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CIRIS 288: AN EMENDATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2017

Boris Kayachev*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin

Extract

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 (286–9).

Type
Shorter Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2017 

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References

1 Lyne, R.O.A.M., Ciris: A Poem Attributed to Vergil (Cambridge, 1978), 221 Google Scholar. Many editors print Barth's text (for instance, Hielkema, Haury, Knecht, Goold). Others give their own versions: Baehrens, A., Poetae Latini minores (Leipzig, 1880), 2.143Google Scholar: quem per (ut a! olim natae te propter eundem) | hunc Amor insanae luctum portauit alumnae!; Némethy, G., Ciris: epyllion pseudovergilianum (Budapest, 1909), 34 Google Scholar: nempe in Creta olim natae te propter eundem, | nunc amor insanae letum portauit alumnae!; de Gubernatis, M. Lenchantin, P. Vergili Maronis Ciris (Turin, 1930), 63 Google Scholar: semper fraus olim <ut> natae te propter eundem, | haud amor insanae luctum portauit alumnae; Helm, R., Die pseudo-virgilische Ciris (Heidelberg, 1937), 37 Google Scholar: semper <obes? mortem per te crudelia fata | attuler>unt olim natae, te propter eundem | hunc amor insanae luctum portauit alumnae.

2 Watt, W.S., ‘Notes on the Appendix Vergiliana ’, Eikasmos 12 (2001), 279–92, at 289Google Scholar, following Lyne's interpretation in general and taking up Némethy's nempe, proposed nempe, <ita> ut ante.

3 As Némethy (n. 1) does.

4 Helm, R., ‘Textkritische Beiträge zur Ciris’, RhM 85 (1936), 254–88, at 274Google Scholar.

5 It can perhaps be objected that the repetition of te propter would point to a paratactic rather than to a hypotactic construction.

6 Cf. Helm's (n. 1) version.

7 According to OLD s.v. 2a, luctus is ‘mournful feeling, grief, sorrow (esp. arising from bereavement)’. This is the meaning at Catull. 64.247 (quoted above), where Ariadne's luctus caused by her abandonment by Theseus is paralleled by Theseus’ own luctus caused by the suicide of his father. Ariadne's grief at 64.199 (nostrum luctum) is similarly paralleled by Aegeus’ grief at 64.226 (nostros luctus). The only exception is 64.71–2 a misera, assiduis quam luctibus externauit | spinosas Erycina serens in pectore curas, where luctus appears to be used of pangs of love. As G. Trimble, ‘A commentary on Catullus 64, lines 1–201’ (Diss., Oxford University, 2010), 134 comments, ‘the word is not typically used of painful love’. Baehrens, A., Catulli Veronensis liber (Leipzig, 1885), 386 Google Scholar likewise observes that ‘luctus […] numquam de amoris maeroribus dicitur’, and he may well be right to propose fluctibus (a conjecture unduly neglected by recent editors), based on the analogy with 64.97–8 qualibus incensam iactastis mente puellam | fluctibus (cf. further 64.62 magnis curarum fluctuat undis).

8 Luppe, W., ‘Textvorschläge zur pseudo-vergilianischen ,Ciris‘’, Philologus 152 (2008), 161–5, at 164CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Accordingly, natae and alumnae would be objective genitives; cf. TLL 7.1742.84 s.v. luctus II.B.1.b.α.

9 The contracted form mi tends to be avoided in epic, but still there are instances of it in Lucretius (1.924, 3.105), Virgil (Aen. 6.104, 123) and Ovid (Met. 9.191, 13.503); on the colloquial character of mi, cf. recently Adkin, N., ‘ Mi in Virgil’, Eranos 105 (2008/2009), 13 Google Scholar. The elision can be paralleled, for example, at Lucr. 1.924 (et simul incussit suauem mi in pectus amorem) and Catull. 76.26 (o di, reddite mi hoc pro pietate mea!), a line imitated at Ciris 524–7 (illi pro pietate suareddidit). On the elision of monosyllables in Ciris, cf. Lyne (n. 1), 18. For the situation in general, Gatti, P.L., Pseudo Virgilio: Ciris (Milan, 2010), 161 Google Scholar points out an interesting parallel in Phaedrus 1.28.5–6 (the fox begging the eagle to spare her cubs): hanc persecuta mater orare incipit, | ne tantum miserae luctum importaret sibi.