A New Text of Catullus

Abstract

IF contemporary fashions in literature permitted one to speak of the popularity of Latin authors, it would undoubtedly be correct to describe Catullus as being today the most popular poet of ancient Rome. No portion of any classical author is more widely read or more deeply appreciated by students at school or college and by their teachers than selected poems of Catullus. Indeed, in this year of 1958 he probably has more readers than ever before, and next year the number will be yet higher. Surprisingly enough, no classical writer survived the middle ages by a narrower margin, for we owe the poems to a single manuscript which was lost soon after its discovery. Moreover, the text bristles with corruptions from beginning to end; and no modern edition, however conservative, is likely to appear with less than five or six hundred conjectural emendations of the text. Consequently, the appearance of a new text of Catullus,' especially when it is as excellent as the new Oxford Classical Text edited by the Corpus Professor of Latin in the University of Oxford, calls for more than the usual brief review. It may be said at once that this text is superior to all others, and no teacher of Latin should be without it.