The dating of Catalepton 9 has been the central issue of scholarship on that poem. The more particular questions of the poem's authorship, the identity of the addressee, and its chronological relation to other texts, both depend on and contribute to ascertaining the date of composition. The clearest exposition of the problem remains that by Richmond. Evidence provided by Catalepton 9 falls into two categories: literary and historical. Literary evidence encompasses two kinds of data: various formal features of the text (...) and intertextual links with other poetry. While the poem's metre, language and style suggest a relatively early date of composition, the close textual parallels with the Eclogues, interpreted as borrowings from rather than sources of Virgil's poetry, point in the opposite direction. Historical indications are likewise ambivalent. On the one hand, it seems likely that the addressee is M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus and, further, that the occasion of composition is his triumph in 27 b.c.. On the other hand, the allusions to his military achievements are both too vague and exaggerated, and, if taken literally, do not fit well our Messalla at any particular point of his career. Richmond, following Birt and followed by Schoonhoven, believed that at least some of the historical references are ‘intended to be prophetic’. More recently, Peirano has attempted to explain this lack of precision by arguing that Catalepton 9 is not a real-life panegyric but a later biographical fiction, the real focus of which ‘is to be found […] in the relationship that the poem constructs between Virgil and his patron’. (shrink)

This article argues that at Lucr. 6.391 (icti flammas ut fulguris halent) fulguris is a corruption, and proposes to read sulpuris instead. While the case against fulguris may in itself not be incontrovertible, the advantages of sulpuris include the acquisition of a new Homeric intertext in Il. 8.135 δεινὴ δὲ φλὸξ ὦρτο θεείου καιομένοιο.

Columella invites his readers to plant different flowers, including violets—which will be the main focus of the following discussion :uerum ubi iam puro discrimine pectita tellusdeposito squalore nitens sua semina poscet, 95pangite tunc uarios, terrestria sidera, flores:candida leucoia et flauentia lumina caltae,narcissique comas et hiantis saeua leonisora feri, calathisque uirentia lilia canis,necnon uel niueos uel caeruleos hyacinthos. 100tum quae pallet humi, quae frondes purpurat auro,ponatur uiola, et nimium rosa plena pudoris.96 pangite Heinsius: pingite SAR || 99 nitentia Gesner || 101 (...) frondes SA: frondens R | purpurat auro ϛ: purpura tabo SAR: purpura et auro Ursinus: purpurat albo HeinsiusThis is the text of Rodgers's recent OCT, but with a somewhat modified apparatus criticus. For the purposes of my argument, it will be useful also to quote from the outset a related catalogue of melliferous flowers from another book of Columella's treatise : mille praeterea semina uel crudo caespite uirentia uel subacto sulco flores amicissimos apibus creant, ut sunt in uirgineo solo […] gladiolus narcissi. at in hortensi lira consita nitent candida lilia nec his sordidiora leucoia, tum Punicae rosae luteolaeque et Sarranae uiolae, nec minus caelestis luminis hyacinthus.There are a number of more general similarities, but the relevant point is that the two catalogues list many of the same flowers and describe them in similar ways, which means that one catalogue can serve as an interpretative guide to the other. The first two items in the prose list of garden flowers correspond to candida leucoia and calathisque uirentia lilia canis, similarly listed in the first half of the verse catalogue; nitent can thus support Gesner's emendation nitentia for uirentia, unduly neglected by recent editors. The metaphoric periphrasis gladiolus narcissi can be compared with narcissique comas. Both texts describe the hyacinth as sky-blue, which seems to be otherwise unparalleled. Finally, just like the prose list, Columella's poem groups roses with two varieties of violet :tum quae pallet humi, quae frondes purpurat auro,ponatur uiola, et nimium rosa plena pudoris.The prose version makes it all but certain that the poem should likewise refer to a yellow and a purple varieties of violet. While Columella's verse description of the former variety is fairly unambiguous, that of the latter raises questions. (shrink)

This article considers two passages in which either the sky or the sun is described as ‘green’; it argues that in both cases such a colour epithet is out of place and proposes to correct uiridi caelo to nitido caelo in the former case, and uiridis … Phoebus to rutilus … Phoebus in the latter.

As the narrator of the Ciris prepares to describe Cupid's attack on Scylla, daughter of Nisus, he offers a concise aretalogy of this powerful god : sed malus ille puer, quem nec sua flectere materiratum potuit, quem nec pater atque auus idemIuppiter,idem tum tristis acuebat paruulus irasIunonis magnae...

Peneus comes to the wedding celebration of Peleus and Thetis – non uacuus: namque ille tulit radicitus altasfagos ac recto proceras stipite laurus,non sine nutanti platano lentaque sororeflammati Phaethontis et aeria cupressu.

