cicero was obviously flattered by the witty implication that Pompey depended upon him. But there is no reason why isti cannot have its second-person force, meaning " of your persuasion ''-i.e., sharing Atticus' Epicurean sympathies. The nature of the coniuratiois uncertain ; but in this context it may mean an early stage of the " conspiracy of satire " against Pompey which is well attested among Catullus and his companions (cf. e.g. Catullus 2.9, 2.4; 113, 1; Calvus, fr. 18). Finally, it is in the light of Cicero's term barbatuliiuvenesthat Catullus' special mention of Egnatius (37, 17-2.0) becomes fully intelligible. The diminutive barbatulimust mean that these young men either affected short beards or were too young to grow proper beards. In either case, Egnatius stood out among them :

tu praeter omnes une de capillatis,

. . . . .

Egnati, opaca quern bonum facit barba.

Une de capillatissuggests an affectation of long hair as well ; opacaquem bonumf acit barbais of course ironical, and bonumhas its political sense of " conservative " or " senatorial ". These young intellectuals were certainly not boniin that sense, and Egnatius' dark beard, which ought to distinguish him from them in appearance as well as in political allegiance, is actually (according to Catullus) a mark of his foreign birth. As a footnote on the Epicurean tendencies of this group it should be added that Catullus' name for them (37, 1) : Salax tabema vosque contubernales, used of Epicurean fellowis a derivative of the technical term contubernium ship.2 In a second sense too Egnatius was unus de capillatis-the chief object of Catullus' invective. He embodied more than any other member of Caelius' intellectual group the literary creed against which Catullus set 1 11

For a further statement of the evidence see cc M. Caelius Rufus ". Cf. N. W. DeWitt, cc Epicurean Contuberni11111,'' TAPA 67 (1936) 55-63.

64 himself. This creed rested ultimately upon the annalistic tradition of Ennius ; and its characteristics to which Catullus objected most were lengthiness (cf. 95, 3 and 7-10, where Catullus echoes Callimachus' dictum µfya f31f3A(ov µfya K.CXKEfas, Pap. Her,. 1082, 11 ; Tlepl cp1>.apyvpias, Pap. H1r,. 253, 12. For a discussion of the fragments see Rostagni, Virgilio Minon, 176(.; Frank, Virgil, 52f; and Korte, /«. tit.

152

Varos, reminding him of their schooldays together by using myths as references to the Epicurean doctrines which they had heard from Siro, is a plausible one. The interpretation is strengthened by the statement of Servius (on Eel. 6, 1;) that the Silenus of the sixth Eclogueis Siro ; and there are strong reminiscences of Epicurean doctrine in the poem (cf. e.g. lines ; 1-;4). In spite of the statement of the scholiasts (Aero and Comm. CrlVJ.on Horace, Ars Poet. 4;8ff) that Varos wrote poetry, there are no extant fragments of, or even direct reference to, his poems. This fact, coupled with the deferential mention of him in Ars Poet. 4;8ff, points to his importance to the Augustan age as a critic rather than as a poet; and the plltlor, jides, and nudaveritas attributed to him by Horace in Odes 1, 24, 6f, are perhaps to be understood of his character as a literary critic. It is hardly too much to say of Varos, as Frank does (Catu/lusand Horace67), that he constitutes an important link between late Republican and early Augustan literary theory. Elsewhere (Vergil 148), Frank divides the Augustan poets into the free romanticists (Gallus, and later Propertius), the eclectics (notably Vergil), and the " strict classicists ,, (Horace, Varius, and Pollio) ; Varos, though not poetically very productive, apparently belonged to the last group. Catullus mentions a Varos in his tenth and twenty-second poems. The former, an amusing anecdote addressed to Varos, is dated about 56 B.C. by reference to Catullus' recent service in Bithynia. Apparently the same Varos is addressed in Catullus 2.2., where the subject is the literary faults of the poetaster Suffenus, also mentioned in Catullus 14. In both poems Varos is clearly seen as a close friend of Catullus; in 10, on the plane of personal understanding, and in 2.2., on the level of common literary principles. It is agreed by most editors 1 and commentators of Catullus that the Varos of both poems is the same, and that he is identical with Quintilius Varos. If the date of Varos' birth (75 B.c.) suggested by Korte is correct, Varos was about nineteen or twenty years old at the time of his appearance in Catullus 10. The date of Catullus 2.2. is uncertain but probably not far from that of 10. Catullus was then about twenty-nine years old; but his familiarity with the young Varos, as with Asinius Pollio, did not suffer from the difference in their ages. There is in the twenty-second poem, moreover, the implied judgment that Varos was already an intelligent and mature critic of poetry. Beside these ties of personal friendship and literary principles, there was perhaps another ground for relationship between Varos and Calvus, as well as Catullus. Calvus wrote an elegy for his beloved Quintilia, probably his wife; and if she was, as is not chronologically unlikely, the 1

See Baehrens, 114 and I H ; Friedrich, uo; Merrill, Intro. xlii; Ellis, Co111111. p and 71. Schwabe, Q. C. 289ff, has fully developed the arguments for the identity of Quintilius Varos with Catullus' Varos.

1 S3

sister of Quintilius Varos, Calvus was Varos' brother-in-law. But whether or not Varus was connected with Calvus by marriage, he was certainly a sympathetic member of Catullus' circle. It is no accident that, after close familiarity with the poetry and literary polemic of Catullus, he carried down to the Augustan age the exacting standards of literary criticism which Horace records in the Ars Poetica.

QUINTIUS-QUINTIA Commentators on Catullus have been reluctant to connect the Quintius of 82 and 100 with the Quintia unfavourably compared with Lesbia in 86; see e.g. Merrill's note on 86 : [Quintia is] "evidently not the sister of the Quintius of c. 82 and 100; for this poem dates from the time of the faith of Catullus in Lesbia, at which time Quintius was his friend ,, . But neither 82 nor 100 dates from the time of Catullus' faith in Lesbia; and he shows the same attitude toward both-hardly friendship. Although it is impossible to identify these two persons precisely, there is still reason to believe that they were closely related-possibly brother and sister. 82 is the earlier poem to Quintius, and it dates from the time when Lesbia began to find other lovers, c. 59/8 B.C.; for the plea to Quintius eripereei [i.e. Catu/lo]no/i, mu/to quodcariusi/li est ocu/is(82, 3£) certainly refers to Lesbia : cf. 104, if. Since the appeal is to Quintius not to steal Lesbia, it implies that she was willing; therefore the date of 82 is toward the end of the Lesbia affair. This poem also may mean that Lesbia was in Verona at the time. In 100, written when the passions of the affair had cooled-probably 56 B.C. or later-the love of Quintius for Aufillena is celebrated with that of Caelius (see "Caelius ") for Aufillenus; but Catullus favours Caelius' love more because of some service of friendship cum vesana meas to"eret jlamma medul/as-i.e., during the Lesbia affair. Both Caelius and Quintius were Veronese (100, 2). Quintia' s reputation for beauty is questioned in 86 ; Catullus grants her beauty in each particular, but she lacks the charm and wit which make Lesbia's beauty complete. This poem therefore belongs to the height of the Lesbia affair, earlier than either 82 or 100. There is a remarkable parallelism between 86 and 100 which strongly suggests that Quintius and Quintia were of the same family: in 100 Catullus does not condemn the love of Quintius but gives his blessing rather to Caelius, while in 86 he confesses that Quintia is candida,/onga,recta but reserves / ormosafor Lesbia. Moreover, Quintia appears to have been a Cisalpine Gaul like Quintius: with 86 cf. 43, the very similar comparison between Lesbia's beauty and Ameana's reputation for beauty in the provincia(43, 6)-i.e., Cisalpine Gaul, where Ameana doubtless shared winter quarters with Mamurra. 86 was certainly written about the same time as 43, possibly on the same visit to Verona. These two poems taken together suggest that like the Aufillenus and Aufillena of 100, 110, 111, and the Postumius of 67 and the Postumia of 27, Quintius and Quintia were old acquaintances of Catullus' homeland, not intimate friends but people whom he knew well. There is a large number of inscriptions of Quintii (or Quinctii) from Cisalpine Gaul; e.g. in Verona, C/L s, 3572, 3719-3723. But the real seat of the gensQuintia appears to have been Brixia ; 37 of 73 inscriptions in C/L s come from there. In C/L 5, 446o, from Brixia there is a C. Quintius C. f. Catullus whose cognomen may be due to association with the family of the poet.

