mne_misce_1781/112-135 3/5/2005 5:04 Page 124

124 MISCELLANEA

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Argentieri, L. 1988. Epigramma e libro, ZPE 121, 1-20.
Asmis, E. 1995. Epicurean Poetics, in: Obbink, D. (ed.) Philodemus and Poetry (Oxford/
New York), 15-34.
Cameron, A. 1993. The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes (Oxford).
Cavallini, E. 1980-2. Note all’Antologia Palatina, Museum Criticum 15, 161-5.
Falivene, M. 1981. La condice di dikè nella poesia alessandrina, QUCC 37, 87-95.
––––. 1983. Per l’interpretazione di AP 10,21 (Filodemo), QUCC 42, 129-42.
Fraser, P.M., Matthews, E.A. 1997. A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, III A (Oxford).
Gigante, M. 21989. Filodemo epigrammi scelti (Naples).
––––. 1989. Filodemo tra poesia e prosa (a proposito di POxy. 3724), SFIC 7, 129-51.
––––. 1995. Philodemus in Italy (Michigan).
––––. 2003. Il libro degli epigrammi di Filodemo (Naples).
Gow, A.S.F., Page, D.L. 1968. The Greek Anthology: The Garland of Philip, 1-2
(Cambridge).
Gutzwiller, K. 1998. Poetic Garlands. Hellenistic Epigrams in Context (Berkeley).
Heichelcheim, F. 1937. Nymphai, in: RE XVII.2, 1527-99.
Ludwig, W. 1962. Ein Epigrammpaar des Asklepiades (AP V.7/150), MH 19, 160-1.
Parsons, P. 1987. List of Epigrams (POxy. 3724), The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, LIV (London),
65-84.
Puglia, W. 2000. Considerazioni bibliologiche e testuali sulla raccolta di epigrammi di POxy.
3724, Papyrologica Lupiensia 9, 359-80.
Rossi, M. 1987. Un motivo arcaico in Filodemo Ep. V G-P (AP V.107 ), Vichiana 10,
163-7.
Sider, D. 1997. The Epigrams of Philodemus (Oxford/New York).

LIGHT AND DARK: PLAY ON CANDIDUS AND RELATED

CONCEPTS IN THE ELEGIES OF TIBULLUS

In the third elegy of his first book Tibullus represents himself as sick
on the island of Corcyra (called by its Homeric name of Phaeacia) and
unable to continue in the entourage of his distinguished friend and bene-
factor Messalla on a mission to the East. He puts his misfortune down to
the love-god’s anger with him for leaving his distraught mistress Delia
behind in Rome. After imagining death on the island without her, Tibullus
eventually ends the poem with a prayer that he will in fact come back
unexpectedly and find her, like Penelope or Lucretia, spinning with her
maids, as she faithfully awaits his return. The poem displays a type of
ring composition, with the opening prayer for dark death to spare him
balanced by the closing one for a bright day to bring him home:
abstineas auidas Mors modo nigra manus.
abstineas, Mors atra, precor . . . (Tib.1.3.4-5)
hoc precor; hunc illum nobis Aurora nitentem
Luciferum roseis candida portet equis.
(Tib.1.3.93-4)

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005 Mnemosyne, Vol. LVIII, Fasc. 1

Also available online – www.brill.nl
mne_misce_1781/112-135 3/5/2005 5:04 Page 125

MISCELLANEA 125

Nigra and atra of the personified Death (Mors) at the start are ‘answered’
by nitentem and candida of the personified Morning Star (Luciferum) and Dawn
(Aurora) at the end. The darkness of death is, of course, a commonplace,
and candidus is also regularly used of a ‘lucky’ or ‘fortunate’ day (uel sim.).1)
There is much to suggest, however, that the concepts of light and dark,
and, in particular, the adjective candidus, had special significance for Tibullus
and his friends. We shall argue for four interrelated facets of it in this
paper: (1) play involving Tibullus’ own nomen Albius; (2) play on candidus
and similar terms in association with the style of both Tibullus and Messalla;
(3) play on Corvinus, the cognomen of Messalla; (4) systematic patterning of
the concepts and vocabulary of light and dark (candidus especially) to reflect
Tibullus’ changing vision of elegiac existence and the differing roles of his
two mistresses, the bright Delia of book 1 and the dark Nemesis of book 2.2)

