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A STICHOMETRIC ALLUSION TO CATULLUS 64 IN THE CULEX*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2014

Dunstan Lowe
Dunstan Lowe*
Affiliation:
University of Kent
*
[email protected]
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Extract

In a recent note, I collected instances of ‘stichometric allusion’, the technique in which poets allude, in one or more of their own verses, to source verses with corresponding line numbers. The technique existed in Hellenistic Greek poetry, but seems more prevalent (or at least, detectable) among the Latin poets of the Augustan era, who applied it to Greek and Latin predecessors alike, as well as internally to their own work. New illustrations of each type may be added here to those previously brought to light. Further examples, detected in an unsystematic fashion, no doubt lie dormant in published discussions and commentaries. Callimachus is still the only known Greek practitioner; perhaps his Roman successors considered the technique not merely Hellenistic but Callimachean. Authors of later ages employ the same techniques in equally haphazard fashion, although this does not mean that they had necessarily noticed examples from antiquity.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , December 2014 , pp. 862 - 865
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2014 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Donncha O'Rourke and William Levitan for stimulating discussions which improved this article, and to CQ's anonymous reader for a reminder that meaning is everywhere.

References

1 Lowe, D., ‘Women scorned: a new stichometric allusion in the Aeneid’, CQ 63 (2013), 1–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 The following list extends that of Lowe (n. 1); several items are drawn from the valuable discussion by O'Rourke, D., ‘Intertextuality in Roman elegy’, in Gold, B.K. (ed.), A Companion to Roman Love Elegy (Malden, MA, 2012), 390–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A compelling Callimachean example is when the rare participle τεθυωμένον (‘sweet-smelling’) appears at Hom. Hymn Aph. 63 and Callim. Hymn Ath. 63, in the same sedes (Hadjittofi, F., ‘Callimachus' sexy Athena: the Hymn to Athena and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite’, MD 60 [2008], 9–37Google Scholar, at 32). In Roman comedy, there is a close resemblance between Plaut. Capt. 800 and Ter. Eun. 801 (Fontaine, M., ‘Dynamics of appropriation in Roman comedy: Menander's Kolax in three Roman receptions [Naevius, Plautus, and Terence's Eunuchus]’, in Olson, S.D. [ed.], Ancient Comedy and Reception: Studies in the Classical Tradition of Comedy from Aristophanes to the Twenty-first Century [Berlin, 2013]Google Scholar). Schiesaro, A., ‘Ibis redibis’, MD 67 (2011), 79–150Google Scholar, suggests that Tristia 2.7–8 supplies the name suppressed at Ibis 7–8, ‘Caesar’. Augustan allusions to Greek include Virgil's translation of Theocr. Id. 11.43–4 at Ecl. 9.43 (Keeline, T., ‘Virgil and the Theocritean scholia’, in Thomas, R.F. and Ziolkowski, J.M. [edd.], The Virgil Encyclopedia [Malden, MA, 2013]Google Scholar). Augustan allusions to Latin include Horace's sole use of anhel– to describe Paris on Ida at Carm. 1.15.31, which recalls Catullus' sole use of anhel– to describe Attis on Ida at 63.31 (Putnam, M.C.J., Poetic Interplay: Catullus & Horace [Princeton, NJ, 2006], 154Google Scholar n. 21), and Propertius' use of exsequiae at 4.7.5, which was a Virgilian hapax at Aen. 7.5 (O'Rourke [this note], 401). A more complex relationship exists between Ovid's description of Elysium beginning at Amores 3.9.59, Tibullus' at 1.3.59, and Propertius' at 4.7.59 (Solmsen, F.W., ‘Propertius in his literary relations with Tibullus and Vergil’, Philologus 105 [1961], 273–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 274, 281–9; O'Rourke [this note], 402). Ovid's line 60 (restat, in Elysia valle Tibullus erit) resembles Propertius' line 60 (mulcet ubi Elysias aura beata rosas) and to a lesser extent Tibullus' line 58 (ipsa Venus campos ducet in Elysios). One intratextual example is Propertius' use of the yoking of bulls as a metaphor for desire's burden at both 2.3.47–50 and 2.34.47–50 (O'Rourke [this note], 397). Although Lowe (n. 1) included incipit allusions (e.g. Calp. Sic. 5.1: ‘forte …’, imitating Verg. Ecl. 7.1), these are clearly a special case and not properly ‘stichometric’.

3 In Milton's Paradise Lost, the array of hanging lamps at 1.726–30 recalls those at Aeneid 1.726–7. Intratextually, Dante describes Geryon and Lucifer as ‘ladders through Hell’ at Inferno 17.82–6 and 34.82–6 (Durling, R.M. [tr.], The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Volume 1: Inferno [Oxford, 1996], 18Google Scholar), and uses the ‘self-rhyme’ of Cristo in Cantos 14 and 19 of Paradiso, both times in lines 104, 106, and 108 (Hart, T.E., ‘The Cristo-rhymes, the Greek cross, and cruciform geometry in Dante's Commedia: “giunture di quadranti in tondo”’, ZRPh 106 [2009], 106–34Google Scholar, at 116).

4 Νυμϕίε Δημοϕόων, ἄδικε ξένε (‘Bridegroom Demophoon, unjust visitor’): Callim. fr. 556 Pfeiffer.

5 Wills, J., Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of Allusion (Oxford, 1996), 134Google Scholar, seems alone in noticing a Catullan debt here. The most recent commentary on the Culex (Seelentag, S., Der Pseudovergilische Culex: Hermes Einzelschriften 105 [Stuttgart, 2012]Google Scholar) does not mention the parallel.

