{"id":1255,"date":"2016-03-09T13:24:36","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T18:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/curculio.org\/?p=1255"},"modified":"2016-03-09T13:39:54","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T18:39:54","slug":"female-turpitude-meets-male-torpitude-catullus-11-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/?p=1255","title":{"rendered":"Female Turpitude Meets Male Torpitude (Catullus 11.18)"},"content":{"rendered":"

    Daniél Kiss’s Catullus Online: An Online Repertory of Conjectures on Catullus<\/a> is a wonderful resource, which I have found complete and accurate in whatever I have checked, but rather depressing viewed at length. Only six of the sixty-eight lines in the first four-plus poems (1-4 plus the fragment 2b) have no variants or conjectures listed, and some have a dozen or more.<\/p>\n

    The first four-line passage with no variants or conjectures listed is 11.17-20, the fifth stanza of Catullus’ Sapphic farewell to Lesbia:(<\/a>1<\/b><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\n

cum suis vivat valeatque moechis,
\nquos simul complexa tenet trecentos,
\nnullum amans vere, sed identidem omnium
\n      ilia rumpens;          20<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It seems to me that this would be wittier with one tiny change: distributive trecenos<\/em> for trecentos<\/em> in 18. That would mean that Lesbia entertains three hundred partners at a time<\/em>, and imply that there are hundreds more moechi<\/em> in town for other evenings if she tires of these, or wears them out beyond recovery.<\/p>\n

    One complication must be mentioned. There is a similar passage in which Catullus himself threatens to act much as Lesbia is (he says) acting here (37.6-8):(<\/a>2<\/b><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\n

an, continenter quod sedetis insulsi
\ncentum an ducenti, non putatis ausurum
\nme unum ducentos irrumare sessores?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Looking only at the second half (non putatis . . . sessores?<\/em>), we might think that distributive ducenos<\/em> would be wittier here as well as in 11.18: Catullus alone (unum<\/em>) can provide two hundred irrumationes<\/em> in one session, not just now, but on any appropriate occasion. On the other hand, ducentos<\/em> fits better with centum an ducenti<\/em> in the previous line. Some may wish to count this parallel against my conjecture in 11.18, which would damage the parallelism.<\/p>\n

\n

(<\/a>1<\/b><\/a>) \tIt is the one crude stanza out of six: perhaps the vivid subject matter kept the sleepier monks’ attention from wandering. It is traditional to say whose text one is quoting, but it doesn’t matter here, does it? I should add that I did not notice the textual cleanness of this stanza until after I had devised my conjecture: an interesting fact, not a challenge to be overcome.<\/p>\n

(<\/a>2<\/b><\/a>) Mutatis mutandis<\/em>, of course, with the change of gender. J. M. Trappes-Lomax, Catullus: A Textual Reappraisal<\/em>, Swansea 2007, argues convincingly ad loc.<\/em> for Pleitner\u2019s unum<\/em> in 8 (una<\/em> OGR), and Kiss prints unum<\/em> in the text accompanying his repertory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Daniél Kiss’s Catullus Online: An Online Repertory of Conjectures on Catullus is a wonderful resource, which I have found complete and accurate in whatever I have checked, but rather depressing viewed at length. Only six of the sixty-eight lines in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,200,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catullus","category-curculio-l","category-latin-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1255"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1267,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions\/1267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/curculio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}