1. Candidus, albus and Albius

Ancient poets had a taste for play on their own names. The tradition
goes back at least to the fifth-century philosophical verse of Empedocles,
where the coupling of the two compound adjectives §mpedÒfulla and
§mpedÒkarpa, ‘ever-in-leaf’ and ‘ever-in-fruit’, is thought to suggest that the
author’s name may be creatively derived from some such coinage as
§mpedÒkleitow, ‘ever-in-fame’.3) Probably, however, the Hellenistic epi-
grammatist Meleager provided the most direct cue for a poet called Albius.4)
At Epigram 98.3-4 G-P (= AP 12.165.3-4), in an apparently playful deriva-
tion of his own name from m°law, ‘black’, and érgÒw, ‘white’, Meleager
claims that ‘the Loves, they say, wove me out of white and black’:
ofl går ÖErvtew
§k leukoË pl°jai fas¤ me ka‹ m°lanow

One of the words involved, érgÒw, is, as often in ancient etymological play,
replaced by a synonym, leukÒw.5) The potential for Latin play on the nomen
Albius, through connection with albus, ‘white’, is thus clear enough. It was
certainly seen by Horace. At Odes 1.33.1-4, addressing an ‘Albius’, he plays
via the subsequent verb praenitere on the ‘white’ and ‘bright’ connotations
of the personal name:
Albi, ne doleas plus nimio memor
immitis Glycerae neu miserabilis
decantes elegos, cur tibi iunior
laesa praeniteat fide . . .

Albius’ ‘nominal’ quality is here trumped, so to speak. At Epistles 1.4.1

Horace again plays on the name, this time through the description of the
addressee as candidus, which bears the meaning ‘white’ or ‘bright’ as well
as ‘fair’ or ‘lucid’ (in judgement or style; more of this shortly):
Albi, nostrorum sermonum candide iudex.6)
mne_misce_1781/112-135 3/5/2005 5:04 Page 126

126 MISCELLANEA

Admittedly, there can be no complete certainty that Horace’s twice-named

Albius is supposed to be Tibullus; Tibullus never directly calls himself
Albius. Yet there is no real reason to doubt the nomen offered by a very
brief anonymous ancient Life (included in all the critical editions) proba-
bly derived from Suetonius’ De Poetis; it is unlikely that the poet’s name
was wrongly recorded only a century or so after his death. The Albius of
the Horatian epistle is a man of elegance and philosophical interests, with
a country estate in Latium; this fits well with information about Tibullus’
looks in the Vita7) and with the portrait of himself in his own poetry.8)
Furthermore, Horace’s reference to the wealth that the gods have given
Albius (Ep. 1.4.7 di tibi diuitias dederunt artemque fruendi, ‘the gods have given
you riches and the art of enjoyment’) smacks of teasing allusion to Tibullus’
conventional elegiac rejection of wealth in the first line of his first poem
(1.1.1 diuitias alius fuluo sibi congerat auro, ‘let others pile up riches for them-
selves in tawny gold’). The Albius of the ode writes love elegies lament-
ing his own amatory suffering, and Tibullus’ elegies were in all probability
being composed more or less contemporaneously with Horace’s first col-
lection of Odes (Books 1-3) in the twenties of the first century BC.9) The
identification is thus all but irresistible.10)
The new suggestion here is that Horace’s play on ‘Albius’ only points
up, perhaps in conscious reaction, similar play in more subtle form by
Tibullus himself. One possible instance of this occurs in the last couplet
of poem 1.3 (lines 93-4, quoted above): if Tibullus is Albius, the epithets
candidus and nitens applied to the Dawn and the Morning Star which will
see him returned to Delia are doubly appropriate. It is poem 1.7, how-
ever, in which Tibullus’ own awareness of the potential for this kind of
play is most clearly signalled. At line 58
candidaque antiquo detinet Alba Lare

he collocates candida and Alba in allusion to the ancient etymology of the

place name Alba Longa, derived from the colour of a (white) sow and the
nature of the place.11) To anyone who knew him as Albius this could well
suggest the latent connection with his own name and so complement fur-
ther elements of play on it arguably present within the same poem. These
fall into categories (2) and (3) below.

