ON LUCRETIUS 5.120 PRAECLARUMQUE
VELINT CAELI RESTINGUERE
SOLEM
Two considerations should make this line disquieting to the critical reader. First, praeclarum and caeli prepare us, it would seem, for a noun that stands in need of the precision they bring. solem is not such a word: it is obvious, and at least to my ear unemphatic. Secondly, the phrase caeli solem is not exactly like the other examples, listed in TLL 3.89.10-17, of nouns to which that genitive is somewhat needlessly appended. (The Thesaurus's article, by the way, needs clarification: at Georg. 1.335 caeli attaches to menses et sidera, not to the former noun alone; and at Lucr. 5.231 and 687 caeli is a necessary addition to tempore and signum respectively.) The common pattern appears in phrases like nubila caeli, fulgura caeli, and sidera caeli. The neatness and convenience of these hexameter line-ends perhaps prompted the addition of the genitive in the first place. Above all, these phrases are common in the poets, each being used more than once. So too a phrase like caeli fulmen can be defended by analogy to fulgura, and by the fact that Lucretius uses it more than once, at 1.489 and 5.1244. caeli solem however stands alone, and I do not see that the use of the obvious noun is in any way pointed. I suggest therefore that Lucretius wrote praeclarum caeli lumen, 'the most radiant light of heaven.' This is of course the sun, and solem would be a gloss upon lumen, which was expelled by that word from the text. ROLAND
MAYER
BEDFORD COLLEGE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
0002-9475/7/0992-0154
AJP 99 (1978) 154 ? 1978 by The Johns Hopkins University Press $01.00