Corrigendum to TAPA 131 (2001) page 116 Alessandro Pardini, "A Homeric Formula in Catullus (c. 51.11-12 gemina teguntur lumina nocte )"

Some text and two notes were inadvertently dropped in the final production of Professor Pardini's article. The error has been corrected in the on-line version of the article in Project Muse (http://muse.jhu.edu). The editor regrets the error, and supplies the correct version here. The last page of the article, p. 116, should read as follows (the omitted material runs from "substitution" to "anomalous,"):

substitution of the model to translate in c. 51.11-12 undeniably comes somehow unexpected.³³

Such a surprise must have an adequate function. In my opinion, this is easier to be imagined if we accept that the otium-strophe belongs to the same poem as the first three stanzas. In this case, the Homeric reference points out that the poem, which up to this point seems like a translation, is indeed something else and prepares for the second section of the poem. On the contrary, if we consider lumina nocte as the "Schlußkolon"³⁴ of the whole poem, the Homeric reference would make it seem as an anomalous, eccentric translation and would serve simply as a device to shorten it: not impossible, but unattractive. All things considered, Homer makes it improbable, that the first three stanzas of c. 51 ever formed an independent poem.

This is a mere indication. Many other arguments should be considered; but this hoary question exceeds the limits of this paper. I hope to have shown how deeply a seemingly insignificant parallel improves the understanding of so famous a text, offering a stimulus to further research on it.

³³ Catullus' translation of Callimachus' Lock shows (for instance, lines 79-88) some noteworthy differences from the Greek model as we know it, which can go back to a contaminatio. However, other explanations are usually preferred: see Syndikus 2: 201.

³⁴ Bickel 196. It could be remembered that the old theory of the poem's end at line 12 still finds some supporters (Wormell 192; Copley 33-37), and also that the conciliative hypothesis contemplating the addition of the last stanza at a later stage (Friedrich 237) has been reappraised not many years ago (Quinn 1970: 245 and 1972: 59).

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