2. Candidus and nitidus: Tibullus and Messalla

Tibullus 1.7 essentially celebrates the birthday of Messalla and his (prob-
ably contemporaneous) Aquitanian triumph in 27 BC. His name appears
as a prominently delayed vocative in the couplet 7-8, which contains the
first of a number of epithets in this poem for ‘bright’ or ‘white’:
at te uictrices lauros, Messalla, gerentem
portabat nitidis currus eburnus equis
mne_misce_1781/112-135 3/5/2005 5:04 Page 127

MISCELLANEA 127

Nitidus and candidus are especially interesting in this context. Both are later
in the poem applied directly to Messalla’s person or that of the birthday
spirit (Genius) identified with him:
illius [sc. Genii] et nitido stillent unguenta capillo,
et capite et collo mollia serta gerat. (51-2)
at tu, Natalis, multos celebrande per annos,
candidior semper candidiorque ueni. (63-4)

Both terms belong to the critical vocabulary of ancient rhetorical theory.12)

Nitidus/nitens may denote a ‘polished’ or ‘elegant’ style.13) Candidus is used
of writers or writings which are ‘clear’, ‘lucid’ or ‘unambiguous’, and
already in the generation before Tibullus Cicero had applied the word to
the plain and elegant style adopted by the so-called Atticists.14) It is for
just such a manner that Tibullus was famed in antiquity.15) This feature
of his writing16) was doubtless influenced by the literary tastes of Messalla,
a prominent orator, who himself dabbled in Greek pastoral poetry, and
who, according to the elder Seneca, was a most diligent critic of Latin
style.17) Ovid, addressing Messalla’s son Messalinus, refers on separate occa-
sions to the stylistic candor and nitor of Messalla père,18) while Quintilian
describes him, in terms of his writing, in the same breath as both nitidus
and candidus19)—almost exactly the coupling that Tibullus himself used with
reference to his own envisaged return to Delia at 1.3.93-4 (quoted above).
All this, together with the likely oblique reminder of the ‘white’ quality of
Tibullus’ own nomen at 1.7.58, seems to raise the possibility that he was
attempting through the nexus of terms albus, candidus and nitidus to point
his special literary link with Messalla—to suggest that Messalla was stylis-
tically even ‘brighter’ and ‘clearer’ (so the emphatically repeated candidior
at the very end of 1.7, quoted above) than he, Albius, was himself. So
could the patron wittily and gracefully be made to outshine his protégé.

3. Candidus, nitidus, albus and Corvinus

But could there be still something more? If Tibullus was associated with
white through his nomen Albius, Messalla would have been associated with
black through his cognomen Corvinus, which is the adjectival form from
coruus, ‘raven’. This bird, supposedly changed to black from its original
white for giving away Jupiter’s secrets to his wife (Ov. Met. 2.540 qui color
albus erat, nunc est contrarius albo), was in antiquity the very epitome of black-
ness;20) a white raven was proverbial for a rarity.21) As an augur, Messalla
would have been particularly alive to all avian connotations, and, as one
also accustomed to the ancient practice of etymologising from opposites,22)
he may well have been put in mind of the associations of his own name
with a black bird by Tibullus’ mention of a white one in the context of
his achievements. For in a praeteritio of eventually rejected subjects for his
mne_misce_1781/112-135 3/5/2005 5:04 Page 128

128 MISCELLANEA

poetic tribute to his benefactor (1.7.9-20) Tibullus alludes to Messalla’s

apparently pacificatory activities in Syria23) with the question (lines 17-8):
quid referam ut uolitet crebras intacta per urbes
alba Palaestino sancta columba Syro?

