Fabullus 1

vol. VI p.1944-1945

1) Fabullus

A friend of Catullus’. The name of his gens is unknown; in the empire, Fabii Fabulli turn up (see there). Catullus addresses c.13 to Fabullus, <40> a jokey invitation to a meal, in around 674 = 60, when he was still in a relationship with Lesbia (cf. 13, 11ff.), and he addresses c.28 to Fabullus and Veranius after he returned from Bithynia in spring 698 = 56 (cf. 28, 7ff.). According to 12, 14ff., Fabullus and Veranius were together in Spain while the poet was staying in Rome (cf. the greeting to Veranius who had returned home c.9), and according to c. 28 and 47, during his stay in Bithynia they were in a province, <50> and indeed in the circle, of a governor Piso, who they were disappointed with in a similar way to how Catullus was disappointed by his propraetor C. Memmius. Probably, this Piso is L. Calpurnius Caesoninus (vol. III p.1387ff.), and the province was Macedonia which he was in charge of at the time; this means Fabullus and Veranius must have been in Spain a few years earlier, probably before 694 = 60. Objections against this idea, which has been mostly accepted, have been made by B. Schmidt (introduction to his edition of Catullus XLIXff.), who identifies the journey to Spain with the one undertaken with Piso, and therefore makes it necessary to assume that Piso held another otherwise unattested governorship in Spain in the year 697 = 57; however, neither the arguments against the first nor the arguments in favour of the second viewpoint seem to be convincing. <page break 1944/1945>

[Münzer.]