RAVIDUS Catullus 40 warns a certain Ravidus with mock solemnity not to incur the risks of notoriety at the poet's hands by pursuing Catullus' amons (40, p)-i.e., Juventius. B. Schmidt, Proleg. 7, mistakenly suggests that meosamoresof 40, 7, can be Lesbia, citing 45, 1, and 64, 2.7, as parallels; but the phrase is twice used of Juventius (15, 1 ; 2.1, 4), never of Lesbia, and the parallels do not refer to Lesbia. Moreover, Catullus' desperate anger against the lovers of Lesbia does not find place here ; one can hardly believe that the revenge threatened against Ravidus will be very fiercely exacted. This poem therefore belongs to the Juventius cycle, and is not to be placed near 82.,on Quintius' rivalry for Lesbia, as Schmidt suggests (ibid.). The name Ravidus does not occur elsewhere, and for this reason Friedrich, p. 2.05f,changes the MS reading Ravideto Ravi; but as Munzer observes (PW 1A, 310), Ravius would become Ravidus in the MSS more easily in any other case than the vocative, and the nomen Ravi111is as difficult to justify from republican inscriptions as the cognomen Ravidus. But Ravidus can be justified. In Catullus 40, 1, prosody requires that the word be pronounced Ramie(see Kroll, p. 74; Plaut. Bacch.2.76has a wordIf" Raudus" was a common pronunciation of Ravidus, play on a11di-avid1). it has a parallel in a very early place-name in northern Italy : the Ramlii Campi along the upper Po near Vercellae, where Marius fought the Cimbri in 101 B.C. It is possible that the family of Ravidus came from this area. Names related to Ravidus, however, such as Ravillius, CIL 3, 6580, Ravius, CIL 6, 2.5381 ; 9, 2.742.; 10, 2.9nf, Ravus (cognomen), Dessau 50.14= CIL 6, 1978, and others of the same derivation, are of Etruscan development; cf. ra111ia, CIE .1666,ravia, CIE .1659, and see Schulze, LE .119,.145: The name of Ravenna comes from this same Etruscan name ra(v)iand indicates that it was an early Etruscan colony-a theory confirmed by archaeological evidence (see PW 1A, 300). Now if Ravenna was the centre of an area of Etruscan influence from early times and was also connected with the name-group of Ravidus-many inscriptions of related names are found throughout Umbria: cf. CIL 11, 1612., .1.180,.1354, 4914, 7.136, 7892., etc.-it would not be surprising if Ravidus himself came from that part of Italy. The Umbrians, it is true, had settled the territory in historical times, but the Etruscan names, as in the case of Ravenna, remained. If Ravidus did come from the Umbrian territory near Ravenna, he may be the mysterious hospes... ah sedePisalll'i,an unnamed admirer of Juventius in Catullus 81 (Pisaurum is in Umbria not far from Ravenna). It has been suggested by Couat, Emde JIii' Cat11/le98, and Baehrens (ad Joe.)that the hospesof 81 was Furius (cf. Catullus 16; .13; .16); by Broner, 638, and B. Schmidt, Proleg. 3Sf, that he was the Aurelius of I 5, 16 and .11. But Catullus always identifies these two admirers of Juventius by name or by reference to Furius' poverty: cf. 2.4, 5 with .13, 1 ; and Bruner's suggestion of a pun on Aurelius in 81, 4, inallf'ata,is very doubtful (B. Schmidt rejects it altogether).

RUFA-RUFULUS Catullus 59 is a coarse and brief diffamatio directed-if we accept Ellis' reading-against a Ru.fa of Bononia, the wife of a Menenius, and an unknown Rufulus (the MSS read r11/um,which is metrically impossible, and Palladius' .Ril/11/um is generally accepted). Some ·commentators take one or both of these supposed names in 59, 1 as epithets ; Pleitner and Postgate read r11/af'lljulum, Palmer reads rufa ruf11/i(i.e. Meneni), and Munro suggests .&I/aru/11manus. The words may be epithets: Munro, p. 134, cites parallel passages on rufa as an epithet (Terence, Heaut. 1061 ; Plaut. A sin. 2., 3, 2.0; Martial 2, 32, 1 ; and a very similar Pompeian wall-inscription, 2.421,r11/a,ita vale,IJ.Nare benetelas, which may derive from as 'a peculiar kind of trib1111i this poem). He also explains r11J11/11s milit11m,. .. often appointed through mere favour by generals or consuls; often too they were idle young men of fashion " ; cf. MarquardtMommsen, RomischesStaatsrecht2.2, 353; Festus, Ep. 26o. are only There may be support for the argument that rufa and ruf11/11s epithets in the fact that if r11/ a is a name, the woman is identified far more laboriously than we should expect in a diffamatio,where one must avoid the obvious and provoke laughter by the gradual disclosure of the victim's identity and misdeeds, as in Catullus 67. The successive impact of identifying notes, Bononiensisr11/ a .•. 11xorMeneni, saepeq11am... vidistis ipso raperede rogocenam,seems to destroy that innuendo which is the prime weapon of such satire. Two points, however, may be urged against this argument : first, that Ru.fa and Rufus are very common cognomina in inscriptions of Cisalpine Gaul and elsewhere, and that it may therefore be presumed necessary to identify the persons in question more elaborately than with less common names; second, that in 67, a longer diffamatio, where this gradual process of identification is seen to best advantage, 1 the name of the family concerned is given early in the poem (Balbo,67, 3). The case of 67 is in fact quite parallel with that of 59 ; the cognomen Balbus was also very common in Cisalpine Gaul and the purpose of the gradual disclosure of identity and scandal in 67 is not only to prolong interest but to identify the particular family named Balbus which was so disgraced. The ingredients of the identification in 67 are substantially the same as those of 59: the locale or origin of the persons (59, 1, Bononiensis;67, 31-34, Brixia); family connections (59, 2, NXorMeneni; 67, 3f, 6, 9, the statements that the elder Balbus had died, that the son had then brought his bride home, and that the house now belonged to a Caecilius); and common gossip about the persons (59, 2.-4, Ru.fa's stolen meal; 67, 5, 7f,the rumour of scandal in the house). Another argument also suggests that Ru.fa and Rufulus are names. The similarity of the names is well suited to the obliqueness of the diffamatio: it indicates unobtrusively that the real charge is not sexual 1

