I am grateful to Edward Courtney for observing that the stichometric correspondence between the Culex and Catullus 64 is close but not exact, since Culex 132–3 really echoes not 132–3 but 133–4. The conventional line-numbering of Catullus 64 conceals the half-line 23b, progenies saluete iter<um> …, which is invisibly missing from the manuscripts but was salvaged by Francesco Orioli from the Scholia Veronensia on Verg. Aen. 5.80 and is universally accepted.Footnote 1 Emendations vary, but all assume a haplographic error caused by an instance of the patterned repetition so typical of Catullus (which indeed is what the Culex author is imitating at 132-3).Footnote 2 Consequently, the perfide … perfide correspondence becomes a partial and not complete overlap, belonging together with many of Knauer's Virgilian examples in the category of ‘near misses’.Footnote 3
We cannot rule out the possibility that the Culex author's text of Catullus 64 already lacked the line preserved in the later commentary, as ours did. Although the Scholia Veronensia belong perhaps to the fifth century a.d., the quotations of Catullus by Pliny the Younger, Quintilian and Gellius already show errors.Footnote 4 The absence of 23b or any other preceding line would realign the Culex's stichometric correspondence. Of course, an extra line earlier on in the Culex would do the same, and indeed Duncan Kennedy postulated a missing verse between 94 and 95 over thirty years ago.Footnote 5 In that case, the correspondence ironically survived thanks to matching single-line lacunas.
