Translate-I could have wished that Otho's head-you are a regular pigsty, you lout—and the half-washed legs and offensive habits of Libo, if not everything else about them, should disgust you and the youthful dotard Fuficius: you will be enraged a second time with my innocent iambics, O peerless general.'

LV.

4. libellis MSS., i.e. 'bookshops,' is perhaps supported by Mart. 5. 20. 8, gestatio, fabulae, libelli, campus, porticus, umbra, Virgo, thermae. But in both passages it is safer to understand the word as meaning 'notices.' Catullus looked to see if his friend was advertised among lost articles that had been found. Birt understands libellis to mean 'books :' the child was so tiny that perhaps he had been shut between the leaves of some book. If any alteration were required, tabernis, the reading of the first Aldine, is simplest.

8. sereno, the reading of three of Ellis' late MSS., is the easiest correction of serena V, as Munro points out. Most editors adopt serenas from the inferior MSS.

9. avelli is my emendation of a uelte MSS. I construe it as an infinitive of exclamation, of which common construction examples are collected in Roby's Latin Grammar, § 1358, Kühner, Ausführliche Grammatik, 2. 532. The meaning is To think that Camerius is being torn from me, you naughty girls!' in this way I went on with my own lips prosecuting my quest. Ellis reads avellent.

I. reducta pectus Ellis; reduc MSS.

12. en is found in a few MSS. em V, which may be right and is approved by Ribbeck, Lat. Partikeln, pp 29-35.

14-23, which lines evidently form part of this poem, are mis

N

placed in the MSS., standing as a separate poem between LVIII. and LIX. They were placed here by the editor of the first printed edition, which appeared probably at Paris before the end of the fifteenth century. Line 15 stands after line 16 in the MSS.; the transposition, which is absolutely necessary, was made by Muretus. In line 17 I retain niveae citaeque bigae MSS., which was altered into nivea citaque biga by Hand: bigae must be genitive singular. There is quite sufficient authority for the use of biga in poets, though bigae (plural) is usual in Augustan and ante-Augustan poets; thus niveis citisque bigis (Muretus) is unnecessary. In line 20 dicares is final subjunctive depending on quos, a not unusual construction: a parallel is Cic. II. in Verr. I, § 51, non putasti me tuis familiarissimis in hanc rem testimonia denuntiaturum, qui tuae domi semper fuissent; ex quibus quaererem signa scirentne ibi fuisse, quae nunc non essent. For the sequence cp. inf. 101. 3. Baehrens and Postgate have created unnecessary difficulties by fancying that the verb is conditional and stumbling over the omission of si. We are now in a position to translate lines 14-23. 'Not if I should be wrought into the fabled giant walker, the guardian of Crete, or the athlete Ladas or Perseus of the winged foot, not if I should be borne along with the speed of Pegasus or of the white fleet chariot of Rhesus; take too all the feather-footed and flying creatures that be, and with them ask for the swiftness of the winds, that you might have yoked them all together and put them at my service, still I should have grown weary to the very bone and wasted with faintness upon faintness in my quest of thee.'

24. ten Muretus; te in V.

27. nunc MSS. is certainly right: num, an Italian conjecture adopted by most editors, seems out of place; for Camerius was with the ladies.

32. nostri sis is rightly retained by Ellis and Schmidt. Most editors accept vostri sim, the conjecture of Parthenius.

Birt in a recently published pamphlet, De Amorum in arte antiqua simulacris et de pueris minutis apud antiquos in deliciis habitis (Marburg, 1892), has suggested an entirely new interpretation of this poem. He thinks that Camerius was a boy favourite of Catullus, a pusio, and that the point is that the child is so securely hidden that his master (so Birt interprets ipse, line 9) cannot discover the place of his concealment; he is inclined to understand libellis, line 4, literally; the poet hunted for the child behind the books. He reads serenas in line 8: and in line 9 foll. 'Puellae' sic ipse flagitabam, Camerium mihi, pessimae puellae.' Quaedam inquit: 'nudum reduc [et aufer], Hem-hic in roseis latet papillis.' In line 26 Ede Audacter, committe crede lucei : 'Me unctae lacteolae tenent puellae.' In line 32 Dum vestri sim particeps amoris. The pamphlet is well illustrated from antiques, and full of recondite learning, characteristic of the author of Das antike Buchwesen; but the conclusions in this instance seem to me fanciful. Birt does not consider that lines 14-23 form part of this poem, but would leave them where they stand in the MSS. as a separate effusion addressed to Camerius. 'Prius nempe poema cottidiana loquela utitur, posterius rhetoricum est; alterum in argumento simpliciter enarrando decurrit, alterum magno apparatu fabulari ornatum et oneratum est Perseo, Rheso similibus in comparationem vocatis.' Birt, p. vii. but the mock-heroic trifling adds an additional zest to this charming poem.

:

LVI.

6. crusantem Baehrens (crisantem. ed. princeps); trusantem MSS., which is kept by Birt, De Amorum simulacris, p. xl.

LVII.

7. lectulo G and most MSS.; lecticulo O, which is accepted by Baehrens, Munro, Schmidt, and Postgate; but Ellis' arguments against it in his commentary are convincing. See on 10. 27.

LVIII.

5. magnanimi Remi Voss; magna amiremini O; magna admiremini G. Ellis reads magnanimis (acc. pl.), but this is a purely late form, and Catullus uses magnanimum (64. 86), magnanimam (66. 26). Many editors adopt magnanimos the reading of Calpurnius.

LIX.

I. rufuli Palmer, Classical Review, 5. 7; rufum V. Rufulum, an Italian conjecture, is accepted by most editors. Pleitner and Munro read rufa rufulum.

LXI.

16. Vinia Datanus and Lachmann; Iunia V and most MSS. (Iunia is clear in Chatelain's facsimile of G, and is clear in O, as I can personally attest.) The bride's name seems to have been Vinia Aurunculeia, the bridegroom's L. Manlius Torquatus: see Schwabe, Quaestt. Catull. pp. 334-335, Schmidt, Prolegg. p. lii. For Manlio V and most MSS. have Mallio.

46-47. quis deus magis amatis est petendus amantibus V, two words being transposed from the proper order, as was seen by Bergk, whom I follow. quis deus magis anxiis est petendus amantibus, Haupt, Ellis, and Schmidt.

68. nitier Avantius and a Paris MS. 7,989; uicier G and most MSS.; nities O.

79-82 are omitted in the MSS. The lines in the text are my own supplement, intended to suggest what possibly may have been the contents of the lost lines.

95, omitted in the MSS., was added in the Aldine edition of 1502.

98. viden? faces, Aldine of 1502; viden (videri O) ut faces MSS., where ut is an obvious adscript.

106. quin Avantius; que G and most MSS.; sed O, which looks like a gloss on quin. See Munro on Lucretius 1. 588.

III. Three lines in the stanza are missing which appear to have contained an apostrophe to the marriage bed; the last line relates to its ivory feet. The epithalamium of Ticida contained a similar address: felix lectule talibus sole amoribus, quoted by Priscian, p. 673. See Weichert, Poetarum Latinorum reliquiae, p. 361.

124. Munro, p. 136, has shown that io throughout the refrain of this poem is scanned as a monosyllable at the beginning and dissyllable at the end of each line.

127. iocatio, Heinsius, Adversaria, p. 644; locacio O; lotatio G; locutio most MSS. and Ellis.

131. I have suggested (Classical Review, 4. 312) to punctuate satis diu lusisti: nucibus lubet iam servire Talasio. 'You have wantoned long enough; now you must throw walnuts in service to the god of marriage.' With the ordinary stopping, which I