See the study of this process by F. 0. Copley, "The 'Riddle' TAPA 80 (1949) 24,-253.

of Catullus 67,"

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perversion but incest~ne of Catullus' favourite topics. The same device is used in 79, where the names Lesbius and Lesbia make the same charge without the necessity of stating it (on the gossip about Clodia and her brother cf. e.g. Cicero's amusing error, Cael. 32 : cum eius m11/ieris virofratrem dico-semperhie erro). In other Catullan epigrams on the subject of incest, the names alone would not have told the story : in 67 the elder Balbus and his son's wife, in 78 Gallus' nephew and sister-in-law, and in 88--91 Gellius and his" mother" and" sister" (he was a stepson and his " sister " was only germana,91, 5)-in all these cases the names of the persons accused were different. There is no reason to suppose that Rufa and Rufulus are fictitious names; Lesbia and Lesbius in 79 are a special case where it is obvious that Catullus still wished to conceal Clodia's name and had also to conceal that of Clodius. The identity of Rufa and Rufulus, however, is as uncertain as that of Menenius. There is nothing to prove that Rufulus (or Rufus, if that was his true name) was M. Caelius Rufus or again that he was the man with rubrasuperciliain 67, 45-48, though neither of these identifications is impossible. The apparent difference of locale between 67 and 59 is no difficulty ; the action of 67 took place in Brixia or Verona, but Bononiensisin 59, 1, means only that Rufa came from Bononia, not that the events took place there.

SEPTUMIUS Catullus 4 5, glorifying the love of Septumius and Acme, may be, as some editors believe, a purely ideal exercise on a favourite Alexandrian topic ; but it is more generally regarded-rightly, I believe-as a piece dedicated to an actual friend of the poet. For Septumius is a well-known Roman gentilicium: there are a dozen republican inscriptions with it and hundreds in imperial times 1 ; secondly, other poems of Catullus simi1arly honour the loves of the poet's friends (cf. e.g. 6 to Flavius, 55 to Camerius, and 61, the graceful wedding song for Manlius Torquatus); thirdly, the reference in 4 5, 2.1f, to Syria and Britain apparently dates the poem in late 55 B.C. when news of Caesar's invasion of Britain reached Rome (cf. Schwabe, Q. C. 316; Bruner, 647), and if so, the poem has a topical allusion which argues against a purely ideal romance. The unreal and paradisial nature of the poem, which has suggested that it is an ideal romance, is better explained by this same reference to Syria and Britain. At a time when young men of ambition like Cicero's friend C. Trebatius were rushing to join the camps of Caesar and of Crassus for the campaigns in Britain and Syria, Septumius, like Catullus, preferred his Epicurean otium and spoke for that group of young delicati,Camerius, Flavius, and others around Catullus, who, disinclined to warfare, lost themselves in their amours and let others fight for glory in distant lands. In this light Catullus 45, 2.1f: unam Septumius misellus Acmen mavult quam Syrias Britanniasque : is completely understandable and agrees with Catullus' own pronounced Epicurean leanings in his later years. Acme, as Schwabe, Q. C. 316, supposes, was probably a Greek freedwoman, one of the large class of respectable courtesans in Roman society (cf. Catullus 10, 3f, on Varus' mistress, scorti/111111 •.. non sane ilkpidtlm nequeinvenustum).There is no reason why the name Septumius should be a cryptonym, since affairs of this sort between young Romans of good birth and women of this class carried no reproach : cf. also Catullus 6, 15-17 and 55, 17-2.0. The name of Septumius' mistress occurs, always as a freedwoman, in various forms in republican inscriptions: Acme, C/L 12, 12.2.0; Acume, id. 1918 ; Acumis, id. 1749. was very numerous in the Empire, Although the gens Sept11111ia relatively few members of it are known in the Republic-a dozen, male 1

I have used the form Scptumius, which is probably what Catullus wrote : of the inscriptions in C/L 11, only one (1794) spells the name Scptimius. The latter in 4S, 1 and 11 form obtains, however, in most imperial inscriptions. Ellis' S,pti111io.r is unlikely, since the inscriptions generally use the -ius form and"the only MS authority pl.). for S,ptimio.r(4S, 1) is probably due to attraction by the following word,J"NO.r(acc. Most members of the gm.rlack a cognomen, but In 4S, 2.1, the MSS read S,pti111i11.r. Scaevola (cf. PW z.A, 1s73) and Dentio (C/L 11, 1794) do appear as cognomina.

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and female, in inscriptions and a very few in literature (cf. PW z.A, 156o-6z., 1573, 1577). The impression conveyed by Catullus 4h that Septumius was native to the Bohemian life of the capital, is home out by inscriptions : over z.oo are from the vicinity of Rome and relatively few from the provinces. Catullus' friend Septumius, like all the poet's intimate companions, was a man of literary tastes to whom the dedication of this little love poem was a genuine honour: for similar dedications cf. e.g. Catullus 1 ; 65, 15-18; 68, 14~156). He was also a relatively young man in 55 B.C., the date of the poem. It is possible, therefore, that he was the P. Septimius (sic) who was quaestor to M. Terentius Varro when Varro was praetor or propraetor, and to whom Varro dedicated Books z.-4 of his De Lingua l.,atina prior to 47 B.C., when he decided to dedicate the remaining books to Cicero: cf. Varro, L.L. 5, 1 ; 7, 109. Varro reached the age for the praetorship in 76 B.C. but the year of his actual office is unknown. Varro's quaestor is perhaps the Septimius whom Vitruvius (7, Praef. 14) mention~ in conjunction with Varro as the author of a work on architecture in two books, written after the similar work of Fuficius, the first Roman architectural writer, and before Varro's treatise on architecture. This Fuficius was probably C. Fuficius Fango, according to Cicero a parvenu (Alt. 14, 10, z.; see " Fuficius "), and one of Caesar's new senators ; Fango was also undoubtedly the Fuficius attacked about 55/4 B.C. in Catullus 54, 5 as a favourite of Caesar. Varro's architectural treatise probably appeared as his last work in 33 B.C. : see Schanz-Hosius 1 4, 568. If Varro held the praetorship relatively late, as he may well have done, his quaestor may have been the young Septumius of Catullus 4 5 and the architectural writer known to Vitruvius whose literary interests and chronology agree with what we know of Catullus' friend.

