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CIRIS 265: AN EMENDATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2018

Boris Kayachev*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin

Extract

Carme fears that Scylla is in love with her own father (237–40); Scylla replies that she loves no one she should love, but one of the besiegers—though she can hardly bring herself to utter his name (262–7):

      nil amat hic animus, nutrix, quod oportet amari,
      in quo falsa tamen lateat pietatis imago,
      sed media ex acie, mediis ex hostibus—eheu,
      quid dicam quoue aegra malum hoc exordiar ore?        265
      dicam equidem, quoniam tu nunc non dicere, nutrix,
      non sinis: extremum hoc munus morientis habeto.
      265 aegra Baehrens: agam Z: ipsa ρ: ausa Sillig

Type
Shorter Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2018 

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Footnotes

This paper was produced during the term of a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship funded by the Irish Research Council (project ID: GOIPD/2016/549).

References

1 Text from Lyne, R.O.A.M., Ciris: A Poem Attributed to Vergil (Cambridge, 1978), 80Google Scholar.

2 Baehrens, A.[E.], ‘Emendationes in Cirin’, Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie und Paedagogik 105 (1872), 833–49, at 845Google Scholar.

3 Sillig, I., P. Virgilii Maronis quae vulgo feruntur carmina Culex, Ciris, Copa et Moretum (Leipzig, 1831), 244Google Scholar.

4 Lyne (n. 1), 214.

5 Cf. Lyne (n. 1), 214: ‘How shall I begin?’.

6 OLD s.v. os 1 8b: ‘the face as showing or failing to show signs of shame; (pregn.) command of countenance, assurance, “face”’.

7 Kaster, R.A., Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome (Oxford, 2005), 162 n. 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar makes a slightly different emphasis: ‘A Roman who was thought to have behaved shamefully could be asked, in tones of incredulity, “with what face” he came into the sight of others […]; the answer could be that he had a “hard” or “iron face” (os durum or ferreum), one incapable of blushing.’ Yet this applies to situations when people are not ashamed, as, for instance, in the Cicero example.

8 Just as Phaedra does (Eur. Hipp. 345): πῶς ἂν σύ μοι λέξειας ἁμὲ χρὴ λέγειν; ‘if only you could say for me what I must say!’. On the use of Euripides’ Hippolytus in the Ciris, see De Gianni, D., ‘La nutrice di Scilla e la nutrice di Fedra: ispirazioni euripidee nella Ciris’, Vichiana 12 (2010), 3645Google Scholar.

9 Again, we may compare Phaedra, who hints to the Nurse that she is in love, but is reluctant to name Hippolytus; unlike Scylla, however, she succeeds in making the Nurse utter his name for her (Hipp. 347–52).

10 It seems necessary to take dicam and exordiar as future forms rather than as (deliberative) subjunctives: the question quoore? does not mean ‘what face am I to assume to tell you about it?’ but ‘what face shall I have as I tell you about it?’, as the Livy and Terence parallels show.

11 On the colloquial character of qui, see e.g. Adams, J.N., An Anthology of Informal Latin, 200 bcad 900 (Cambridge, 2016), 194–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But note Chahoud, A., ‘Idiom(s) and literariness in classical literary criticism’, in Dickey, E., Chahoud, A. (edd.), Colloquial and Literary Latin (Cambridge, 2010), 4264, at 44 n. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, observing that, despite its colloquial currency, qui can find place in higher linguistic registers too: ‘This phrase [qui fit] and similar questions introduced by adverbial qui (e.g. qui potest/potis est?) are found in early high-register poetry (e.g. Acc. trag. 418), in Lucretius (1.168) and in formal prose (e.g. Cic. Fat. 38; Sal. Cat. 51.24).’

12 See Lyne (n. 1), 193 on 226 aegroto, 199 on 241 quouis, 200 on 244 macerat, 202 on 247 digna atque indigna, 203 on 249 senio, 208 on 257 torques and nutricula, 211 on 261 odimus, 215 on 268 uides, 241 on 328 estnostrum.

13 See in general Trappes-Lomax, J.M., Catullus: A Textual Reappraisal (Swansea, 2007), 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar (with a list of other possible examples); on the latter context, see esp. Adams, J.N., ‘Nominative personal pronouns and some patterns of speech in Republican and Augustan poetry’, PBA 93 (1999), 97133, at 115–16Google Scholar. Another possible parallel is Verg. Ecl. 2.2 (nec quid speraret habebat), where Gratwick, A.S., ‘Corydon and his prospects’, CR 23 (1973), 10Google Scholar proposed qui—which is now printed by Ottaviano in her recent Teubner edition (Ottaviano, S., Conte, G.B., P. Vergilius Maro: Bucolica, Georgica [Berlin, 2013], 42Google Scholar). S.J. Heyworth, BMCR 2014.02.47 objects that ‘Vergil does not otherwise use the form’; id., Cynthia: A Companion to the Text of Propertius (Oxford, 2007), 171Google Scholar shows that at Prop. 2.14.58 qui has no manuscript support and should not be printed, observing that ‘none of the Augustan poets uses the adverb except Horace in his prosaic hexameters’ (after Housman, A.E., ‘Butler and Barber's Propertius’, CR 48 [1934], 136–9, at 139Google Scholar), though he admits that ‘Ovid also uses it, but only in poems to be dated to his exile: ep. 17.213, and perhaps tr. 3.4.21’. It can perhaps be noted that the Virgil of the Eclogues is not (yet) an Augustan poet.