Eranos 108, 111–115 Ciris 315. An Emendation Boris Kayachev Trinity College, Dublin boriskayachev@gmail.com Abstract: Ciris 315 saepe tuo dulci nequiquam capta sopore is usually taken to mean that Carme was enchanted by the sight of Scylla asleep. Since capta sopore should normally mean “overcome by sleep,” tuo appears to be corrupt. The line can be restored by writing: saepe <ego> tum. For some twenty-four lines Carme has been bewailing the loss of her daughter Britomartis (286–309). Now she faces the impending loss of her nurseling Scylla (310–318). Carme could bear the death of Britomartis while she still had Scylla (310–312). Will now Scylla be taken from her too (313–314)? Scylla has been the only reason that kept her alive (315–317): saepe tuo dulci nequiquam capta sopore, cum premeret natura, mori me uelle negaui, ut tibi Corycio glomerarem fammea luto. Often enchanted in vain by your sweet sleep, although nature pressed me, I said I did not want to die, so that I could make you a wedding-veil of Corycian safron. 1 Te text and meaning of the second and third lines seem generally clear and unobjection- able: despite her old age (316a), Carme refused to die (316b), in order to see Scylla happily married (317). Yet the exact interpretation of the second line is less obvious. In what sense did nature press Carme? In what circumstances did she say that she did not want to die? Some light can be shed by a fragment of Callimachus’ Hecale, on which the Ciris context appears to be modelled (fr. 49.2 Hollis): ἠρνεόμην θανάτοιο πάλαι καλέοντος ἀκοῦσαι (I refused to listen to death calling me since long ago). Te situation in Callimachus is that of a (failed) dialogue: death had long been calling Hecale, but she refused to listen. It seems reasonable to understand the Latin context along similar lines: many a time (saepe) nature pressed her hard (saying, as it were, that her time had come), but Carme always objected that she did not want to die. 2 Line 315, in the transmitted form, apparently implies that Carme’s endurance was motivated by the sight of Scylla asleep. Lyne accepts this sense as “tolerable,” but he is clearly correct to point out that the expression is odd: “The oddness consists not only in the strained use of sopor, in the heavy ellipse, but also in the fact that capta sopore would 1 All translations are mine. 2 Cf. Hollis 2009, 32 n. 25, who interestingly suggests that at Ciris 316 “the meaning is ‘when Nature pressed me hard’ (like e.g. an insistent creditor demanding repayment), with a subsidiary allusion to Lucr. 3.931ff. where Nature abuses the person reluctant to face death.” It seems relevant that the second part of Nature’s diatribe is addressed specifcally to old people clinging to life (3.952–962). Carme’s reply is, as it were, that she refused to die not for her own sake, but for the sake of Scylla.