160 SESTIUS In 44 Catullus wittily reports how he contracted a chill and a cough from reading the oration of Sestius against Antius (probably C. Antius Restio: see "Antius ,,). The Sestius of 44 was undoubtedly, as Achilles Statius first observed, P. Sestius, the handyman of the senatorial party whom Cicero defended in the Pro Sestio. For Catullus' " chill " is a play on the rhetorical term frigidus applied to turgid and difficult writing ; and P. Sestius was notorious for this fault (cf. Plut. Cic. 2.6,6 ; Cic. All. 7, 17, 2.). Even Sestius' bonsmots were "frigid" : Cic. Att. 7, 32., 1 and 3 ; and his orationesscriptaeto which Cicero refers in 56 B.C. ( Vat. 3)-the Oratioin Antium Petitoremof Catullus 44, 11 may have been one of thesewere unflattering enough to their author to be read in court as evidence against him. That they were plenaeveneniet pesti/entiae,as Catullus (44, 12.) describes the oration against Antius, can hardly be doubted ; Sestius was a volatile spirit who on one occasion in 57 B.C. publicly denounced the consul, Q. Metellus Nepos, and was nearly killed by Clodius' mob in the melee that followed (Cic. Sest. 79f, 81, 85, 90; Post Red. in Sen. 7; Q. Fr. 2., 3, 6; Mi/. 38). He was also morose and unpredictable: Oc. Q. Fr. 2., 3, 5, Plut. Cic. 2.6; his venomous speeches must have lacked that clarity and keen edge which Catullus had perfected in his own satire. There is, moreover, real irony in Catullus' confession (44, 7-12.) that he was about to join Sestius at a sumptuosacenawhen he read the speech against Antius, since Sestius' intemperance was notorious (Cic. Att. 4, 3, 3) and Antius was the author of a /ex sumptuariaof 71 B.C. directed against luxurious banquets, and a fanatical crusader against them. Finally, Catullus' amused tolerance toward the clumsy but likeable Sestius is very much like that of Cicero, who remained grateful to Sestius for his support (Fam. 13, 8, 1) but confidentially referred to him, always with a certain irony, as Sestiusnosier(Q. Fr. 2.,4, 1 ; Alt. 3, 2.3,4; 7, 17, 2.; 13, 2., 2. and 49, 1 ; 15, 13, 5). The key to the mood of Catullus 44 is the playful, mock-modest reference to his farm (44, 1-5), which his friends call Tiburtine and his enemies Sabine ; the sly envoiin 44, s, sed seuSabinesiveveriusTib11rs,shows that the poem is not a real satire on Sestius but the jocular recital of a story which is as much a joke on Catullus as on Sestius: cf. the mock-solemn protest to Calvus (14) for his present of bad books. The purpose of 44 is to excuse the poet for his absence from Sestius' banquet on account of a cold which he jokingly attributes to reading Sestius' speech as a conversation-piece for the banquet ; the poem is really addressed to Sestius. Catullus' relationship to Sestius, like that of Ocero, was somewhat shaken by Sestius' poor diction and impetuous tongue, but was grounded in a general agreement of political ideas and alliances. Like Catullus (cf. 49), Sestius was an admirer of Ocero, a sharer of his political viewpoint, and an adherent to the senatorial party rather than the pop1"ares:

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see Cic. Sest. s on his incredibi/is amorin bonos. Sestius' affection for Cicero stemmed from the fact that he too was a novushomo; his father, L. Sestius, never rose above the tribunate (in 100 B.c. : cf. PW .2.A,1884). Sestius, born about 9S B.C., was an efficient quaestor of Cicero's colleague C. Antonius in 63 B.C. and served Cicero in the Catiline affair; when the revolt broke, he commanded troops against Catiline and helped force the decisive battle at Pistoria (Cic. Sest. 8-12.). He went to Macedonia in 62. B.C. as C. Antonius' proquaestor (id. 13). In 58 B.c. he was elected tribune and in the autumn of that year, before he entered office, went boldly to Caesar in Gaul-or perhaps in Catullus' own house at Verona, where Caesar often stayed (Suet. Ju/. 73)-and asked his support in recalling Cicero from exile; Cicero (Sest. 71) pointedly omits to state the success of the mission. Sestius at once prepared a bill to recall Cicero and sent him a copy of it (Att. 3, 17, 1 ; 19, .2.; 2.0,3 ; 2.3,4). Sestius' activities during this period when he was probably acquainted with Catullus earned him a number of the same friends and enemies as the poet had. On his entry into the tribunate in s7 B.C., he joined his colleague Milo in supporting Cicero's recall (cf. e.g. Sest. 7S, 77, 78, 12.4, 144) and frustrating P. Clodius, the Lesbius of Catullus 79, with whom Catullus was then also in bitter enmity after his break with Clodia. Sestius opposed Clodius' candidacy for the curule aedileship, threatening to watch the sky on election day (Cic. Att. 4, 3, 3); soon afterward he denounced the consul Nepos and was involved in the murderous brawl with Clodius' mob. When Milo and Sestius laid down their office in s6 B.c. Clodius sought revenge by prosecutions of them de vi; the somewhat hypocritical charge was that Sestius maintained gladiators to cause political riots (Sest. 84, 90, 92., 135; Schol. Bob. 2.92.Or.). Sestius was acquitted: see Cic. Q. Fr. 2., 3, s ; .2.,4, 1. His trial rallied the opposing sides in the political conflict then emerging at Rome ; and his lawyers included at least three friends of Catullus, for he was defended by Q. Hortensius, M. Crassus, Calvus, and Cicero, who gave the peroration in the Pro Sestio(cf. Vat. 3 and 14; Sest. s ; Q. Fr. 2., 4, 1 ; Schol. Bob. 2.92.Or.). The witnesses against Sestius were likewise Catullus' enemies: L. Aemilius Paullus (cf. Q. Fr. 2.,4, 1), perhaps the malodorous Aemilius of Catullus 97, L. Gellius Poplicola (Sest. 110-112.; Vat. 4; cf. Catullus 80, 88--91), and P. Vatinius (Sest. 132.; cf. Catullus s.2.,3). Vatinius, Caesar's henchman, was the chief witness against Sestius, and Cicero directly attacked his testimony in the Oratio in P. Vatinium Testem. Witnesses for Sestius included Milo and Pompey: see Cic. Fam. 1, 9, 7. The trial took place March 11, s6 B.c., and resulted in an acquittal; for a full account of it see Pro Sestioand In Vatinium,passim ; Q. Fr . .z, 3, s ; .2., 4, 1 ; Munzer, PW .2.A,1888. A charge of ambitus,of which nothing is known, was made against Sestius about this time ; it was renewed in s .2.B.c., when the retroactive /ex Pompeiaagainst bribery also involved Milo, C. Memmius, and P. Plautius Hypsaeus, perhaps the patron or kinsman of "Ipsithilla" in II

16.2

Catullus 3.2 (see Appian, B.C . .2, 90 on these cases; Sestius, defended by Cicero, was the only one acquitted: Cic. Att. 13, 49, I; Fam. 7, .24, z). Sestius was accused of bribery in his campaign for the praetorship, which he held in ss B.c. if the legal five-year interval between the magistracy and provincial governorship still applied during the civil war, since he was made governor of Cilicia in 49 B.C. (Plut. Brut. 4, .2). He remained loyal to the Senate and Pompey in the civil war; in January 49 B.c. he wrote the notoriously "Sestian" letters to L. Caesar on C. Caesar's peace terms. The letters were widely circulated by Pompey, himself a better writer than Sestius; of them Cicero says in despair (Att. 7, 17, .2): nihil umq11am legi scriptum O'TlO"T1006tcrrepov. Sestius remained obdurate against Caesar longer than Memmius, Calvus, and Catullus himself, who had made their peace by S4 B.c. (cf. Suet. Jui. 73); but after Pharsalus he succeeded in keeping his position safe by a quick show of repentance (Cic. Att. 11, 7, 1). He was therefore able to continue in active public life both in the East and at Rome : on his activities from 48 B.c. onward see Munzer, PW 2A, 1889. He was during this time a useful contact between Caesar, to whom he remained loyal after his conversion (Cic. Att. 13, 7, 1), and the senatorial party; for he was still on friendly terms with Cicero, whose last reference to him, Ad Brut. .2, S, 4, is cordial. He appears in two senate decrees of 39 and 3s B.C. (Viereck, SermoGraecus41, no . .20, 6 ; 19, 8) relating to towns in Caria of which he was probably a patron, since he had served as an administrator in that area.

