Catullus: A Critical Edition ed. by D.F.S. Thomson (review)

HUMANITIES 399 and deepens the portrayals of women given by Blais, Giguere, Maillet, Soucy, and Grignon. In a sense Qualre tl quatre synthetizes their separate experiences by a deliberate con-fusion of times, places, circumstances, and characters. Moreover, the four women of this play, who transcend the temporal and spatial boundaries of a particular culture, have now crossed the language frontier to join the larger company created by Laurence, Munro, Atwood, el al. Accompanying them are all the characters of the novels and plays translated into English this year. Indeed, it is precisely this kind of increased accessibility and larger domain that is promised by the act of literary translation - the invaluable and, happily, very busy cultural bridge between our two solitudes. Humanities D.F.S. Thomson, editor. Catullus: A Critical Edition University of North Carolina Press 1978. xvi, 206. $16.00 If Mynors's edition of Catullus is libellus arida expolilus pumice, Thomson 's is lepidiornouus liber. Beautifully set in Mergenthaler VIP Palatino, it contains preface (8 pp), introduction (41 pp), table of MSS (146 in all, with a separate note on each), list of works cited (including Max Bonnet's review of Baehrens's edition but not Housman's of Ellis's Oxford Text), stemma codicum, sigla (Virtually as Mynors, though without X and with minor differences in classes' to 8, and, among the ediliones, with Avantius 's second Aldine replacing A. Guarinus), text proper with lestimonia and critical apparatus (pp 73-195), index of first lines, and index of names. The introduction discusses the earliest MSS, 'the problem of X,: the Marcianus (written, as Albinia de la Mare and Thomson have argued, by Poggio), R's descendants, Lachmann's Datanus (vindicating Mynors against Bardon), and 'Ghost MSS'; it appends a comparative table of the classification of later MSS by Mynors, Hale, Zicari, and Thomson. The leslimonia add to Mynors a number of later references, several to Hieremias de Montagnone, Pastrengicus, and Petrarch, and one to Rather. The apparatus is much fuller than Mynors, recording 0 GRand m extensively, citing variations in spelling and word division when interesting or indicative of MS affiliation, and quoting more conjectures. The index of names includes two not in the text: Syme's Vibia, quoted in the apparatus at 61.16, and Vinia, which does not appear there, though G2'S JUllia does. This is clearly an important edition. Its special value lies in the introduction , which will also be of interest to those concerned with the revival of learning in Italy, and in the apparatus, from which the layman can learn about the habits of scribes and the expert trace affiliations of MSS. The various hands in the earliest MSS have never before been distinguished in such detail, so the early stages in the process of conjectural emendation can be clearly followed. Of course there are slips. At 31.5 and 64.387 V's reading is omitted. Readings are sometimes given in the wrong order; at 2b.3ligatam is read but V's negatam cited first. It is sometimes not clear that the reported reading is an expanded abbreviation; at 1.5 it would help to know that 0 reads Iii and G lam (d 64.249). Again, why print V's aureis at 46.3 but not Caluas at 53.3 nor karum at 2.67 The newly published Gallus fragment suggests that this last was what Catullus wrote (so carr. in the apparatus must here be interpreted carrupil) . There is no space here to do justice to the Latin text offered. Suffice it to say that it is a good deal less conservative than Mynors's. Obeli are used at 67.12 only. At 54.2 Thomson reads el mi Rustice and at 55.9 audile en, but that these simplicities could produce respectively el eri rustice and auelte is hard to believe; for the second I prefer Camps's a cetle hue. It is remarkable that Thomson admires Ellis as a textual critic, referring on P4 to his 'magnificent edition of the text' and to his 'unusual ability to generate attractive emendations.' So I cannot resist pointing out that his learned guide has caused him to misspell...