This one remaining mention of whiteness in the poem, though applied

directly neither to Messalla nor to Tibullus, could prepare for the pres-
ence at the end (lines 63-4) of a neat etymological joke, as well as flattery
of Messalla’s literary style, in the implicit notion of a Corvinus being can-
didior than an Albius.
Possibly, too, there are hints that the witticism persisted, for in contexts
less strictly literary than those in the passages of Ovid and Quintilian
already quoted24) there is also to be found the association of Messalla with
brightness.25) Velleius Paterculus 2.72, Coruinus Messalla, fulgentissimus iuuenis,
may be particularly telling in this respect, as neither the context nor the
term he uses ( fulgentissimus, ‘most resplendent’) for Messalla’s quality of
brilliance is stylistic.26) It is tempting to suggest further that Tibullus’ play
on his own name was similarly recognised and taken up: the name Lygdamus
adopted by the author of the pseudo-Tibullan third book of the corpus
also has connotations of brightness, being derived from lÊgdow, a white
Parian marble. The only instances of candidus in that book refer to Lygdamus’
own bones,27) and much the same imagery of brightness as is applied to
Messalla in the context of his triumph of 27 BC in poem 7 of Tibullus’
first book is used in the context of his consulship of 31 BC in poem 7
(Panegyricus Messallae) of the pseudo-Tibullan third book.28)

4. Candidus and the Shadows: Bright Delia and Dark Nemesis

Finally, ‘light’ and ‘dark’ play of the most general kind. It has often
been noted that Delia and Nemesis, the elegiac mistresses of books 1 and
2 respectively, are in many ways opposites. Whereas Delia’s name sug-
gests connections with Apollo, the Delian god of poetry and music, or
with his sister Diana, associated with the unspoilt countryside, or with the
Greek adjective d∞low, meaning ‘clear’ or ‘bright’, Nemesis means ‘retri-
bution’, and Hesiod tells us in his Theogony (223 ff.) that she was the daugh-
ter of Night. This opposition between the two mistresses is thematically
reflected in the tendency of the Nemesis poems of the second book to
invert Tibullus’ scenarios and attitudes in the Delia poems of the first.
Whereas Delia is associated with an ideal existence in the country and is
locked away from Tibullus by his rival in a town house,29) Nemesis is asso-
ciated with a life of luxury in the town and is separated from Tibullus by
being dragged away to the country by his rival.30) In the Nemesis poems
he adopts on the whole a less starry-eyed persona. He prefers town life,
but will put up with a harsh existence in the country simply to be with
mne_misce_1781/112-135 3/5/2005 5:04 Page 129

