Catullus 61.109–13 (again)

Extract

quae tuo ueniunt ero,
quanta gaudia, quae uaga 110
nocte, quae medio die
gaudeat! sed abit dies:
prodeas noua nupta.

In these lines, addressed by the poet to the wedding-couch of Junia and Manlius, a difficulty presents itself: uaga nocte does not cohere with medio die, since the epithets characterizing this polar pair of nouns belong to different categories. This was pointed out by R. G. M. Nisbet (PCPS n.s. 24 (1978)99) who saw medio die as the culprit on three grounds: (i) the incoherence of the pair of epithets, (ii) the inappropriateness of a reference to ‘sex in the afternoon’ in an epithalamium and (iii) the pointless repetition of dies in 112 after die in 111. As a solution he suggested emerito for medio, ‘when the day has done its service’, repeating the essential sense of uaga nocte (another reference to night rather than a change to day) but with a contrasting nuance of epithet: uaga would suggest the vagabond flightiness of night, emerito the solid service of the sun during the day. In a reply to Nisbet (PCPS 25 (1979) 69-70), Roland Mayer answered (i) by asserting the principle of an ‘illogical doublet’ (the incoherence between epithets is real but acceptable), regarded (ii) as mistaken and did not deal with (iii). More, I think, remains to be said, and elements of both these views may contribute to a different solution.