Catullus 96

Manuscripts O, G, and R (C14)—there is no visual distinction between the lines of this poem and those immediately before and after

1472 editio princeps—paratextual features of this incunable include the heading^[5] ("On Aemilius", the name appearing at the bottom right in what is now line 2 of poem 97) and the guide letter ſ for rubrication

The following Latin text is taken from the 1958 Oxford Classical Text, edited by R. A. B. Mynors.^[6] The translation is by John Nott, his 1795 versions being the first unabridged translation of Catullus into English.^{[7][8][note 2]}

The metre is that of elegiac couplets, lines of dactylic hexameter alternating with those of dactylic pentameter.^[9]: xxxiv

Fictive literary epitaphs and their poetic form may be approached from the context of surviving epigraphic examples.^[10] In the case of Catullus 96, an epicedium [it] or elegy by Calvus on the early death of Quintilia, referred to by Propertius,^{[note 3]} and perhaps emulating that of Parthenius for his wife Arete,^{[11]: 257–8} is likely represented by two surviving poetic fragments.^{[3][12]: 178–9} These are preserved in the form of quotations from Calvus by Charisius in discussion of the gender of cinis, "ash", with Nonius also citing the first though with manuscript variants in the person of the verb:^{[3][13][14][15][note 4]}

As Propertius has the dead Cynthia reproach him for his forgetfulness,^{[note 5]} these fragments may be related to Calvus' furta or stolen loves, his affairs with other women,^[16]: 482 told of by Ovid in his Tristia.^{[4][17]: 31 [note 6]} In the first fragment in that case we have Quintilia chastising Calvus for his infidelities, 'you'll be sorry when I'm dead and gone', his repentance and regret then providing some comfort in the second.^[4][18]

Of the two figures named in the poem, the poet and orator Gaius Licinius Macer Calvus, who hailed from the ancient Roman Licinian gens, was a friend of Catullus, himself of provincial origins, and as such appears also in Catullus 14 [ru], 50 [it], and 53 [ru].^{[19]: 188 [20]: 31} Quintilia's is a noble name, that of a female member of the patrician gens Quinctilia, though a freedwoman could also have such a name, as was the case with Mark Antony's mistress Volumnia; neoteric poets may have often used a Greek pseudonym for their well-born mistress, as with Catullus' Lesbia (perhaps Clodia),^[21] but this practice was not universal.^{[22]: 297–8 [23]: 95–6} Part of her role in the poem may be to contrast with Lesbia.^[24]: 83 While it may be gleaned from Diomedes that Calvus was married, whether Quintilia was his wife or his mistress is unknown.^{[3]: 69 [25]}

The poem takes the form of a single periodic sentence,^[22][26] "one intense compassionate breath".^[21] Since this is a conditional (if...then..., a hypothetical antecedent (or protasis) followed by the consequent (or apodosis)),^[22]: 300 Catullus leaves it unclear—and ultimately up to the reader to decide—whether any contact with and consolation of Quintilia is achieved.^[27]: 285 Comprising three couplets,^[22]: 300 a "rhetorical syllogism based on uncertain premises",^[28]: 141 it opens with a "protasis of minimal hypothesis", closing with an "apodosis that affirms certainty".^{[29]: 51–2} The parenthetical central couplet expands upon the nature of the sorrow,^[19]: 188 Catullus' own involvement marked by a shift from the singular to the plural,^[29]: 63 which may also be a generalizing plural of universal experience,^{[22]: 301 [30]: 27} before the focus narrows to the particulars of Calvus and Quintilia.^[28]: 143

While the theme of an untimely death, as ordained by fate or fortune before the limits set by nature,^[8] was a concern of classical authors from Homer and Plato to Virgil and Tertullian,^[31] the final couplet, grief at one's own death transcended by joy derived from the love of the living, seemingly has no prior parallel.^[29]: 61 The more conventional doubts in the opening couplet, as to the survival of the soul and the possibility of communion with the dead, culminate in Catullus' poem on the death of his brother in nequiquam, "in vain"; in a poem that purports to console a friend, he cannot be so pessimistic.^{[27]: 285 [29]: 51, 66–7} In the central couplet, Eduard Fraenkel makes the case that the missas affections are not so much a "lost love" as one that has been actively abandoned;^{[4][32]: 158–60} the ueteres amores that are renewed, while not inconceivably deep-seated, long-lasting feelings since way back,^{[23]: 97 [33]: 76} may more naturally refer to a former relationship that is over.^[13]: 209 They may alternatively or also refer to the mythological loves to which poets give new life in their retelling, such as that of Ariadne in Catullus 64 and Laodamia in Catullus 68, and perhaps as adduced by Calvus in his poem:^{[30]: 28 [34]: 91} Propertius' epithet for Calvus, doctus or "learned", could well apply to one schooled in the mythological literature.^{[30]: 28 [note 7]} Catullus' poem may well be better understood as a literary-critical response to a fellow poet's verse than from a biographical perspective;^{[19]: 189 [30]: 31} Quintilia may have died some time before, and compositions by other members of the neoteric literary circle would similarly give rise to Catullus 95 [it] (on Cinna's Zmyrna) and 35 [ru] (on Caecilius' Magna Mater).^[29]: 49

There are thematic and linguistic parallels with Catullus' elegy for Quintilia in Horace Odes I. 24, an epicedium and consolatio, with Virgil the addressee, on the death of a Quintilius [it].^{[35]: 124–6 [36][note 8]} The language used to describe Misenus' funeral in Virgil's Aeneid similarly has close parallels with that of Catullus' lament for his brother and echoes also the elegy for Quintilia.^{[37][note 9]} In Ovid's lament for Tibullus in the Amores, Catullus and Calvus are imagined as together meeting the dead poet in Elysium, their poetic responses to death in the case of Quintilia making them a "grimly appropriate" pairing.^{[38][39][note 10]}

In a poem supposedly sent by Bohuslaus Lobkowitz von Hassenstein to Bernhard Adelmann von Adelmannsfelden [de] On False Literary Glory, Quintilia appears alongside Paelignian Corinna and Cynthia, from the pages of Calvus-Catullus, Ovid, and Propertius respectively.^{[40]: 206, 210} Tracing the reception of Catullus in Britain, scholar of English J. A. S. McPeek [Wikidata] sees in Shakespeare's Sonnet 30 "not imitation" but "perfect assimilation" of the "chiselled perfection" of the Elegy on Quintilia,^[41][42] George Lamb having observed before him similarities between the two in "idea and expression".^[43] Dining together on one occasion, Tennyson quoted the poem to Thackeray as an exemplar of the "perfection in form" and "tenderness" of Catullus,^[44] to whom he would return in his Frater Ave atque Vale.^[45][46][47] In a draft Canto, Ezra Pound included Quintilia alongside Cornelius Gallus' Lycoris;^{[48]: 33 [note 11]} she may be found instead, alongside Gallus' Lycoris, Varro's Leucadia, and Propertius' Cynthia, in his 1917 Homage to Sextus Propertius, which closes with its "claim to posterity" and "the undying value of love transformed into song":^[49]: 1042

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