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Two notes on [Vergil] Catalepton 2*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
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The difficulty of this little poem is shown by the facts that Ausonius had no idea what it was about, and that Westendorp Boerma's commentary takes 22 pages to explicate its five lines. The latter relies on Quintilian 8.3.27ff., who quotes the poem, saying that Vergil wrote it to attack a certain Cimber for his taste in obsolete words. This is no doubt the Annius Cimber whom Augustus ridiculed when reprimanding Mark Antony for a similar foible (Suet. Aug. 86) and who, as an antiquarius is contrasted with the Asiatici oratores. For convenience, I have kept Westendorp Boerma's text, but I take issue with his interpretation on two points.
4 tau Gallicum: since Bücheler tentatively suggested it in RhM 38 (1883), 508, the standard explanation of this has been to point out that a number of Latin inscriptions in Gaul use a Greek θ or else a barred D (Ð), to represent what appears to have been a dental fricative elsewhere indicated in Latin by -sd- or -st-. Thus Frank, AJP 56 (1935), 255, quotes (T)HYÐRITANVS (CIL xii 686) for what is elsewhere spelled Thysdritanus, and says that ‘Ð clearly represents the best that one Celt could do with sd’. On the basis of this supposed Gallic incompetence, Frank went on to see the repeated -st- sounds in the poem as some sort of joke on the orator's inability to pronounce this sound. His view seems to have been generally accepted.
There seems to me a profound error in this viewpoint which shows cultural imperialism at its worst. First, let us note that none of the examples of alleged substitution are in Latin words; they are native names for people or places or things. The Latin names by which we know some of them are only the approximation of foreigners, and not in any sense the ‘correct’ names of those people or places.
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References
1 Grammaticomast. 5ff. (= Peiper p. 167); if he was not misquoting from memory (legens can hardly be taken as literally as Westendorp Boerma thinks it must), Ausonius had a different text before him, for he wonders what al Celtarum, tau, sit and min signify. The first of these does not appear in the alternative version of Ausonius' poem (see Westendorp Boerma 21f.).
2 Assen, 1949.
3 On this see now Evans, D. Ellis, Gaulish Personal Names (Oxford, 1967), 410–19Google Scholar.
4 Most significantly by Westendorp Boerma and by Richmond, in the OCT of 1966Google Scholar.
5 See Pedersen, H., Vergl. Grammatik. Kelt. Sprach. (Göttingen, 1909), i.78, 532Google Scholar, but for possible exceptions Evans 399.
6 Leumann, , Lat. Gramm. i.130–2Google Scholar; more concisely in Allen, , Vox Latina 26–7Google Scholar.
7 As indeed did other foreigners — cf. the Thracian in Aristophanes, ' Thesm. 1001ffGoogle Scholar.
8 Leumann 130f.
9 Allen, , Vox Graeca 22Google Scholar
10 Further ancient discussion cited in Sturtevant, , The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin (Philadelphia, 1940), 158–60Google Scholar, Allen, , V.L. 26Google Scholar.
11 V.L. 27.
12 Pedersen i.132–40.
13 Ib. 533.
14 Evans 407f.
15 Allen, , V.G. 12Google Scholar.
16 Evans 407f.
17 Cf. Allen, , V.G. 16–20Google Scholar, Schwyzer, , Gr. Gram. i.204fGoogle Scholar.
18 Allen, , V.G. 20–4Google Scholar, Schwyzer i.205–7.
19 Schwyzer i.159.
20 37; but he is wrong in denying σɸι(ν) to the tragedians: cf. A., Pers. 759Google Scholar, S., O.C. 444Google Scholar, E., Med. 399Google Scholar etc.