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

Carme fears that Scylla is in love with her own father ; Scylla replies that she loves no one she should love, but one of the besiegers—though she can hardly bring herself to utter his name : nil amat hic animus, nutrix, quod oportet amari,in quo falsa tamen lateat pietatis imago,sed media ex acie, mediis ex hostibus—eheu,quid dicam quoue aegra malum hoc exordiar ore? 265dicam equidem, quoniam tu nunc non dicere, nutrix,non sinis: extremum hoc munus morientis habeto.265 aegra Baehrens: agam (...) Z: ipsa ρ: ausa Sillig. (shrink)

The paper proposes to restore Ciris 471-2 hinc uenus illi | sunius by accepting Heyne’s Sunion for sunius and changing uenus to simul.

Scylla's nurse Carme has just learned that Scylla is in love with Minos, who in turn was once in love with Carme's daughter Britomartis and chased her to death. Carme opens her speech with an address to Minos.

Here, too, it may initially appear reasonable to see in uobis the same group of people, but there is little doubt that it must refer to senis nostri felicia rura, which can hardly be anything but a vocative. If condatis does not refer to people, one may be tempted to accept the humanist conjecture sulci and construe the verb as addressed to the furrows. Yet I rather doubt that an address to the farm can justify apostrophizing something as technical and (...) down-to-earth as furrows. I think Fraenkel is right to insist on relating condatis to the same vocative as uobis, that is, rura. This interpretation is supported by the fact that the two stanzas are closely analogous. (shrink)

In the final book of his poem Lucretius spends some time discussing earthquakes and their causes. In accordance with the standard Epicurean practice, Lucretius considers four alternative physical mechanisms that may be responsible for the phenomenon. The first three explanations involve three different kinds of subterranean matter—rock, water and air —causing the commotion of the earth's deeper regions, which is then transmitted to the surface. The fourth type of earthquake is different, as it is produced by the seismic agent affecting (...) the surface directly and potentially causing its deformation rather than just trembling. This happens when a gust of subterranean wind exagitata foras erumpitur et simul altamdiffindens terram magnum concinnat hiatum. (shrink)

Columella's poem on horticulture, which forms Book 10 of his prose treatise De re rustica, has predominantly been edited by experts in agricultural writings rather than in Latin poetry, leaving many textual problems unsolved or even unrecognized. This article discusses a number of passages and proposes some thirty emendations.

This article argues that the text of the Dirae and the Lydia is even more corrupt than current editions give reason to believe, and attempts to emend about a dozen passages.

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

The subject of this article was suggested by the question of whether the present tense formuĕnitin Catull. 64.85 should be considered anomalous. My analysis will result in a positive answer, and I shall conclude by proposing a way to eliminate this anomaly. However, a study of Catullus' use of the historical present may also be of some relevance for the interpretation of poem 64 as a whole.

The anonymous panegyrist concludes his prediction of Messalla's future achievements by prophesying that, after his deeds are duly honoured with triumphs, Messalla will be titled the Great :ergo ubi praeclaros poscent tua facta triumphos, 175solus utroque idem diceris magnus in orbe.175 praeclaros A: per claros Scaliger | poscent A: ierint F: tulerint Dyer: cierint Lachmann: noscent uel scierint Postgate: peperint NenciniLine 175 contains a well-known textual problem: A offers a text that is linguistically unobjectionable, but produces a weak sense; F (...) seems to express a more appropriate idea, but in a way that is not idiomatic. Hence the conjectures. (shrink)

The first eclogue opens with an exposition, put in the mouth of Meliboeus : Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagisiluestrem tenui Musam meditaris auena;nos patriae finis et dulcia linquimus arua.nos patriam fugimus; tu, Tityre, lentus in umbraformosam resonare doces Amaryllida siluas. These five lines receive two and a half pages in Coleman's commentary, five in Clausen's, six in the recent commentary by Cucchiarelli, and eighteen in Paraskeviotis's unpublished thesis on the Eclogues’ sources. Yet on the central line and a (...) half, in which Meliboeus speaks about himself rather than Tityrus, only Cucchiarelli spends more than half a page. For lines 1–2 and 4b–5, focussed on Tityrus, numerous intertexts have been suggested: Theocritus 1.1–3 and 7.88–9, Lucretius 4.589 and 5.1398, Meleager, AP 7.196.2, Callimachus, Aetia fr. 73 Pfeiffer, to list the most important ones. No allusion seems to have been detected in 3–4a. (shrink)

Like most other fragments of Nicander's Georgica, fr. 74 is preserved by Athenaeus, who presents it as a catalogue of flowers used for making wreaths. Transmitted in the only independent manuscript of the fuller text of Athenaeus, the fragment's text is extremely corrupt, which, coupled with its technical subject matter and intricate style, renders its restoration an arduous and uncertain job. In what follows I challenge the established reconstruction and interpretation of the section dealing with the ivy, and propose my (...) own instead. (shrink)