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The Text of Pervigilium Veneris 74

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

P. S. Davies
P. S. Davies
Affiliation:
Bolton
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Extract

The extant MSS. of the Pervigilium Veneris, which all derive from a single archetype, are unanimous in their reading at line 74. Yet, as is widely agreed, this reading cannot be correct. The poet is describing the descendants of Venus

Information

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , December 1992, pp. 575 - 577
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1992

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References

1 The tradition of the MSS. is discussed by Catlow, L. in his edition of the poem: Pervigilium Veneris: Collection Latomus 172 (Brussels, 1980), pp. 7–17.Google Scholar

2 I cite here the text and the translation of Catlow, op. cit.

3 Catlow, op. cit., p. 90.

4 See articles in, for example, Souter, A., Glossary of Later Latin (Oxford, 1949)Google Scholar; Blatt, F., Novum Glossarium Mediae Latinitatis (Hafnia, 1959)Google Scholar; Niermeyer, J. F., Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden, 1976)Google Scholar. The meaning ‘nephew’ seems to have become increasingly important; observe, however, that the Italian nipote retains the meaning ‘grandson’ as well as ‘nephew’, whereas the French neveu and the English nephew do not. I suspect that there was a nuance of the connotation ‘a person to whom I behave indulgently’ within the meaning ‘grandson’ from the outset, and that that was how nepos came to be used for other blood-relatives to whom one behaves indulgently, as well as for grandsons.

5 Jerome, Ep. 14.2; 60.9.

6 CIL 3.3684; 3.4321; 3.6480.

7 Eutrop. 7.1.

8 The Latin Dictionary of Lewis and Short wrongly lists Suet., Div. Iul. 83, as an instance of the meaning ‘nephew’. Nepos in fact means ‘grandson’ in this passage, because the phrase is sororum nepotes, ‘the grandsons of his sisters’. (The reference is to the three grandsons of Caesar's sisters.)

9 Catlow, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 18–21.

10 Suet. Div. Iul. 6.

11 Ennius, Ann. 53.

12 Lucr. 1.1.

13 Cic. Verr. 5.36; Lucr. 5.739.

14 Cic. Font. 47; Vir. Geo. 1.498. That Cicero does not coin the phrase Venus mater could be due to his antipathy to Caesar.

15 Conceivably nepotem is intended to carry a hint of a double meaning: Augustus Caesar is the nepos (grand-nephew) of Julius Caesar, but he is also the nepos (distant descendant) of Venus, the subject of the sentence – cf. the use of nepos in this sense at the start of this section of the poem (Pervigilium 69).

16 Catlow, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 89, points out that the complete lack of enjambement in the Pervigilium is an argument against those proposed emendations which involve it.