v. 5. This is a Catullian _crux_. Mr. Arthur Palmer (Trinity College,
Dublin, Jan. 31, 1890) proposes, and we adopt--
"Cum diva miluorum aves ostendit oscitantes."
(When the Goddess of Kites shows you birds agape.)
Diva miluorum is--Diva furum, Goddess of thieves; _i.e._, Laverna Milvus
(hawk) being generally used for a rapacious robber. Mr. Palmer quotes
Plaut. (Poen. 5, 5, 13; Pers. 3, 4, 5; Bacch. 2, 3, 40), and others.--_R.
F. B._
v. 6. _Involasti_, thou didst swoop--still metaphor of the prey-bird.--_R.
F. B._
C. xxvi. v. 3. Still the "Bora" of the Adriatic, extending, with intervals,
from Trieste to Bari. It is a N.N. Easter of peculiar electrical
properties, causing extreme thirst, wrecking ships, upsetting mail-trains,
and sweeping carriages and horses into the sea. Austral, the south wind, is
represented in these days by the Scirocco, S.S.E. It sets out from Africa a
dry wind, becomes supersaturated in the Mediterranean, and is the scourge
of Southern Italy, exhausting the air of ozone and depressing the spirits
and making man utterly useless and miserable.--_R. F. B._
C. xxviii. v. 10. These expressions, like those in carmen xvi. ante, are
merely terms of realistically gross abuse.
C. xxviiii. v. 5. _Cinaede Romule_. The epithet is here applied in its
grossest sense, which again is implied in the allusion to the spoil of
Pontus; for this, as Vossius proves, can only be understood to mean the
wealth obtained by Caesar, when a young man, through his infamous relations
with Nicomedes, king of Pontus--as witness two lines sung by Caesar's own
soldiers on the occasion of his triumph:
Ecce Caesar nunc triumphat, qui subegit Galliam;
Nicomedes non triumphat, qui subegit Caesarem.
v. 13. _Defututa Mentula_ = a worn-out voluptuary. Mentula is a cant term
which Catullus frequently uses for a libidinous person, and particularly
for Mamurra.
v. 24. Pompey married Caesar's daughter, Julia, and is commonly supposed to
be the "son-in-law" here meant; but Vossius argues with some force, that
_socer_ and _gener_ apply, not to Caesar and Pompey, but to Caesar and
Mamurra. Those words, and the corresponding terms in Greek, were often used
in an unnatural sense, as for instance in an epigram on Noctuinus,
attributed to Calvus, in which occurs this very line, _Gener socerque
perdidistis omnia_.
C. xxxi. v. 1. As the Venice-Trieste railway runs along the southern bar of
the pyriform narrow, Lago di Garda, with its towering mountains, whose
heads are usually in the storm-clouds, and whose feet sink into the nearest
vineyards, the traveller catches a sight of the Sirmio Spit, long and
sandy. It is a narrow ridge boldly projecting into the lake (once called
Benacus) which was formerly a marsh, but now made into an island by the
simple process of ditch cutting: at the southern end is the Sermione hill
and its picturesque Scottish-German Castle. To the north are some ruins
supposed to be the old Villa of Catullus, but they seem too extensive to
serve for the purpose.--_R. F. B._
C. xxxii. v. 11. Pezay, a French translator, strangely mistakes the meaning
of the passage, as if it amounted to this, "I have gorged till I am ready
to burst;" and he quotes the remark of "une femme charmante," who said that
her only reply to such a billet-doux would have been to send the writer an
emetic. But the lady might have prescribed a different remedy if she had
been acquainted with Martial's line:
O quoties rigidâ pulsabis pallia venâ!
or with this quatrain of an old French poet:
Ainsi depuis une semaine
La longue roideur de ma veine,
Pour néant rouge et bien en point,
Bat ma chemise et mon pourpoint.
C. xxxvii. v. 1. Taverns and Wine-shops in Rome were distinguished by
pillars projecting into the streets, the better to catch the eye of the
passenger, as sign-posts of inns do with us now; the tavern in question was
a house of ill-fame, and we are told it was the ninth column or sign-post
from the Temple of Castor and Pollux.
v. 2. It was customary to display on the fronts of brothels the names of
the inmates, just as shopkeepers' names were inscribed over places of more
reputable trade: this was called _inscriptio_ or _titulus_.
v. 10. _Scorpionibus_. Indecent inscriptions scribbled on the walls and
door with burnt sticks.
v. 11. Catullus's mistress had, it seems, run away from him to a common
brothel, in front of which it was the custom, not only for women but even
for men, to sit down and offer themselves for prostitution.
v. 16. _Semitarii moechi_. Whoremongers who take up with common women who
offer themselves at every corner of the streets for a mere trifle.
v. 20. _Hibera Urina_. We are assured by Strabo, _Lib._ 3, that this filthy
custom prevailed greatly in Spain: teeth were not only washed in stale
urine, the acid of which must necessarily render them white, but they were
also rubbed with a powder of calcined human excrement. Persons sometimes
even bathed their whole bodies in urine.
C. xxxxi. v. 3. _Turpiculo naso_. The kind of nose alluded to is such as
sheep or goats have. Cf. Lucretius, _lib._ iv. v. 1152.
C. xxxxvii. v. 6. _In trivio_, i.e., in the most public places, in hopes of
finding some host.
v. 7. This hunting for invitations does not, according to modern notions,
place the two friends of Catullus in a respectable light; but it was a
common and avowed practice at Rome.
C. liii. v. 5. _Salaputium_. A pet name for the male virile member. This
word has been the subject of much debate among the learned. Some read
_solopachium_, meaning a "mannikin eighteen inches high"; Saumasius
proposes salopygium, a "wagtail"; several editors have _salaputium_, an
indelicate word nurses used to children when they fondled them, so that the
exclamation would mean, "what a learned little puppet!" Thus Augustus
called Horace _purissimum penem_.