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Notes on Catullus and Ovid

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

W. A. Camps
Affiliation:
Pembroke College, Cambridge

Extract

The writer purports to be conversing with the door of a house, now owned by a man named Caecilius, which is alleged to have harboured a scandal in the time of its previous occupants. For this the speaker reproaches the door, as having through negligence been partly responsible. The door replies (beginning at line 9) that it is wholly innocent in the matter; but people lay blame on it for everything that is done amiss. Line 12, in the door's speech, is obviously corrupt, and the greater part of it is obelized by editors accordingly.

Type
Shorter Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1987

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References

1 D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Two Studies in Roman Nomenclature (American Classical Studies 3, New York, 1976), 36; see also his edition of the Letters to Atticus, ad. loc.

2 ‘M. Histimenius Treptus Histimeniae fil(iae)... Histiraeniae Rufinae uxori.’ The family may be of Roman origin. Some other attestations: AE 1980, 386 (Histimennius, Interamnia), 1981, 479 (Istumenius, Sardinia).

3 Mundus is by no means improbable as a Republican cognomen, even if attested only rarely.

4Tullio is an odd cognomen even for a Roman’, says Shackleton Bailey (see the following note). This is not, in fact, true. Cognomina formed with -io from gentilicia or praenomina (like Tullus) are not uncommon; see Kajanto, Latin Cognomina, 163–5, where many items could be added.

5 Two Studies, 70.