Volume 37, Number 16 · October 25, 1990

Lucan's Civil War

By William M. Calder, Reply by Hugh Lloyd-Jones

In response to Roman Grand Guignol (January 18, 1990)

To the Editors:

Surely suffecitque omnibus unda at Lucan 9. 510 means: "Cato satisfied them all by the way in which he used the water."

Cato is subject of the verb as he is of the first verb in the verse. Unda is ablative and parallel to the ablative ira that ends the preceding verse. This makes sense. To construe unda as nominative subject of suffecit makes no sense.

William M. Calder III
Oldfather Professor of the Classics
The University of Illinois
Urbana, Illinois

Hugh Lloyd-Jones replies:

I am not attracted by the interpretation of Dr. Campos, which would seem to require omnes in place of omnibus. Professor Calder's translation, on the other hand, gives vigorous sense and may well be right, though when he says that "to construe unda as nominative subject of suffecit makes no sense" he goes too far. J.D. Duff in the Loeb Edition translates, "there was water enough for all," and he may well be right.

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