Part 32 (2/2)

v. 3. _Ostreosior_. This Epithet, peculiarly Catullian, is appropriate to the coasts most favoured by Priapus; oysters being an incentive to l.u.s.t.

C. xx. v. 19. The traveller mocks at Priapus' threat of sodomy, regarding it as a pleasure instead of as a punishment. The G.o.d, in anger, retorts that if that punishment has no fears for him, a fustigation by the farmer with the self-same mentule used as a cudgel may have a more deterrent effect. Cf. _Auct. Priap._ Ep. li. v. 27, 28:

Nimirum apertam convolatis ad poenam: Et vos hoc ipsum, quod minamur, invitat.

Without doubt, ye flock to the open punishment [so called because the natural parts of Priapus were always exposed to view], and the very thing with which I threaten, allures you.

And also Ep. lxiv.,

Quidam mollior anseris medulla, Furatum venit hoc amor poenae.

Furetur licet usque non videbo.

One than a goose's marrow softer far, Comes. .h.i.ther stealing for it's penalty sake; Steal he as please him: I will see him not.

C. xxiii. v. 6. Dry and meagre as wood; like the woman of whom Scarron says, that she never snuffed the candle with her fingers for fear of setting them on fire.

C. xxv. v. 1. Cf. Auct. Priap. Ep. xlv.

v. 5. This is a Catullian _crux_. Mr. Arthur Palmer (Trinity College, Dublin, Jan. 31, 1890) proposes, and we adopt--

”c.u.m diva miluorum aves ostendit oscitantes.”

(When the G.o.ddess of Kites shows you birds agape.)

Diva miluorum is--Diva furum, G.o.ddess of thieves; _i.e._, Laverna Milvus (hawk) being generally used for a rapacious robber. Mr. Palmer quotes Plaut. (Poen. 5, 5, 13; Pers. 3, 4, 5; Bacch. 2, 3, 40), and others.--_R.

F. B._

v. 6. _Involasti_, thou didst swoop--still metaphor of the prey-bird.--_R.

F. B._

C. xxvi. v. 3. Still the ”Bora” of the Adriatic, extending, with intervals, from Trieste to Bari. It is a N.N. Easter of peculiar electrical properties, causing extreme thirst, wrecking s.h.i.+ps, upsetting mail-trains, and sweeping carriages and horses into the sea. Austral, the south wind, is represented in these days by the Scirocco, S.S.E. It sets out from Africa a dry wind, becomes supersaturated in the Mediterranean, and is the scourge of Southern Italy, exhausting the air of ozone and depressing the spirits and making man utterly useless and miserable.--_R. F. B._

C. xxviii. v. 10. These expressions, like those in carmen xvi. ante, are merely terms of realistically gross abuse.

C. xxviiii. v. 5. _Cinaede Romule_. The epithet is here applied in its grossest sense, which again is implied in the allusion to the spoil of Pontus; for this, as Vossius proves, can only be understood to mean the wealth obtained by Caesar, when a young man, through his infamous relations with Nicomedes, king of Pontus--as witness two lines sung by Caesar's own soldiers on the occasion of his triumph:

Ecce Caesar nunc triumphat, qui subegit Galliam; Nicomedes non triumphat, qui subegit Caesarem.

v. 13. _Defututa Mentula_ = a worn-out voluptuary. Mentula is a cant term which Catullus frequently uses for a libidinous person, and particularly for Mamurra.

v. 24. Pompey married Caesar's daughter, Julia, and is commonly supposed to be the ”son-in-law” here meant; but Vossius argues with some force, that _socer_ and _gener_ apply, not to Caesar and Pompey, but to Caesar and Mamurra. Those words, and the corresponding terms in Greek, were often used in an unnatural sense, as for instance in an epigram on Noctuinus, attributed to Calvus, in which occurs this very line, _Gener socerque perdidistis omnia_.

C. x.x.xi. v. 1. As the Venice-Trieste railway runs along the southern bar of the pyriform narrow, Lago di Garda, with its towering mountains, whose heads are usually in the storm-clouds, and whose feet sink into the nearest vineyards, the traveller catches a sight of the Sirmio Spit, long and sandy. It is a narrow ridge boldly projecting into the lake (once called Benacus) which was formerly a marsh, but now made into an island by the simple process of ditch cutting: at the southern end is the Sermione hill and its picturesque Scottish-German Castle. To the north are some ruins supposed to be the old Villa of Catullus, but they seem too extensive to serve for the purpose.--_R. F. B._

C. x.x.xii. v. 11. Pezay, a French translator, strangely mistakes the meaning of the pa.s.sage, as if it amounted to this, ”I have gorged till I am ready to burst;” and he quotes the remark of ”une femme charmante,” who said that her only reply to such a billet-doux would have been to send the writer an emetic. But the lady might have prescribed a different remedy if she had been acquainted with Martial's line:

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