In close imitation of Virgil's pledge in Georgics 3, Nemesianus announces in the Cynegetica the future composition of a panegyric poem on the military exploits brought about by the current rulers, Carinus and Numerianus (lines 63–75). He promises to sing of the empire's outer boundaries and of the peoples subdued by the imperial brothers as illustrated by four landmark rivers:
Soon I will gird myself with a better lyre to record your triumphs, you most valiant sons of deified Carus, and will sing of our shores at both boundaries of the world, and of the peoples—subjugated by the divine power of brothers—that drink the Rhine and the Tigris and the distant source of the Arar and †drink† the source of the Nile at its origin;
While the allusion to a people by reference to a river is a common trope among Greek and Roman writers from Homer onwards, it is specifically Virgil and Horace that serve as Nemesianus’ literary models. The image of the vanquished peoples dwelling at remote corners of the empire and drinking from their respective local streams draws on Verg. Ecl. 1.62 aut Ararim Parthus bibet aut Germania Tigrim (cf. Aen. 7.715) and Hor. Carm. 4.14.45–8 te fontium qui celat origines | Nilusque et Hister, te rapidus Tigris, | te beluosus qui remotis | obstrepit Oceanus Britannis.Footnote 1 However, neither the Augustan poets nor any other author, for that matter, can account for the curious gemination of bibunt in the consecutive lines 67 and 68. Although the repetition in no way violates the metre, it is on stylistic grounds that the authenticity of the text has been questioned. Finding it ‘impossible to believe that Nem. could have repeated himself in this way’, H.J. Williams in her 1986 edition printed the second bibunt between daggers.Footnote 2 She is followed by R. Jakobi in his more recent edition who, having dismissed the various suggestions put forth to replace either the first or—more often—the second bibunt, concludes that the case remains unclear.Footnote 3 The emendations that have been suggested include uident or colunt (both Johnson), habitant (Heinsius), metunt (Stern), libant (Klein) and potant (Williams). What all these conjectural suggestions have in common is the repeated attempt to replace the spurious bibunt with another verb which seems to be supported by the presence of the coordinator -que in line 68 (to which I will return below). Yet an alternative verb in the third-person plural is by no means the only conceivable solution, if indeed an admissible emendation at all. With bibunt in line 67 fully satisfying the syntactical needs for a verb in the relative clause, an adjective in line 68 such as latentem (‘hidden’) that qualifies the source (fontem) of the Nile would appear to make for a better case, particularly considering the source's notorious obscurity. Even the elision of the final syllable of latentem in order to meet correct verse scansion perfectly concurs with Nemesianus’ prosodic and metrical practice.Footnote 4
Given that the obscurity of the Nile's origin is a common topos among Greek and Roman writers since Herodotus discussed the issue at 2.28–34, it is beyond question that a learned poet such as Nemesianus was familiar with this geographical mystery.Footnote 5 In fact, his knowledge of the matter is indirectly confirmed by his undisputed adaptation of Hor. Carm. 4.14.45–6, where it is stated that the Nile ‘conceals the origins of his sources’ (fontium qui celat origines). Besides, Nemesianus’ engagement with the opening lines of the first book of Lucan's Bellum Ciuile further buttresses the notion that he was aware of the issue. Having reworked Luc. 1.10–11 in Cyn. 73–4,Footnote 6 Nemesianus surely also read Luc. 1.20 (et gens si qua iacet nascenti conscia Nilo, ‘and any people dwelling on the Nile, privy to its inception’), a passage that implies the reader's close acquaintance with the matter at hand.Footnote 7 Assuming that Nemesianus read Lucan's epic in its entirety, he will even have come across the passage where Julius Caesar enquires about the Nile's causas per saecula tanta latentis | ignotumque caput (‘the causes, hidden for so many ages, and its unknown head’, 10.190–1), a phrase that may well have exerted influence on Nemesianus’ (assumed) wording of Cyn. 68.
Furthermore, a syntactical argument can be made for the adjective latentem as opposed to a verb. Not only is there no need for a second verb in lines 67–8, as noted above, but more importantly the arrangement of the connective coordinators (that is, the triple -que) strongly suggests the adoption of an adjective rather than a second verb. The first -que connects two direct objects, the Rhine and the Tigris (Rhenum Tigrimque). Similarly, the second -que (Ararisque … principium) and the third -que (Nilique … fontem) are attached to a river's name too, albeit in the genitive; the latter two -que seem to suggest a correlation with each other, when primarily they simply connect the third and the fourth direct objects (principium and fontem) with the earlier ones (Rhenum Tigrimque), all of which depend on bibunt, while at the same time leaving no coordinator left to connect bibunt with a hypothetical second verb in the following line.Footnote 8 While there is thus no exclusive correlation between the second and the third -que in a strictly grammatical sense, the two coordinators nevertheless highlight the obvious parallel between the two respective units. What is brought to the fore here is the analogy between principium and fontem, including the spatial distance of each ‘source’. While the Arar's source is merely described as remotum, the Nile's source is best understood to be so remote that its location is virtually unknown (latentem). As each of the three units pertaining to the four rivers increases in length, the mimetic effect of this reflects the increasing length of the rivers and, by extension, the vast extent of the Roman empire itself.Footnote 9 In other words, the overall sentence structure not only calls for the adjective latentem but also rules out a second verb altogether.
When more than a century later the historian Ammianus Marcellinus discussed the issue of the origin of the Nile at 22.15.4—something he interestingly called latentem notitiam (‘undisclosed knowledge’)—he was convinced that it would never be resolved.Footnote 10 Indeed, it was not until modern times that European explorers would eventually ‘discover’ the river's sources.Footnote 11 Should the proposed emendation of line 68 be correct, the long-concealed adjective of the Nile's source in Nemesianus may now be considered ‘discovered’ too.Footnote 12
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