SILO The Silo who is accused of being a /enoin a brief epigram, Catullus 103, does not appear to 6.t his description there ; for if he was actually a /eno we should expect him to be a freedman or a foreigner of the type found in Roman comedy. His profession was certainly beneath the dignity of a freeborn Roman citizen of good family. But his name is an old and well-documented Italian cognomen frequently found in the inscriptions of respectable Roman citizens. Schulze, LE 232, relates it to Etruscan z.ilini,z.ilni, zili, and cites many examples, e.g. CIL 2, 6094; 5, 2547; 6, 7459. It is common in Cisalpine Gaul, and Catullus' Silo may have come from there: cf. e.g. CIL 5, 1933, 3055, 3662, 4102. It occurs in republican inscriptions (CIL 12, 1263, 1322) and on a coin of Q. Poppaedius Silo, Marsian leader in the Social War (CIL 12, app. 247). It is unlikely, therefore, that the Silo of 103 was a freedman, since the normal practice of freedmen was to take the praenomen and nomen of their former master but to retain their original name as cognomen. One inscription, CIL 12, 2270, of a L. Paqui Longi L. Sil. appears to show a freedman with the cognomen Silo and is so listed in CIL 1 2, Index; but the name is nowhere else so abbreviated in republican inscriptions, and is more probably a Latinized foreign name (the inscription is from Nova Carthago in Spain). Suppose, then, that the Silo of Catullus 103 was a freeborn Roman citizen ; he might, unlikely as it may be, have been a /eno. But the evidence of Catullus' poem is against this possibility. There is little point-and what is such an epigram without point ?-in saying, " Either give me back my ten thousand sesterces, Silo, and be as violent and overbearing as you like, or if money is your pleasure, stop being a pimp and at the same time violent and overbearing." For the character of the /enowas familiar to all Romans as precisely that with which Catullus charges Silo : greedy, violent, and overbearing (cf. e.g. Labrax in Plautus, Rhdens47-69, 344-6, 706--891, 1357-1423). Why then charge Silo, if he was a /eno,with the vices characteristic of his breed ? The answer, I believe, is that Silo was not a professional pimp, and that the sum mentioned in the poem was not simply a fee for his services but a form of polite blackmail in connection with one of Catullus' loves. There is epigrammatic point in saying, " Don't be greedy, violent, overbearing, and a pimp," if Silo would have felt disgraced by that title but was actually performing a similar service. Leno in 103, 4, obviously contains the point of the epigram, since it is in the emphatic position beginning the last line and is followed by words merely repeated from the second line. It is therefore the real word of accusation in the epigram. It is an interesting coincidence that one of the late republican inscriptions relating to a Silo (CIL 12, 1322) shows that he and his family belonged to the gensjNVentia.The inscription, found at Rome and roughly contemporary with Catullus, lists an entire family: P. Juventius D. f.

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Arn(ensia tribu) Silo, L. Juventius D. fil. Col(lina tribu), Fulvia L. f. mater, Posilla Iventia P. f., and Iventia P. 1. Atenais. Since Silo was a cognomen of the Juventii, Catullus' connection with the Silo of 103 may have been that Silo, as a relative of the poet's beloved Juventius (see Catullus 2.4, 48, 81, 99), actively or passively aided his affair with the boy. We may even have, in the inscription above, the actual family of Catullus' Juventius; the date and place agree (Juventius was in Rome: cf. in tantopop11/o, 81, 1), and it will be noted that the L. Juventius D. fil. of the inscription was apparently a younger brother or nephew of P. Juventius D. f., since he had no family, while the wife, daughter, and freedwoman of P. Juventius appear in the inscription. Furthermore, L. Juventius and P. Juventius Silo belonged to different tribes; the inference from the inscription is that L. Juventius did not belong to the household of P. Juventius Silo, but had come to live there. This is precisely the situation which best explains the epigram on Silo: that the boy Juventius was somehow in the care of Silo, who allowed Catullus to visit him and in return demanded a reward. For passages illustrating the Roman practice of entrusting boys or young men to the care of relatives and friends, see Ellis, Comm. 56. It is possible but uncertain from the evidence in Catullus' poems that Furius and Aurelius were Juventius' hosts at Rome (cf. Catullus. 15, 16, 2.1, .z. 3, 2.4, and see " Aurelius ") ; even if this theory of B. Schmidt (Proleg. 38-40) is true, Silo, a member of Juventius' gens there, may still have had some authority over the boy.

SULLA LITTERATOR The Sulla litteratorfrom whom Catullus suspects ( 14, Sf : Quod si, ut suspicor, hoe novum ac repertum Munus dat tlbi Sulla litterator,) that Calvus had received the ho"ibilemet sacrumlibel/umwhich he}·okingly sent Catullus as a Satumalian present, was apparently a client o Calvus ( 14, 6), and gave him the poems in appreciation of services, probably legal aid (14, 1of). The only probable suggestion as to the identity of this litteratoris that proposed by Muretus and followed by a number of editors (see e.g. Ellis, Comm. 50), that" Sulla" is Cornelius Epicadus (Suetonius, De Gram. 12.), the grammarian and freedman of the dictator L. Cornelius Sulla. Baehrens, in his edition of Catullus (p. 1 35), raises difficulties against this identification. One is that of the name " Sulla," which does not conform to the practice of freedmen of taking only the praenomen and nomen of their master. Muretus had foreseen this objection, and assumed that " Sulla " was a popular nickname of Epicadus, but Baehrens objects that Suetonius would surely have mentioned this nickname. Moreover, says Baehrens (ibid.), Epicadus cannot have been a mere litterator, and there is no need for contempt in this passage (Suetonius, De Gram. 4, explains that the term is often contemptuous, indicating a mere boys' schoolmaster). Baehrens suggests that" Sulla", whoever he was, is used as an example by Catullus to make good-natured fun of Calvus' rich and powerful clients ; " Sulla " is so poor that, after searching in vain for a cheap gift which would still express his appreciation to Calvus, he finally wrote a libel/us himself and presented it to his patron (thus Baehrens takes novumac repertumm,mus,in lines Sf, literally of a new composition). The identification of " Sulla " with Epicadus is not disproved by these objections, however. Support for Muretus' theory that Epicadus had the nickname " Sulla " may be found in De Gram. 1 z, where Suetonius says of Epicadus : Su/Jae... ftlio quoqueeius Faustogratissimusfuit; quare numquamnon utriusquese libertumedidit. If Epicadus continually referred to the fact that he was a freedman of the Sullas, it would not be strange if he acquired the nickname " Sulla." As to Suetonius' failure to mention the nickname, Robinson 1 argued that De Gram. 12 and 13 are much shorter than the other sections of the work, and are apparently out of chronological order ; so that these two sections, on Epicadus and Staberius Eros, are probably epitomes. If that theory is correct, Suetonius' anecdote about the nickname may easily have been omitted in the epitome. Epicadus was not a mere litterator,but the contemptuous sense of the term exactly fits the mood of Catullus' poem. I cannot, moreover, follow the conjecture of Baehrens from the words novumac repertumm,mus, that " Sulla " had written the libel/ushimself for the occasion. The expression 1 R. P. Robinson," Valerius Cato," TAPA 54 (192.3) 101-103.