MISCELLANEA 129

Nemesis.31) His reverence for Venus in the first book32) is replaced by a

willingness to sack her temple to provide Nemesis with costly luxury items
such as silk, gold and expensive purple-dyed clothes.33) His respect for the
Muses34) is replaced by a willingness to dismiss them if they are unable to
perform their prime function: providing access to the beloved.35) Traces
of the old Tibullus remain in the non-Nemesis poems 2.1, 2.2 and 2.5,
but in general the new mistress casts a dark shadow over the second book.
This is also reflected in Tibullus’ deployment of certain items of vocab-
ulary, again candidus in particular. In the first book candidus and related
‘bright’ words are associated with his ideal of a life of love with Delia in
a rustic setting. After its appearance in the last line of 1.3 (already dis-
cussed), candidus next occurs in Tibullus’ dream of Delia acting the role
of materfamilias on his country estate and watching over the production of
new white wine, candida musta, with the grapes trodden in his own vine-
yard.36) Here candidus is the technical word for white wine, as opposed to
niger for red, but the adjective also brings with it the associations of peace
and happiness perceived in poems 3 and 7.
Within the final elegy of the first book, poem 10, there is a movement
parallel to that in poem 3: from fears of war and death at the beginning
to a dream of peace at the end. At 1.10.33 personified death (Mors) is
atra, ‘black’, as it is in poem 3, while personified peace (Pax) is candida (line
45). Candidus recurs in the very last line of the poem (68), referring to the
white robes of Pax. This is entirely in keeping with conventional repre-
sentations of her in art, and white robes were anyway the rule for reli-
gious occasions. But for any who have already detected an oblique
self-reference through candidus in the concluding line of other poems in
book 1 (3 and 7) there will perhaps be just a hint of a ‘signature’ here
by Albius Tibullus the author. The final line of the final poem would be
a fitting and traditional place for a so-called sphragis, however cryptic.
As might be expected from the different character of the second book,
candidus is much less frequent there. In fact it occurs only twice. But on
both of these occasions the tonal associations of the word established in
book 1 seem to be sustained. The first occurrence is in poem 2.1, which
opens in a bright and optimistic mood, preserving the atmosphere at the
end of poem 1.10. Tibullus imagines himself playing a leading role in a
rustic festival on his own estate, possibly the ambarualia, and a troop of
white-clad worshippers, candida turba, processing to the ‘gleaming’ altar.37)
But, unlike what happens in poems 3 and 10 of book 1, the movement
within 2.1 is from light to darkness, and the poem ends on an unsettling
note describing the approach of Night, of Sleep with ‘dusky wings’,
furuis . . . alis, and of ‘black Dreams,’ Somnia nigra (emphatically placed in
the last line).38) This movement from light to dark, from candidus in the
opening section to niger at the end, foreshadows the inversion of the roman-
tic vision of book 1 and adumbrates the arrival of the new mistress,
mne_misce_1781/112-135 3/5/2005 5:04 Page 130

130 MISCELLANEA

Nemesis, daughter of Night, who is to dominate the rest of book 2. Only

in poem 2.5, which is not connected with Nemesis but celebrates the inau-
guration of Messalla’s son to a religious post as one of the quindecimuiri
sacris faciundis, does the adjective candidus occur again. It is surely not with-
out significance that the context then is a description of the idyllic pas-
toral simplicity of early Rome, when the ‘snowy ewe’s white lamb’ (niueae
candidus agnus ouis, line 38) was an adequate present from a lover to his
mistress. A far cry indeed from life beset by the demands of the grasping
Nemesis, with which the second book closes in poem 6.

Universiteit L J B

Opleiding Griekse en Latijnse Taal- en Letterkunde
Postbus 9515
NL-2300 RA Leiden
j.booth@let.leidenuniv.nl
University of L R M
School of Classics,
Leeds LS2 9JT
UK
r.maltby@leeds.ac.uk

1) Cf. Prop. 2.15.1 o nox mihi candida; Ov. Pont. 4.4.18 candidus et felix proximus
annus erit. References to marking a lucky day on a primitive calendar with a white
pebble are also found: e.g. Catul. 107.6 o lucem candidiore nota, 68.148 quem lapide
illa dies candidiore notat.
2) Many of the points which follow were, uncannily, made independently and
almost contemporaneously by both of us in the oral presentations from which this
paper grew. RM, however, was initially responsible for the structural observations
and JB for those involving the cognomen Corvinus.
3) Fr. 77 d°ndrea dÉ §mpedÒfulla ka‹ §mpedÒkarpa t°yhlen, ‘trees flourish ever-
in-leaf and ever-in-fruit’. See further Sedley 1998, 25, n. 91.
4) Tibullus imitates him closely at various times; see Maltby 1995.
5) Other poetic name puns are not far to seek. Philodemus in Epigr. 10 Sider
(= AP 5.115) claims that the Fates gave him his name, philo- ‘love(r)’ and demos,
because he was destined to have a series of girl friends all named Demo. In Latin
a play on Carus, Lucretius’ cognomen, has been detected at Lucr. 1.730, where
Lucretius tells us that Sicily has nothing more sacred, wonderful or dear (carum)
than Empedocles; the pun links the Sicilian philosopher-poet with his Roman coun-
terpart (see further Kollman 1971, n. 46, Gale 1994, 59). More subtle still is the
Virgilian ‘signature’ which some would detect at G. 1.429-33, where the first two
letters ( pu- ue- ma-) of each of Virgil’s tria nomina, Publius Vergilius Maro, occur
in reverse order at the beginning of lines 429, 431 and 433. This could be dis-
missed as sheer coincidence if the lines in question were not Virgil’s version of
Aratus Phaen. 783-7, which contains a metapoetic acrostic on leptÒn, the literary
critical term used by the Alexandrians to describe a refined verse style (on these
and other ancient acrostics see Brown 1963, Courtney 1990). It is particularly
noteworthy, in view of the case to be made below for the stylistic significance of
mne_misce_1781/112-135 3/5/2005 5:04 Page 131

