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CIRIS 137: AN EMENDATION*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2014

Boris Kayachev
Boris Kayachev*
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
*
[email protected]
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Extract

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 (133–9):

      sed malus ille puer, quem nec sua flectere mater
      iratum potuit, quem nec pater atque auus idem
      Iuppiter (ille etiam Poenos domitare leones
      et ualidas docuit uires mansuescere tigris,
      ille etiam diuos homines – sed dicere magnum est),
      idem tum tristis acuebat paruulus iras
      Iunonis magnae ...

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , December 2014 , pp. 859 - 861
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2014 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to CQ's editor and anonymous referee for their criticisms and suggestions.

References

1 See Lyne, R.O.A.M., Ciris: A Poem Attributed to Vergil (Cambridge, 1978), 157–8Google Scholar. I give the transmitted text (possibly corrupt), whereas Lyne, for example, follows O. Skutsch (‘Pseudovergiliana’, CR 21 [1971], 11) in changing etiam at 135 into iram, and F.R.D. Goodyear (in Clausen, W.V. [ et al. ], Appendix Vergiliana [Oxford, 1966]Google Scholar) posits a lacuna after 135.

2 This solution is adopted, for example, in Goodyear's OCT (n. 1).

3 Lyne (n. 1), 158.

4 This interpretation is often ascribed to Ribbeck, O., Appendix Vergiliana (Leipzig, 1895 2)Google Scholar, 36, but it was already proposed by Schwabe, L., In Cirin carmen observationum pars I (Dorpat, 1871)Google Scholar, 13.

5 Lyne (n. 1), 158.

6 Catullus' presence in the Ciris is well known; in particular, Ciris 242–3, nam te iactari non est Amathusia nostri | tam rudis ut nullo possim cognoscere signo, is evidently modelled on Catullus 68.17, non est dea nescia nostri, and 68.51–2, nam mihi quam dederit duplex Amathusia curam | scitis; Ciris 104, quarum non ulli fama concedere digna, on 68.131, aut nihil aut paulo cui tum concedere digna (the collocation concedere digna is unattested elsewhere); and Ciris 44, haec tamen interea quae possumus, on 68.149, hoc tibi quod potui (in both cases referring to poetic compositions).

7 Again, I give a conservative text (as printed and discussed by Williams, G., Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry [Oxford, 1968], 712)Google Scholar, though it may conceivably be in need of more intervention. For a recent and more radical treatment, see Trappes-Lomax, J.M., Catullus: A Textual Reappraisal (Swansea, 2007), 242–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Williams's (n. 7) translation.

9 The allusion is noted by Schwabe (n. 4), 13.

10 Lyne (n. 1), 158.

11 For example, Schwabe (n. 4), 13, paraphrases it as sed haec furta deorum enarrare longum est. Gatti, P.L., Pseudo Virgilio, Ciris (Milan, 2010)Google Scholar, 65, translates it as ‘ma sarebbe lungo narrarlo’.

12 OLD, s.v. magnus 15. Note that magna loqui is the idiom for ‘talking big’: see e.g. Maltby, R., Tibullus, Elegies: Text, Introduction, and Commentary (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar, 469.

13 If we are to supply a form of componere, perhaps the closest meaning would be OLD, s.v. 3d: ‘to put together for comparison, to compare; to treat as comparable’.

14 On the topos, see e.g. Fedeli, P., Properzio, Elegie Libro II: introduzione, testo e commento (Cambridge, 2005)Google Scholar, 422.