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is certainly ironical, in the sense that " Sulla " considers his work a fresh and original composition ; actually, Catullus implies, the stuff is as old as the hills. This interpretation conforms to the suggestion of Schmidt, 1 who says pessimipoetaeof 14, 2.3-who doubtless include that the saecliincommoda, the poet of" Sulla's" libel/usas well as Caesius, Aquinus, and Su.ffenusare archaistic poets. Schmidt's suggestion is probably correct, since Catullus' polemic against the annalists of the Ennian tradition (cf. 36 and 95) is well known (see "Caesius "). Suetonius (De Gram. 12.) says that Epicadus finished a liberwhich the dictator Sulla had left unfinished, entitled De Rebus Suis; and it is possible that this book, which seems to have been a poem on the order of Cicero's De ConsulatuSuo, was the libel/uspresented to Calvus by his grateful client. The inclusion of Caesius, Aquinus, and Su.ffenusin Catullus' poem, since they are nowhere else mentioned together as representing a group of poetasters, suggests a new interpretation of this poem. Caesius is probably, and Aquinus possibly, to be identified with members of a circle of young disciples of Servius Sulpicius, the orator, jurist, and friend of Cicero, who are named by· Pomponius (Dig. 1, 2., 2., 44). The three poetasters whom Catullus especially wishes to send Calvus in revenge for the libel/usof " Sulla " would therefore be particularly appropriate as a joke on Calvus, himself an orator, just as the gift of " Sulla's " libel/us, the work of a learned but uninspired grammarian, was probably a goodnatured gibe at doctusCatullus(cf. 53 and 14, 11, where Catullus appears to josh Calvus on his oratory). 1

B. Schmidt, Proleg. 54-

THALLUS

Thal/usaccused in Catullus .is of stealing the poet's cloak, The cinaedNs a Saetaban napkin, and some tablets from Bithynia, has been identified by some commentators with Asinius Marrucinus, the napkin-thief of Catullus 12, or even with Juventius, the boy whom Catullus loved (cf. 24, 48, 81, 99). But there is no reason to suppose that Thallus is a cryptonym or that the person satirized was either Juventius or Marrucinus. Thallus is accused of taking several things (2s, 6£), of which only a napkin is mentioned as stolen by Marrucinus (12, 11), and there could easily have been more than one theft of such obviously desirable souvenirs : cf. 42, demanding the return of tablets. The effeminacy of Thallus, which is the real accusation against' him, could be applied to Juventius, a coquette as well as a homosexual, but although Catullus complains of the boy's attention to other men (cf. e.g. 24 and 81), he never satirizes him for effeminacy. It is quite impossible, I think, to identify Thallus with any other person mentioned by Catullus. The name Thallus, however, is possibly to be corrected in the text. The MSS, with one exception (Par. 7989), read ta/le (vocative) in .is, 1 and 4, where Ellis and most editors read Thalle. There is no example of a cognomen Thallus or Tallus in Roman nomenclature ; the Sabine praenomen Talus (see Schulze, LE 94 ; Vergil, Am. 12, s 13) was probably the source of this name if it was a Latin name, but this cannot be the praenomenin .is, 1 and 4, since Catullus neveruses a praenomen alone. The gentilici11m Tallius, Talius, or Thallius occurs in literature and inscriptions : cf. Tacitus, Ann. 14, so; CIL 6, 221ss; II, 6707s; 12, SIi. The aspirated form Thallius is found only in CIL 6, 221s S, and related forms of the name such as Talonius and Talicius (Schulze, Joe.tit.) are unaspirated. This evidence suggests that the single case of Thallius is an anomaly, and that if the name in Catullus .is, 1 and 4 is Latin, the reading should be Ta/lei, the vocative of the gentilici11m Tallius (cf. e.g. 23, 1, where the MSS read F11rei,vocative of Furius); Thalleicould also be justified. It is possible, however, that Thalle is the vocative of a Greek name, Thallos, and remotely possible that it belonged to Antonius Thallos of Miletus (see Geffcken, PW sA, 1226), a poet of the Philippic garland in the Palatine Anthology. His poems are Ep. 6, 91 and 23s; 7, 188 and 373 ; 9, 220. Ep. 6, 23s praises a prince of the Augustan age, perhaps Germanicus or Tiberius; 7, 373 is a lament for two Milesians who died in Italy, and its curse on the land of their death is much like that which Catullus spoke over Troy where his brother died (cf. 68, 89-100). Thallos' other poems are tender and sentimental repetitions of the common elegiac themes of love and lament. If Catullus' cinaedusThal/us was Antonius ThaUos-and his chronology makes the identification possible though undemonstrable-the charge of effeminacy may be borne out by his

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poems and is perhaps significant as reflecting Catullus' literary precept (16, 1f) : ... castum esse decet pium poetam ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est, that is, a man may write tender erotic poetry as Catullus himself did, but must not be effeminate in habits as Thallus obviously was.

M. TULLIUS OCERO The evidence for Ocero's relation to the Alexandrian school of Latin poetry centres about three passages in his works. A letter to Atticus (Att. 7, 2, 1) dated November, 50 B.c., is chronologically the first notice. Here Ocero says, speaking of his voyage homeward to Brundisium : ita bellenobis"j/avit ab Epiro lenissimusOnchesmites ". Hunc crnov&16:tov-ra, si cui voles-rc.ovveCAYTtf)Cl)v, pro tuo vendito. In the Orator (48, 161), written in 46 B.c., he remarks, speaking of the elision of finals in the older poets: ita non ,rat ea offensioin versibus,quam nuncfugiunt poetaenovi. Again, in Tusc. 3, 19, 45 (written 45-44 B.c.), Ocero refers to his beloved Ennius: 0 poetam egregium ! quamquamab his cantoribusEuphorioniscontemnitllf'. There are other possible references to the " modems " in Orator 20, 68 and 49, 164, and Gandiglio 1 has suggested another in De Opt. Gen. Die. 1, 2; but the first three passages are the most important, and have in fact given us the names by which the " modern " school of Republican poetry is most often known. Certainly these passages, especially that in the Tuscu/ans,imply a marked difference of literary opinion between Ocero and the " new poets " ; but as Frank 2 pointed out, Ocero shared much the same political convictions and had many of the same political enemies, during the decade 6o-50 B.c., as the leaders of this group of young poet-patriots. There was, therefore, a bond of political sympathy between Cicero and the young poets. Moreover, the earliest of Ocero's comments on the neoteroi,in 50 B.c., was written in good humour, as Frank observes (loc. cit. 414), when Cicero was triumphantly returning from his governorship of Cilicia. The entire letter (Att. 7, 2) has an expansive and jovial mood, marred only by Cicero's anxiety for Atticus' health; and far from launching a polemic against the " new " school, he seems to take whimsical pride in the fine crnov6e16:toovwhich he has dashed off. The other passages, it has been noted, belong to a period when the leaders of the first " modern " group, Catullus, Calvus, and Memmius, were dead, and most of the others were absent from Rome or not productive. With these facts in mind it is not improbable that Marchesi 3 is right in suggesting that Ocero was attacking a post-Catullan " Euphorionism ", and that the objects of his polemic in the Oratorand the Tusculanswere primarily the young Vergil, Cornelius Gallus, and with them, as leader of the new direction, Valerius Cato. To these should perhaps be added Parthenius, whose indebtedness to Euphorion is rather well established. The connection of Cato's Dirae with the 'Apa{ of Euphorion has been noticed (see Rostagni, Virgilio Minore, 362), and the interest of both Vergil and Gallus in Euphorion is well attested (Vergil, Eel. 10, 5of and "Probus" ad loc.; Servius on Eel. 6, 72; Quintilian 10, 1, 56). Gallus 1 1 8

A. Gandiglio, "Cicerone e i •poetae novi', "Boll. di Filo/. Class. 7 (1901) 2.os-2.08. T. Frank, "Cicero and the Poetae Novi," AJP 40 (1919) 396-4q. C. Marchesi, "I Cantores Euphorionis," Alene e Roma 4 (1901) 183-191.

