This collection of ten essays by members of the Dipartimento di Filologia Classica e Medievale dell’ Università degli Studi di Parma are linked, as the title suggests, by the text of Catullus – its history, transmission and reception. There are three essays that focus on Catullus directly while the rest consider the various ways in which the language and text of Catullus seem to be reflected in writers ranging from Seneca to the present century.

A. Agnesini, ‘Una rilettura di Catull. 1.8s.: lo snodo tra dedica a Nepote e invocazione alla Musa’, provides a careful review of the transmitted text of 1.8–10 and makes a powerful and attractive case for reading (p. 20):Footnote ¹

His proposed punctuation clarifies and sharpens the relationship between line 8 and the opening of the poem: cui dono ~ Corneli tibi ~ habe tibi; libellum ~ libelli; namque ~ quare. Quidem signals the change of addressee and allows him to make a distinction between quidquid (whatever the book is objectively) and qualecumque (whatever its qualities may be as inferred from its suitability as a gift for Nepos). In discussing the relationship with Nepos, he rightly discounts irony and stresses that the characteristics of his own works make Nepos a suitable recipient for the libellus. But more might be made of the fact that Nepos was not a writer of traditional annalistic history. Although the work in focus is the Chronica,Footnote ² it is worth noting that the preface to his later Lives of Foreign Generals begins non dubito fore plerosque, Attice, qui hoc genus scripturae leue et non satis dignum summorum uirorum personis iudicent. Catullus reciprocates Nepos’ appreciation of poems which, he implies, most thought of as nugae in his praise of the qualities of Nepos’ work which may have been similarly underrated. Having meticulously re-examined the manuscript tradition in respect of both quidem and quod <o > , Agnesini finds the latter to be rightly considered a humanist conjecture but sees quidem (the reading of the editio princeps 1472 and several manuscripts from 1459–71) as more likely to be a correct expansion of an abbreviation transmitted independently (pp. 6–7; 18). With the strong pause at the end of line 8, the final lines turn to request of the patrona Virgo immortality in recognition of their true quality, an immortality that only a divinity can confer.

B., ‘Catull. 44.21: passo destinato alla crux o al supplizio di Sisifo?’, takes a fresh look at another well-known poem. He starts from Thompson's text. While noting (p. 24 n. 5) that legi is found for V's legit at 44.21 in a late fifteenth-century manuscript (Thomson 43; not reported by Bardon), B. treats it (with most editors) as Lachmann's emendation and argues, against both legi and Baehrens's fecit (pp. 28–9; 32–3), not for a reinstatement of V's lĭbrum lēgit but rather for Avantius’ lěgit lībrum. He notes that Avantius claimed manuscript authority for this reading as early as 1493 (p. 37; for the implication, see p. 40). The nub of his argument is that Catullus caught his cold from reading Sestius’ speech and for the apotropaic request of lines 18–21 to work the ‘cold’ must be transmitted to Sestius by a strictly analogous process (pp. 28–32). While B. emphasises that legit is (almost) unanimously transmitted by the manuscripts, he accepts that lēgit creates an impossible hysteron-proteron (p. 29) and that V's text cannot stand. Avantius’ inversion removes the problematic perfect and restores the normal prosody of lībrum (pp. 38–40 confirming TLL 7.2.1271. 27).

The remaining essays must be reviewed more briefly. A. Minarini, ‘Il carme 45 di Catullo fra Terenzio e Orazio’, helpfully explores the lexical and syntactical affinities of this poem to the palliata (and especially Terence) which, she argues, support a reading of the poem as a realistic representation of the way lovers talk in the tradition of mime. G. Allegri, ‘Echi catulliani nella Lettera 75 di Seneca’, argues, against the majority view, in favour of seeing Seneca engage, deliberately and seriously, with specifically Catullan language and views as he seeks to explore the different types of love that exist between a man and his amica, and a father and son, or a teacher and pupil; and sees a deliberate contrast between concordet sermo cum uita (Epist. 75.4) and Catullus 16.4–5 (castum esse decet … poetam / … uersiculos nihil necesse est). G. Maggiali, ‘La presenza di Catullo nelle Siluae di Stazio’, surveys the allusions to Catullus in the Silvae and notes that, with a few familiar exceptions (poems 2, 3 and 14), they are mostly to the long poems (and especially the epithalamic 61, 62 and 64) and relatively insignificant. G. Rota, ‘Catullo in Ben Sira’, provides a detailed discussion of the relationship between the phrase mulier multiuola (Catullus 68B.128) and its later appearance at Eccl. 9.3: ne respicias mulierem multivolam, ne forte incidas in laqueos illius, where it translates the Greek of the LXX γυναικὶ ἑταιριζομένῃ. Rota, like Fordyce, understands multiuola to be = multos uolens but, unlike Fordyce, who thought the most likely explanation was that ‘the word may have belonged to the common language’, argues that the Catullan phrase has taken its colour from Catullus’ accounts of Lesbia's promiscuity and has been adopted by the translator for its nuance. S. Gibertini, ‘Una noterella su Catullo, Petrarca e Gautier de Châtillon’, examines the possible use of Catullus 68B.57 in aerii … uertice montis by Gautier at Alexandreis 7.157: aerii de uertice montis and in Petrarch, Africa 7.264–5: tum uertice montis / aerii. That Petrarch knew Catullus is established; how Gautier may have known him is less clear (p. 116). Gibertini argues, however, that Petrarch imitates Catullus in a way designed to make clear the superiority of his new way of understanding and creating literature and so of his own superiority to Gautier. S. Voce, ‘Aspetti della fortuna di Catullo nella poesia tra il Quattrocento e il Cinquecento: Giovanni Cotta (XV ad sodales)’, provides an analysis of a poem by Giovanni Cotta (1480 or 1482–1510), a student of Pontano. She demonstrates the internalisation by Cotta of typically Catullan themes and motifs, detailed characteristics of his style and lexicon and modes of composition. O. Portuese, ‘Catull. 67.34 Veronae … tuae: storia, furta, fortuna di una congettura umanistica’, argues that the emendation tuae was made, probably (p. 142), by Francesco Pucci no later than 1502; and subsequently adopted by Avantius in the ed. Trinc. (c. 1535) and by Scaliger in 1577. Portuese also sees an allusion to this emendation of 67.34 (i.e. Brixia Veronae mater amata tuae) in a poem of Nicolò d'Arco (1544, possibly earlier [p. 152]): Numeri 78.28: Garda et Veronae Turris amata tuae, and argues that he knew of it, probably, from the ed. Trinc. (pp. 156–60). M. Bonvicini, ‘Catullo alle soglie del terzo millennio: i racconti brevi’, rounds off the volume with a lively account of a number of Italian short stories which reflect in a variety of ways the continuing fascination of the modern world with Catullus.