21 By e.g. Fairclough, , TAPA 47 (1916), 48ff.Google Scholar, and Reitzenstein, , RhM 79 (1930), 81fGoogle Scholar.
22 TLL I A 2 b.
23 Eupolis 244 refers to a ơκ⋯μμ’ ⋯σελγ⋯ς κα⋯ Μεγαρικòν κα⋯ σɸόδρα / ψυχρόν, almost a literary-critical usage, and this may predate the Acharnians (see Edmonds ad loc.).
24 Of course, this disapproval will often be directed against types of error, and hence something precise may be conveyed by occurrences in one particular critic; but the wide divergence even amongst the more methodical critics should warn us against seeking any common factor. A full history of the term in Latin and Greek has yet to be written; any such account would have to consider not only the quasi-technical senses in which it is used by some critics, but also the loose way in which others use it. (The scholarly mind, abhorring chaos, has shied away from the latter.) By far the most thorough discussion so far is by Gutzwiller, K., ‘ψυχρός und ⋯γκος,’ Diss. Basel, 1961 (publ. 1969)Google Scholar, whose analysis of Aristotle, however, seems to me badly flawed. Gutzwiller argues that Aristotle regards all offences against τò πρεπόν as ψυχρ⋯, whereas in fact he is far more specific and polemical than this, for only ‘poetic’ prose is regarded as ψυχρόν. Van Hook, 's ‘ψυχρότης ἢ τò ψυχρόν’, CP 12 (1917), 68–76Google Scholar is quite uncritical in its acceptance of Aristotle's use of the term as the only valid one. In some ways the best assessment is in Ernesti's old Lexica s.v. ψυχρός in the Lex. Technol. Graec. Rhet. (1795) and frigidus in the Lex. Technol. Lat. Rhet. (1797).
25 Wine was linked with artistic creativity from an early period; see Archilochus 120.2 W, Epicharmus 132 K, Cratinus 203 KA. The contrast between ‘water drinking’ and ‘wine drinking’ poets appears in later criticism as well (see Gow, and Page, , The Garland of Philip [Cambridge, 1968], ii.17, 39Google Scholar).
26 See Aristophanes fr. 346 KA with notes; in this fragment Aristophanes says that he has been forced to drink water, which Gelzer, , RE sup. 12.1415fGoogle Scholar, has interpreted as meaning that he was unable (for political reasons) to make certain jokes. There may also be a reference to literary disability in the ἠπ⋯αλος with which he is afflicted.
27 Ed. Abbott, Oldfather and Canter (Urbana, 1964).
28 Winterbottom's text; the most important MS at this point (Bernensis 351) reads Attici.
29 Of the many examples that Jocelyn 79–108 collects, none can be confidently assigned to a time before the birth of Christ. The claim that Neanthes of Cyzicus used the word rests only on a title in Eudocia 712 (FGrH 84 T.1b). Even if this text is not a worthless sixteenth-century forgery (and the best that Jocelyn can say is that the case for this ‘is not watertight’ (79)), it only proves that such a title was used for the work in the eleventh century, and we know that few titles of ancient books can be regarded as authentic. Again, Jocelyn 81 admits that the description of an orator as κακόζηλος in Diogenes Laertius 1.38 may not come from Demetrius of Magnesia, on whom Diogenes is relying. Finally, it is worth noting that, pace Jocelyn ib., the word cannot even be surely attributed to Augustus; Suetonius, , Aug. 86Google Scholarcacozelos…sprevit is not a quotation.
30 Although the terms are distinguished in the stilted classifications of Demetrius, , de eloc. 186Google Scholar, ‘Longinus’ (surely closer to the type of criticism to be expected at a reading) virtually treats them as synonyms in 3, 4.
31 A word on terminology here: we would call this a ‘chiasmus', but the ancients would not. According to TLL, the word occurs only twice in Latin, in neither case in a literary context. LSJ tells us that it is a late arrival in Greek; not until Hermogenes in the second century a.d. is it used of literature, and even then it is applied to whole clauses in relation to other clauses, not to individual words. I mention this so that we can recognize the way this figure would have been classified by ancient critics.