MISCELLANEA 131

candidus in Tibullus, that the last line of Virgil’s acrostic (G. 1.433) begins with the
word pura, which is a stylistic equivalent of Aratus’ spelled-out leptÆ.
6) There is a Virgilian precedent for play on albus/candidus at Ecl. 7.37-8 Nerine
Galatea . . . candidior cycnis, hedera formosior alba, where the two adjectives are associ-
ated in a description of the sea-nymph whose name, Galatea, itself connotes ‘milky
white’. Cf. also the similar play at Verg. A. 8.82-3 candida per siluam cum fetu con-
color albo . . . sus.
7) Insignis forma cultuque corporis obseruabilis.
8) The country estate features especially in 1.1 and 1.5 (see also Maltby 2002,
39, § 3.2), and an almost Epicurean claim to contentment with little is made at
1.1.43-6.
9) See Maltby 2002, 39-40, § 3.3.
10) Support from Nisbet-Hubbard (1970, 368), Ball (1994), Keith (1999, 47);
resistance from Mayer (1994, 133).
11) Varro L. 5.144 oppidum alterum conditur, Alba; id ab sue nominatum . . .; propter
colorem suis et loci naturam Alba Longa dicta.
12) Keith (1999) studies these terms in Roman elegy.
13) Cf. Cic. de Orat. 3.51 ita de horridis rebus nitida, de ieiunis plena, de peruulgatis
noua quaedam est oratio tua (see also OLD, s.v. 7); Cic. Brut. 238 non ualde nitens, non
plane horrida oratio (see also OLD s.v. 3).
14) Cic. Orat. 53 puro quasi quodam et candido genere dicendi; see also OLD s.v. 9.
15) Quint. Inst. 10.1.93: elegia quoque nos Graecos prouocamus, cuius mihi tersus atque
elegans maxime uidetur auctor Tibullus.
16) Analysed by Maltby (1999).
17) Sen. Con. 2.4.8 fuit autem Messalla exactissimi ingenii quidem in omni studiorum
parte, sed Latini utique sermonis obseruator diligentissimus.
18) Ov. Tr. 4.4.3 cuius inest animo patrii candoris imago, / non careat numeris candor
ut iste suis; Pont. 2.2.49 nunc tibi et eloquii nitor ille domesticus adsit.
19) Quint. Inst. 10.1.113 Messalla nitidus et candidus. Cf. Quint. Inst. 1.7.35 aut
ideo minus Messalla nitidus, quia quosdam totos libellos non uerbis modo singulis sed etiam lit-
teris dedit?
20) See e.g. Petr. 43 niger tamquam coruus; Apul. Met. 2.9 coruina nigredine.
21) Juv. 7.202 coruo rarior albo.
22) See O’Hara 1996, 66.
23) Perhaps during a governorship in 30/29 or 29/28 BC; Syme (1986, 209-
10) collects and analyses the evidence.
24) See nn. 18 and 19 above.
25) E.g. Tacitus Dial. 21.9 nolo Coruinum insequi, quia non per ipsum stetit, quo minus
laetitiam nitoremque nostrorum temporum exprimeret . . .
26) The riposte might have been that there was no contradiction in terms after
all, since many corvine birds are distinguished by the glossiness of their black
plumage.
27) [Tib.] Lygd. 3.2.9-10 ergo cum tenuem fuero mutatus in umbram / candidaque ossa
super nigra fauilla teget, 3.2.17-8 pars quae sola mei superabit corporis, ossa / incinctae nigra
candida ueste legunt.
28) [Tib.] Lygd. 3.7.122-4 nam modo fulgentem Tyrio subtegmine uestem / indueras ori-
ente die duce fertilis anni, / splendidior liquidis cum Sol caput extulit undis.
29) Tib. 1.5.21-34; 1.2.1-6.
30) Tib. 2.4.27-38; 2.3.1-4.
31) Tib. 2.3.5-10, 81-4.
32) Tib. 1.2. 81-2, 99-100.
33) Tib. 2.4.21-6 (cf. 2.3.51-62).
mne_misce_1781/112-135 3/5/2005 5:04 Page 132

132 MISCELLANEA

34) Tib. 1.4.61-72.

35) Tib. 2.4.15-20.
36) Tib. 1.5.23-4 aut mihi seruabit plenis in lintribus uuas / pressaque ueloci candida
musta pede.
37) Tib. 2.1.15-6 cernite fulgentes ut eat sacer agnus ad aras / uinctaque post olea can-
dida turba comas.
38) Tib. 2.1.87-90 ludite: iam Nox iungit equos, currumque sequuntur /matris lasciuo
sidera fulua choro, / postque uenit tacitus, furuis circumdatus alis, / Somnus et incerto Somnia
nigra pede.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ball, R.J. 1994. Albi, ne doleas: Horace and Tibullus, CW 87, 409-14
Brown, E.L. 1963. Numeri Vergiliani: Studies in Eclogues and Georgics, Collection Latomus
63 (Brussels), 96-114
Courtney, E. 1990. Greek and Latin Acrostics, Philologus 134, 3-13
Gale, M.R. 1994. Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge)
Keith, A.M. 1999. Slender Verse: Roman Elegy and Ancient Rhetorical Theory, Mnemosyne
52, 41-62
Kollman, E.D. 1971. Lucretius’ Criticism of the Early Greek Philosophers, StudClas 13,
79-93
Maltby, R. 1995. Tibullus 1.2. and Meleager, AP 12.49, in: Belloni, L., Milanese, G.,
Porro, A. (eds.) Studia classica Iohanni Tarditi oblata (Milan), 523-6
––––. 1999. Tibullus and the Language of Latin Elegy, in: Adams, J.N., Mayer, R. (eds.)
Aspects of the Language of Latin Poetry. Proceedings of the British Academy 93 (Oxford),
377-98
––––. 2002. Tibullus I and II (Cambridge)
Mayer, R.G. 1994. Horace, Epistles, Book 1 (Cambridge)
Nisbet, R.G.M., Hubbard, M. 1970. A Commentary on Horace, Odes, Book I (Oxford)
O’Hara, J.J. 1996. True Names. Virgil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological
Wordplay (Ann Arbor)
Sedley, D.N. 1998. Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (Cambridge)
Sider, D. 1997. The Epigrams of Philodemus (Oxford)
Syme, R. 1986. The Augustan Aristocracy (Oxford)

A. GELLIUS NOCTES ATTICAE 16.2.6:

TAMQUAM SI TE DICAS ADULTERUM NEGENT

I. In A. Gellii Noctium Atticarum libro sexto decimo, capitulo secundo, ubi

tractatur de rebus quibusdam ad disciplinam dialecticam pertinentibus,
manifesta offenditur lacuna, quam indicauit Hertzl (1885). Ea textus pars
mutilata est, in qua Gellius de quaestiunculis captiosis loquitur:
Sed enim esse quaedam uidentur, in quibus, si breuiter et ad id, quod roga-
tus fueris, respondeas, capiare. Nam si quis his uerbis interroget: ‘Postulo, uti
respondeas, desierisne facere adulterium annon’, utrumcumque dialectica lege
responderis, siue aias seu neges, haerebis in captione, tamquam si te dicas
adulterum *** negent; nam qui facere non desiit, non id necessario etiam

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005 Mnemosyne, Vol. LVIII, Fasc. 1

Also available online – www.brill.nl