¹ Fritz Schulz, Classical Roman Law, 339.

² An equally emphatic hyperbaton of the same type occurs at Eur., Alc. 1072–4, where σὴν…γυναῖκα is separated by a whole trimeter; for the implications see my note on Aesch., Ag. 13 f.

³ Ulpian, Dig. 6, 1. 9.

⁴ And afterwards, for instance Horace, Epodes 7, 15 f.

⁵ arte Dousa: tute trad. For other possible corrections see Konrad Müller's recent edition.

⁶ Carm. lat. epigr. 52, 7.

⁷ This recalls the famous remark of the great orator L. Licinius Crassus in Cicero's dialogue De oratore, 3, 45, ‘cum audio socrum meam Laeliam (about her sermo and that of some other ladies of the contemporary aristocracy see also Cic., Brut. 211) … eam sic audio ut Plautum mihi aut Naevium videar audire.’ The sentence by which the remark on Laelia's speech is interrupted, ‘facilius enim mulieres incorruptam antiquitatem conservant,’ etc., is a rendering of Plato, Crat. 418c αἱ γυναῖκες αῖπηερ μάλιστα τὴν ἀρχαίαν φωνὴν σῴζουσι (not noticed in the commentaries of Piderit-Harnecker and of Wilkins).

⁸ I feel no qualms in accepting the old emendation potest (potes the Veronensis), which makes the expression much more forcible and idiomatic.

⁹ In his Roman Elegies Goethe wrote: ‘Manche Töne sind mir Verdruss, doch bleibet am meisten Hundegebell mir verhasst; kläffend zerreisst es mein Ohr.’

¹⁰ See Lucilius 2 and 377 with Marx's comments and notice especially Persius 1, 109 f.

¹¹ An attentive fifteenth-century scholar saw that at line 22 the nobis of the Veronensis must be changed to vobis.

¹² ‘Italische Volksjustiz’, Rhein. Mus. LVI (1900), 1 ff. (Kleine Schriften IV, 356 ff.).

¹³ Usener, Kl. Schriften IV, 373, and Wackernagel, Kl. Schriften 1284, following an ancient etymology, derive convicium from vicus, but J. B. Hofmann's argumentation (Walde-Hofmann, Lat. etymol. Wörterbuch 1, 269 f.) has convinced me that a connection with vox, vocare is far more likely.

¹⁴ I follow Lindsay in accepting what is to all intents and purposes the reading of the παράδοσις, multum. Goetz-Schöll (ed. min.), Leo and Ernout accept Scaliger's multo, but I see no valid reason for the change.

¹⁵ On its first page Usener speaks of his ‘Beschäftigung mit den Erscheinungen der sogenannten Volksjustiz, zu welcher mich zeitig eine Stelle des Plautinischen Pseudolus (v. 357 ff.) veranlasste’. Had Usener been a Hellenist in the now only too common sense of the word, he would never have been the Usener we know and admire.

¹⁶ In all probability Plautus, and not an Attic playwright. The features common to this scene and to Ar., Clouds 909 ff., disturb me now even less than when I dealt with this point in Plautinisches im Plautus 401, n. 3. An observation made by Paul Lejay, Plaute (published posthumously 1925), 68, n. 1, may be as helpful to others as it has been to me: ‘On a comparé Aristophane, Nuées 909 suiv. Le point commun est dans les réponses, ici, du leno, là, de l'Injuste. L'idée de ces impudences narquoises a pu venir séparément à deux auteurs comiques, comme on peut les trouver tous les jours dans des querelles populaires. Quoi qu'il en soit, la scène elle-même d'insultes appartient à une tradition nationale, nettement italique.’

¹⁷ It was not for nothing that the greatest actor of the Ciceronian time chose this part for himself (Cic., p. Rosc. com. 20).

¹⁸ 61, 179 f., ‘bonae senibus viris cognitae bene feminae’, for which see Festus p. 244 (282 Lindsay), ‘pronubae adhibentur nuptis, quae semel nupserunt.’

¹⁹ Festus p. 245 M. (282 Linds.), ‘patrimi et matrimi pueri praetextati tres nubentem deducunt,’ etc.

²⁰ An early correction (cum the Veronensis). To assume here a conjunctional clause, with the principal clause following at line 8, would destroy the severe structure of the poem which, as will be shown presently, consists of a series of self-contained cola. Moreover, it is necessary to have a full stop at the end of line 7, for the following fulsere vere candidi tibi soles, echoing line 3, would lose a good deal of its force if it did not stand in isolation. To these stylistic arguments I would add one derived from Catullus' usus linguae. In all his smaller iambic or lyric poems, I–LX—and only these are comparable—Catullus uses the conjunction cum twenty times. In fourteen of these cases cum stands at the beginning of a sentence or clause. Of the remaining six sentences four begin with a pronoun (in one case two pronouns) which is immediately followed by cum: 5, 5, nobis cum …; 17, 14, cui cum sit …; 22, 9, haec cum legas tu; 13, 13, quod tu cum olfacies. In only two cases is cum preceded by a simple noun or adjective: 22, 16, poema cum scribit; 39, 5, orba cum flet unicum mater. A parallel to ibi illa multa cum iocosa fiebant cannot be found in these poems. Nor is at 61, 102, the word-order lenta sed velut defensible, for, as may be seen from Schmalz-Hofmann 666, ‘die Nachstellung von sed ist dichterisch seit den Augusteern (Niedermann, Essais 59 f.).’ The sed of the Oxoniensis is an arbitrary alteration; in the que of G and R the original qui is preserved.

²¹ Avantius' supplement of the end is certain.

²² Since ‘Meleagri (h.e. Balthazari Venatoris) Spicilegium in edit. Liuineii et Gebhardi Francofurtae 1621’ is known to me only from Ellis's Prolegomena, p. LXXVII, to the second edition of his Catullus, I assume that that gentleman's claim to immortality rests mainly, if not solely, on his having seen that here the MS reading ne means uae.

²³ This is true even of lines 4–5, for, owing to both its weighty sense, and its size, ‘amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla’ functions not as a mere attribute but as a self-contained clause. It is no accident that this whole line, only the second word being different, recurs at 37, 12. In transplanting it like that, the poet must have felt that the line was an autonomous unit.

²⁴ Not necessarily between 14–15, see my ‘Kolon und Satz’ 11, Nachr. Gött. Ges., Phil.-hist. Kl., 1933, 326 f.

²⁵ Not necessarily between 6–7, for 6 may be regarded as ‘enlarged subject’, and so may 13.

²⁶ Plautus, Trin. 1026, ‘quin tu quod periit periisse ducis?’ has long been quoted by the commentators.