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not only imitated but translated Euphorion; and Diomedes (GLK 3, 484) cites Euphorion with Callimachus as the model of Roman elegy. If this theory is correct, Cicero's concern in his polemic with the cantores Euphorioniswas the tendency to extreme obscurity and preciosity which marks what we know of Euphorion, and which may have dominated the "modern" school after the death of Catullus. Marchesi (Joe.cit.) argues that the young Vergil renounced this artificiality in Catalepton5. It has been suggested 1 that Cicero's polemic against the" new poets u was closely connected with his attack on Atticism in oratory ; and it is true that the Orator,which contains most of his references to Alexandrian poetry, is his principal oratorical work against Atticism. Cicero himself had been influenced to some extent in his poetry by Alexandrianism. Plutarch (Cic. z) states that in his youth he wrote a poem called Pontius Gkmcus-a popular Alexandrian tale, used by Comificius (q.v.) for an epyllion. Among Cicero's other poems were the Alcyones, a myth of metamorphosis such as attracted the Alexandrians, the Limon, or Meadow,the Ni/us, and two corrupt titles possibly to be read as Thalia Maes/a and Uxorius. Ewbank 2 considers these titles to reflect an early interest in Alexandrianism on the part of Cicero. Cicero's principal poetic work reflecting the influence of Alexandrianism is of course his translation of Aratus' Phaenomena, which belongs of Aratus' probably before 79 B.c.; but his translation (called Prognostica) Diosemeiamay have been written, or at least re-edited, as late as 6o B. c. (Cic. Att. z, 1, 11 ; see Ewbank, op. cit. 24). His interest in Alexandrian models can therefore quite possibly be traced as late as that year. It is perhaps worth noting that Cinna, the friend of Catullus, was interested in Aratus, and presented (see fr. 11) to a friend some Arateis mu/tum vigilatalucerniscarminawhich he brought back from Bithynia. It is curious that we have no certain reference in Cicero to Catullus, unless we accept the suggestion of Frank (Catullus and Horace, 3zf) that the "Valerius" mentioned by Cicero (Alt. z, 3, written in 6o B.c.) as recently acquitted, with Hortensius defending, may be Catullus. Certainly Cicero, living across the clivus Victoriaefrom Clodia's house, and with the intimate knowledge of her affairs which he displayed in the Pro Caelio, knew Catullus well ; and had the· association been an unfriendly one Catullus might easily have found an unsavory place in that speech. Scholl 3 suggests that the adulescens non tam insulsusquam nonverecundus of Pro Caelio69 is Catullus, but the poet would hardly be adulescens in ~6 B.c. Fortunately we need not conjecture whether Catullus knew Cicero. Catullus 49 is addressed to disertissimeRomulinepotum,... MareeTu/Ii . .. optimus omniumpatronus-certainly Cicero. Some editors (cf. e.g. Pascal, pp. 131-143), influenced by the belief that Cicero was a lifelong enemy of 1 See A. Gandiglio, lo,. t:it., 2.07 ; V. Brugnola, " Cicerone ed i Poe/a, Novi,,. Boll. di Filo/. Class. 1 (1898) 17; 0. Harnecker, in Phiioiogw 37 (1882.) 480. 2 W.W. Ewbank, The Poems of Ckero, London, Univ. of London Press, 19H, 25f. a F. Scholl, injahrb.fiir Philo/. 1880, p. 481.

171 the " new poets ", have interpreted as sarcasm this poem of thanks to Cicero for some service, taking omnium with patronus instead of with optimus, and implying that Cicero was careless in choosing his clients. Frank ( Catullus and Horace, 40£), with most editors, accepts the poem as a sincere expression of gratitude, and suggests that the service which Cicero performed may have been a letter of recommendation to Quintus, governor of Asia in 59 B.C., for Catullus' brother, or the securing of a staff position in Asia for the poet's brother, or passing on to Quintus Catullus' instructions at the death of his brother. Another possibility is that Cicero may have interceded with Caesar to have Catullus' poet-friend Caecilius (q.v.) enrolled in the new colony of Novum Comum, as he did in the case of a certain Philoxenus (Cic. Fam. 13, 35, 1). The occasion cannot, of course, be determined ; but Catullus' designation of himself in 49 as pessimus omniumpoeta suggests that there is contrition for his literary sins in the poem (cf. 36, 6, where he uses the same terms of himself, apparently after writing a peevish epigram to Lesbia), and that the most likely explanation is that one of his scurrilous epigrams had got him into trouble, perhaps with Pompey or Caesar, and that Cicero helped extricate him.

P. VALERIUS CATO The chief ancient biographical material concerning Valerius Cato is the account of him in Suetonius, De Gram. 11, and references to ~ ibid. 2. and 4. His praenomen is given only in the index of the De Grammaticis,which was compiled after Suetonius' time. The brief sketch in De Gram. 11 states that (ut nonnullitradiderunt)he was the freedman of a certain Bursenus, and of Gallic origin (as were Catullus, Furius Bibaculus, Cinna, and probably others of the poetaenovi). However, in the libel/us which, according to Suetonius, he called lndignatio, he answered his detractors and maintained that he was freeborn and had been deprived of his patrimony while a boy during the upheavals of the Sullan proscriptions (82.-80 B.c.). He taught, says Suetonius, multos et nobiles,and was peridoneuspraeceptor,maxime ad poeticamtendentibus ; to this aspect of his work refers the famous anonymous tribute quoted by Suetonius, which Baehrens, PPR p. 317, n., assigns to Furius Bibaculus as fr. 1 (fr. 17 Morel) : Cato grammaticus, Latina Siren, qui solus legit ac facit poetas. Suetonius further says that he lived ad extremamsenectutem,but in great poverty (if we are to interpret in summapauperieet paeneinopiaso literally), after his Tusculan villa had been forfeited to his creditors. Here Suetonius quotes two testimoniain hendecasyllabics by Furius Bibaculus, the first (fr. 1) on the sad condition of the old professor's fortunes, and the other (fr. 2.) addressed to "Gallus", probably Cornelius Gallus, in a playful commentary on Cato's loss of his Tusculan villa and inability to manage his own financial affairs. Furius modelled the latter poem upon one of very similar vein which Catullus addressed to him (z6: cf. Frank, CatuJIN.r and Horace, 85) when he (Furius) was in like financial straits. Catullus himself was pinched by the high cost of living at Rome (see e.g. 13, ?f). Such modest circumstances were not rare among the Republican literati, especially those of Alexandrian persuasion, 1 and were probably aggravated for most of the " new poets " by their unwillingness to become permanently attached to any of Rome's masters. Cato's position in the order of Suetonius' grammarians (after Ateius Philologus, De Gram. 10, and before Cornelius Epicadus, the freedman of Sulla, and Staberius Eros, who taught Brutus and Cassius, De Gram. 12.f)seems to fix hisjloruit about 60-50 B.c., since the sketches in Suetonius are apparently in chronological order. 2 Robinson (loc. cit. 105-108) extensively discusses the chronology of Cato and his relation to Horace, Furius and Ticidas. He argues plausibly that Cato's birth-date need not be as early as c. 100 B.C., as Teuffel 3 maintained, but was probably near Cf. W. Allen, Jr., and P. De Lacy, cc The Patrons of Philodemus,'' CP 34 (19.39) 59-65. . 1 See R. P. Robinson, cc Valerius Cato,'' TAPA 54 (192.3) 98-n6, esp. 101-103. 8 W. S. Teuffel, Ge.uhi&ht, der ro111iJch,n Literalllr 1•, 466. 1