6 ‘A lack of fides is the classic accusation against the deserting man’ (Gibson, R.K., Ovid: Ars Amatoria Book 3 [Cambridge, 2003], 286Google Scholar, with citations). There are repetitions of proper names at Cat. 64 19–21 (Thetidis … Thetis … Thetidi), 37 (Pharsaliam … Pharsalia), 285–6 (Tempe, | Tempe); Culex 131 and 133 (Demophoon … Demophoon), 271 and 273 and 275 (Ditis … Ditis … Ditis); Ciris 66 (Crataein … Crataeis), 105–6 (Alcathoi … Alcathoi), 130–1 (Scylla … Scylla), 295–6 (Britomarti … Britomarti), 498 (Iovis … Iovis) and 540 (Nisus … Nisus). The closest parallel to Demophoon … Demophoon is Ciris 295–6, where the repeated name is a four-syllable non-Latin vocative (Britomarti). On the stylistics of repeated nominal forms, see Wills (n. 5), 124–86.

7 The vocative perfide appears at Ov. Ib. 130 (speque tuae mortis, perfide, semper alar), and repeated proper nouns appear at Ov. Her. 5.127–8 (illam de patria Theseus – nisi nomine fallor – | nescio quis Theseus abstulit ante sua) and [Verg.] Ciris 130–1 (nec fuerat, ni Scylla novo correpta furore, | Scylla, patris miseri patriaeque inventa sepulcrum). Epanalepsis of a more common, non-Greek name appears at [Verg.] Dirae 129–30: fabula non vana est, tauro Iove digna vel auro | (Iuppiter, avertas aurem) mea sola puella est.

8 Seelentag (n. 5), 9–17, provides a convenient status quaestionis and accepts the dominant view (introduced by Güntzschel, D., Beiträge zur Datierung des Culex [Munich, 1972]Google Scholar) that the Culex is later than Ovid, but still early imperial.

9 Catullus 64 is 408 lines long, with at least one lacuna, and the Culex is 414 lines long. Ariadne's lament is 70 lines long (Cat. 64.132–201) and the gnat's is 73 lines long (Cul. 210–382).

10 Ross, D.O., ‘The Culex and Moretum as post-Augustan literary parodies’, HSPh 79 (1975), 235–63Google Scholar.

11 According to Drew, D.L., Culex: Sources and Their Bearing on the Problem of Authorship (Oxford, 1925)Google Scholar, esp. 68, 84, Catullus 64 is the major influence upon the Culex – after Lucretius. Although the majority of Drew's parallels are loose, there are several specific verbal echoes. These include gaudia vultu (Cat. 64.34; Cul. 120), omnia … omnia (Cat. 64.186–7; Cul. 348–9), impia … impia (Cat. 64.403–4; Cul. 124–5), late … omnia frangens (Cat. 64.109) with obvia … carpens … late (Cul. 166–7), and myrtus at the line-end, in a catalogue of flowers and linked with Laconia (Cat. 64.89; Cul. 400).

12 The direct link between Catullus' perfide … Theseu (64.133) and the Culex poet's perfide Demophoon (133) was Ovid's intervening perfide Theseu (Fast. 3.473; cf. [Verg.] Aetn. 583). Jacobson, H., ‘The date of the Culex’, Phoenix 58 (2004), 345–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, suggests that the transformation of Phyllis into the almond tree is a variant which postdates Ovid, making the entire premise for the trope part of its ongoing evolution.

13 Wills (n. 5), 132–8, esp. 134.

14 Alternatively, since the poem's main project is a plangent accumulation of allusions, the imitation is central to the poem. I thank CQ's anonymous reader for this observation.

15 Seelentag (n. 5), ad loc.

16 For Demophoon as the heartbreaker son of the heartbreaker Theseus, see Prop. 2.22a.1–2, 24.43–4; Ov. Her. 2.75–8, Ars Am. 3.35–8, 459–60 (see also Ov. Her. 4.65–6, where Phaedra hurls the same charge at Hippolytus). The apostrophe to Demophoon may also make the Culex an ‘heir’ to Ov. Her. 2, which is addressed to Demophoon in its entirety: both poems have funerary inscriptions as their closing couplets.

17 Seelentag (n. 5), ad loc.

18 Just as the initial ‘p's at Cul. 131–3 echo Ariadne's sobbing patriis … perfide … perfide, the words multis … et nunc signal the allusion as the sequel to many prior Phyllis-laments. They also activate the etymology of Demophoon as ‘Killer of the Many’, just as the Culex itself ‘culls’ the whole sub-genre of elegiac and epyllionic soliloquy. I thank CQ's anonymous reader for these observations.

19 Using what we know of how classical Latin poems were presented in written form, O'Rourke, D., ‘Paratext and intertext in the Propertian poetry book’, in Jansen, L. (ed.), The Roman Paratext: Frame, Text, Readers (Cambridge, 2014)Google Scholar, suggests that the placing of text, e.g. in adjacent columns, formed the basis for intratextual and paratextual allusions.

20 There are superficial visual or aural resemblances between words in the same sedes, especially at line endings: aequor/auctor (12), tuetur/petuntur (53), fluctibus in/talibus in (98), labello/capellae (104), pectus/per artus (138), femina/cacumina (143), tauro/torvo (173). The only exact verbal parallel is the unremarkable quis at the start of lines 145. On two occasions the same word appears in different positions in the line: sensus (189) and mente/mentem (200). These effects seem coincidental.