Modern editors of Catullus all agree on the text of line 53.Footnote 3 The manuscripts also agree on the line, the only difference being R transmitting mutantibus, while O and G transmit nutantibus.Footnote 4 Nevertheless, a few scholars have in the past questioned the reading of nutantibus. As the lines quoted above illustrate, Catullus generally translates Callimachus’ poem closely.Footnote 5 But neither of the words suggested in the manuscripts seems wholly to describe the rapid and vigorous movement of Callimachus’ κυκλώσας βαλιὰ πτερά, ‘having whirled its swift wings’. The reading of nutantibus is somewhat supported by Apuleius’ pinnarum nutantium (Met. 6.15.5). But there too the nodding, swaying and wavering sense of nutare does not seem to illustrate the hurried and rapid action of Jupiter's eagle.Footnote 6 Additionally, the wording of the passage is sufficiently disputed to make it possible that nutantium is not the correct reading.Footnote 7
Hitherto, scholars questioning the paradosis in Catullus have primarily taken the reading of OGR2 as the basis of their attempts to emend the word. The sixteenth-century philologist and poet Marcus Antonius Muretus, who did not have access to the line in Callimachus’ poem,Footnote 8 interpreted Memnonis Aethiopis | unigena (66.53–4) as Aurora and suggested the reading natantibus in connection with Aurora's rising.Footnote 9 It is now agreed that the indirect agent of the participle is Zephyrus, the Western Wind, whereby Muretus's conjecture seems to lose its sense.Footnote 10 In 1697 Richard Bentley, who did not know the line by Callimachus either, suggested the conjecture nictantibus, and offered as parallels Lucretius’ hic ubi nictari nequeunt insistereque alis (6.836), a line later corrected to nixari which is now the accepted reading,Footnote 11 and Virgil's hic primum paribus nitens Cyllenius alis (Aen. 4.252).Footnote 12 nictantibus was conjectured anew, with due acknowledgement of Bentley's conjecture and with the sense of ‘flashing’, by J.R.C. Martyn,Footnote 13 who offered a further parallel in Lucretius’ semina quae faciunt nictantia fulgura flammae (6.182).Footnote 14
I think that Bentley and Martyn are right in seeking an intransitive participle. But I am not convinced by their parallels. In Verg. Aen. 4.252 nitens illustrates that Hermes is borne on his wings, and does not describe any flashing quality nor a swiftness of movement; and in Lucr. 6.182 nictantia is not used to describe the wind but the flashes of flame, that is the lightning, which the wind squeezes out of the cloud. I suggest that, in emending the word, we look closer at R's mutantibus rather than at OGR2’s nutantibus, and at the indirect agent of the participle, Zephyrus.
In 1521 Alexander Guarinus put nutantibus in his text, but mentioned motantibus as an alternative in his commentary.Footnote 15 I agree with Guarinus that motantibus is a very attractive reading. R's mutantibus could easily be a corrupted form of motantibus, produced by a scribe through an act of normalization. Although motare is very rare,Footnote 16 Virgil, who echoes Catullus 66 in the Aeneid Footnote 17 as well as Catullus 62 and 64 in Eclogues 4 and 6,Footnote 18 uses the word in the same form and with Zephyrus as its agent in Ecl. 5.4–6:
In order for the parallel to be effective, Virgil ought to use motantibus in an intransitive sense, as Catullus almost certainly does in 66.53. Traditionally, commentators on the passage have read the word as transitive in sense.Footnote 19 But I think that there are persuasive arguments in favour of Virgil using motantibus intransitively.Footnote 20 First, although OLD does not give an intransitive sense of moto,Footnote 21 Lewis and Short seem to suggest that Virgil uses motantibus intransitively in Ecl. 5.5,Footnote 22 and TLL states that Virgil uses motantibus in a mediopassive sense.Footnote 23 Further, both OLD and Lewis and Short give intransitive meanings of moueo.Footnote 24 When moueo can be used intransitively, there should be a strong possibility that moto, derived as a frequentative verb from moueo, could be used in that sense as well. Second, the preposition sub must certainly go with incertas umbras. Thus, the western winds do not rapidly and continuously move the uncertain shades. Mopsus suggests that the two of them go beneath the shades, which are uncertain because the western winds rapidly and continuously move about.Footnote 25
I suggest that motantibus … pennis describes the rapid, vigorous movement of Zephyrus, as he rushes down to snatch the lock of hair. This reading is in accordance with Callimachus’ κυκλώσας βαλιὰ πτερά, it is easily corrupted in the manuscripts into the much more common mutantibus and nutantibus, it finds support in Virgil's Zephyris motantibus and it derives further probability from the Catullan echoes in Eclogues 4 and 6. I therefore suggest that Catullus wrote:
