Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LIIJI. Othonis caput oppidost pusillum . Neri rustica semilauta crura, subtile et leue peditum Libonis. si non omnia displicere uellem tibi et Fuficio seni recocto LIIIP. Irascere iterum meis iambis imnerentibus, unice imperator. Though. I dissent with diffidence from so many eminent authorities, I cannot conceal my belief that the poem is quite entire and unmutilated, and that the change of one other letter will render it perfectly intelligible, dispel the Cimmerian darkness and enable us to dispense with the Sibyl’s assistance. Before offering any further explanations I will print the poem as I think Catullus may have written it: Othonis caput (oppido est pusillum) et, trirustice, semilauta crura, subtile et leue peditum Libonis, si non omnia, displicere uellem tibi et Fuficio seni recocto:? irascere iterum meis iambis inmerentibus, unice imperator. The proper interpretation of the whole poem appears to me to depend primarily on the right understanding of the words si non omnia; ad for this uia prima salutis, quod minime reris, Graia pandetur ab urbe;or rather, I should say, not from a Greek city, but from the city of the Trojan Antenor. It is not known who Otho or Libo or Fuficius was, but it is plain that the poet means to say that Otho and Libo were favourites of Caesar and Fuficius, standing in the same relation to the former as he had scurrilously described Mamurra as doing in the 29th poem. I could wish, he says, that Otho’s head (right puny it is) and, you thorough clown, those half-washed legs of his, and Libo’s offensive habits, if not everything else about them, should disgust you. Then pretending to recall his former quarrel with Caesar, he breaks off abruptly with the words, ‘ you will be enraged a second time with my innocent …
