As the narrator of the Ciris prepares to describe Cupid's attack on Scylla, daughter of Nisus, he offers a concise aretalogy of this powerful god (133–9):

The first two lines of the parenthesis in 135–7 are certainly not without problems,Footnote ¹ but their general meaning, whether in the transmitted form (as printed) or variously emended, is clear: Cupid can even tame lions and tigers. The third line (137) is more difficult to make sense of, as it is far from obvious what verb is suppressed by the aposiopesis after homines. The most banal solution is to interpret both diuos and homines as direct objects of this suppressed verb, assuming that it refers to Cupid exercising power over gods and men.Footnote ² As Lyne justly objects, ‘the progression diuos, homines is undeniably anticlimactic’.Footnote ³ A more elaborate approach is to take diuos as a direct object with docuit and to supply an infinitive, for example amare, which would have as its direct object homines.Footnote ⁴ Although not entirely impossible, this seems too forced a construal; perhaps the most tangible objection may be that a second ille should rather require a second finite verb (and just one verb rather than a construction such as docuit amare, if it is to be easily guessed). Heinsius' omnes for homines therefore comes as a welcome solution: ‘omnes removes the anticlimax; the ellipse is now easy to make up: whereas Venus and Jupiter were not able flectere Cupid, omnes deos flectere potuit uel flexerat Cupido’.Footnote ⁵

Heinsius' conjecture, however, does not take into account the fact that here the Ciris is apparently alluding to Catullus (68.137–42):Footnote ⁶

The Catullan passage is no doubt an interpretative problem in its own right,Footnote ⁷ which this is not the place to discuss; but thematic points of contact with the Ciris are obvious enough, even if not very specific. Only a few lines earlier Catullus was actually mentioning Cupid (68.133–4: quam circumcursans hinc illinc saepe Cupido | fulgebat crocina candidus in tunica). Here he speaks of Juno's anger (68.138–9: Iuno, maxima caelicolum, | coniugis in culpa flagrantem concoquit iram), which is precisely the driving force of the narrative in the Ciris (138–9: idem tum tristis acuebat paruulus iras | Iunonis magnae). And 68.141, nec diuis homines componier aequum est (‘it is not right that men should be compared with gods’),Footnote ⁸ is apparently echoed in Ciris 137: ille etiam diuos homines – sed dicere magnum est.Footnote ⁹ While securing homines from intervention, the Catullan parallel also appears to locate the textual corruption in diuos and suggest an obvious course of emendation, changing diuos into diuis.

How does this affect our understanding of the text? Let me begin with what has not so far attracted our attention, the seemingly unproblematic phrase sed dicere magnum est. Lyne takes it to mean ‘but it is <too> big, too long a tale, to recount it all’ or, slightly modified, ‘that's (too) momentous a topic to embark on’.Footnote ¹⁰ Lyne was neither the first nor the last to understand dicere magnum est in that way,Footnote ¹¹ but such an interpretation is arguably mistaken; I suggest that a more natural reading is to take magnum in its idiomatic sense, as roughly equivalent to Catullus' nec … aequum: ‘but it is arrogant to say’.Footnote ¹² If this is right, the narrator will have a different reason for his reticence, and accordingly we should look for a different way to fill in the omission. Whether or not the reader is expected to recognize the allusion and supply componit from Catullus, the combination of the dative diuis and the accusative homines is made intelligible enough by the sheer semantic force of the cases: Cupid makes men (homines) in some way related to gods (diuis). What sort of relation does Cupid effect between men and gods, of which it is not safe to speak? It might be conceivable that what is implied is Cupid's bringing about amorous unions of men with gods, although it is certainly doubtful whether mentioning this well-known fact can be considered an act of arrogance. I propose a different interpretation, namely that we should take the suppressed verb to refer to Cupid's effecting a conceptual, rather than physical, affinity of men to gods. In other words, what Cupid does is to assimilate men to gods,Footnote ¹³ which apparently can be taken to allude to the idea that sex makes men godlike.Footnote ¹⁴ This is an arrogant thing to say.