173 90 B.c. The fragments of Bibaculus quoted by Suetonius, if the Gallus addressed in fr. 2 is Cornelius Gallus, date probably from 35-30 B.C.,

and refer to Cato as still alive. He apparently died in the twenties, if we accept Suetonius' extrema seneehlsand Robinson's birth-date; there is at any rate no datable reference to him after Gallus' death (26 B.c.). Cato's literary associations during his long and influential life certainly included Catullus and his friends, since Cato was occupied at the same time with the same poetic genres as the Catullan poets, and is unquestionably the addressee of Catullus 56. It is not surprising, therefore, to find him named along with Catullus, Calvus, Memmius, Cinna, and Cornificius in Ovid's list of the neoteroi(Trist. 2, 436) : et leve Cornifici parque Catonis opus. There is perhaps some chronological significance in Ovid's grouping of Cato with Comificius, who seems to have died in 41 B.c., but the more obvious connection is that of both poets' /eve opus-delicate erotic poetry. Cato's actual leadership of the neoteroiafter the death of Catullus is generally acknowledged ; but his role in the circle of Catullus is more difficult to determine. However, the external evidence of chronology, poetic affiliations, and the probable references in Catullus (56, 1 and 3 ; 95, 9, with Leo's emendation) strongly point to Cato's influential membership in the circle. Scholarly opinion generally concurs with this probability .1 Robinson (Joe.cit. 107) declares that there is no evidence for the theory that Cato was a leader of the Catullan circle ; but (Joe.eit. 116) sees Cato as the centre of Alexandrian tradition in the transition period (e. 40-30 B.c.). The vita of Cato by Suetonius leaves little doubt that Cato was the outstanding exponent of Alexandrianism at Rome during the transition; and it is supported by Horace's remarks in Sat. 1, 10, if Hendrickson's interpretation (see below) is correct. As to Cato's influence in Catullus' circle, Robinson's argument (Joe.cit. 104) that he was too young is vitiated by the to have taught the Catullan poets as a grammatiCNs probability (cf. Catullus 56 and 95, 9) that Cato stood in the relation of companion and critic rather than teacher to the Catullan group. The tribute of Cinna, who apparently died in March 44 B.c., on Cato's Dictynna(see below) indicates moreover that Cato had finished the poem; and if, as probable, it was an epyllion like Cinna's own Zmyrna(see Catullus 95), it must have been begun years before and was the product of a mature poetic mind. An additional note on the early chronology of Cato is furnished by Suetonius' statement (De Gram. 2) that Cato was first introduced to the satires of Lucilius through his teacher Vettius Philocomus, who had been a/ amiliarisof the satirist. a. e.g. Schanz-Hosius, 1 •, '8 and 6s ; Tcuffcl, op.tit., 46s and s Is ; 0. Ribbcck_ Gu,bi,ht, du romi.r,hmDithhlllg 11, 309; E. Nordc~ Einltihlllg in di, Alt,rhult.nlli.r.r111.r,haft, Leipzig-Berlin, 1912., 11, 344; W. M. Lindsay, in AJP 42 (1921) H9· 1

1 74

A controversial passage for the role of Cato as literary critic and editor of Lucilius is the group of eight lines found in some Horatian manuscripts prefixed to Sat. 1, 10, where Cato is mentioned by name as a" defender" of Lucilius. The lines state further that Cato was about to edit (emendare parat) Lucilius, and call him, possibly with irony, gra111111aticor11111 eqllihlm doctissi11111s. This evidence of Cato's Lucilian studies accords with Suetonius' statement that he became interested in Lucilius through Philocomus, and points to Cato as Horace's most important opponent during his early period. The authenticity of the lines prefixed to Sat. 1, 10 has been doubted, and they are bracketed in most editions. However, since the important study and interpretation of them by Hendrickson, 1 they have been widely accepted as genuine. Together with Horace's other satire on Lucilian criticism (Sat. 1, 4) and the unquestioned lines of Sat. 1, 10, they constitute, as interpreted by Hendrickson, a body of polemic against Cato and his group, and reveal clearly the position of the " new poets ", who had now become the " old ", against the circle of Horace and the rising nationalist school about 40 B.c. A letter of Messalla Corvinus, Horace's friend and patron, quoted by Suetonius (De Gram. 4), also shows the sharp division between Cato' s school and the young Augustans at this period, and possibly, as noted above, a split within the ranks of Catullus' heirs : Cato and Ticidas on one side, Furius Bibaculus and probably the annalists on the other. Of Cato' s works, Suetonius (De Gram. 11) refers to grammaticiJibe/Ii, the lndignatio(which Schanz-Hosius 14, 288, conjecture to have been in prose), and two poems, Lydia and Diana (or Dictynna). These poems, Suetonius remarks, were especially popular (praecip11e probantur)with the neoteroi,and he quotes as evidence of their vogue an efegiac line (fr. 2) of Ticidas: Lydia doctorum maxima cura liber, and a hexameter of Cinna (fr. 14) : saecula permaneat nostri Dictynna Catonis. Both of these tributes seem to come from epigrammatic poems such as Catullus 9~, expressing the literary creed of the " modems " through the medium of praise of an outstandingly artistic poem. The exact nature and subject of these poems are not clear. From the fact that they were singled out for special praise by Cato's fellow-poets, they must have been rather long and important works, presumably both epyllia, as Wheeler 2 suggests. However, the fact that Suetonius twice calls the latter poem Diana, while in Cinna's fragment it is Dictynna, is explained by Robinson as due to Cato's use of both names in telling how Diana came to have her Cretan 1

G. L. Hendrickson," Horace and Valerius Cato," CP

( 1 9 1 7)

77-92., 32 9-35°-

11

(1916) 2.49-269; CP

a A. L. Wheeler, Caltl/111.1 and the Traditionsof Ancient Poetry, 80.

12

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name Dictynna. He therefore suggests (Joe.t:it. 110) that the poem may have been a narrative elegy of the type of Callimachus' AiT1a,Propertius' aetiological elegies, or the Fasti of Ovid. The Lydia, Robinson suggests (Joe.dt. 115f), was possibly a learned geographical poem explaining points of history or custom in Lydia, on the analogy of Ca11imachus'"Apyovs which Cato ob