ABSTRACT
I cannot read Skutsch’s sober and honest note on 42 corde capessere without asking myself why he did not mark corde with cruces, an expedient Jocelyn would have thought just and proper in this case, I believe. Skutsch writes:
A very difficult phrase. capere and its derivatives used with the instrum. abl. corde denote understanding rather than than perception (differently Stat. Theb. 8. 261 tenui captabat corde tumultum). The meaning ‘to perceive (see, hear) you’ is thus ruled out. So, by the lack of even a remote parallel, is the sense of sinu complecti. There remains only ‘to reach you’. The addition of corde, which strains this sense, conforms to the alliterative pattern of the passage (cf. above) and seems to convey the sense of cupitam capessere; compare corde cupitus 47. The emendations proposed are not convincing. corpus (Marx) is excellent in Ov. met. 11. 675 corpusque petens amplectitur auras but feeble here. Havet’s corda capessere ‘to take heart’ is unsatisfactory from every point of view. If corde should be wrong it might conceal the name of the sister.
Skutsch, hardly convinced himself, fails to prove that corde capessere can convey the sense of cupitam capessere. The word corde Ennius uses three times in these 17 lines. At line 47 (corde cupitus sc. pater) and at 50 corde (aegro cum corde meo) the word is totally justified. It is obvious that Skutsch understands te as object from the previous infinitive in which case corde must be Ilia’s cor seeking physical contact with her sister; corde spoils such a natural extension of vestigare and quaerere. The unavoidable conclusion is that corde is corrupt. It is true enough that capessere, a desiderative, can mean ‘grasp’ with the additional notion ‘eagerly’, cf. Priscian (II 535, 10 Keil) = desidero capere. But another meaning of capessere is more striking in early Latin, ‘set forth’, ‘set off‘, ‘sally forth’, ‘betake oneself’: Plautus Bac. 113 quo nunc capessis ted hinc advorsa via? (“where are you now betaking yourself from here up the street?”), cf. Rud. 178 si ad saxum [fort. a saxo] quo capessit ea deorsum cadet, errationis fecerit compendium (“If she falls down the cliff where she’s heading, she’ll go to the devil more quickly.”) From these two examples one may observe that there is both a reflexive 1 and an intransitive use of capessere. 2 Of the latter alternative, I believe we have an example in our text. All examples for this use of capessere are either defined as motion whither (adverb or prepositional phrase) or as motion whence. Instead of corde, inde would stand out as an excellent extension of an intransitive capessere (like Rud. 178, Apul. Met. 1. 22), namely defined as motion whence (like Bac. 113). neque posse/ inde capessere expresses “without being able to get away/ betake myself from there” – a good description of a person’s situation in a dream. The ensuing semita nulla pedem stabilibat is an asyndetic clause explaining neque posse/ inde capessere: “<as> no path was there to make my foot steady.” In other words, she is stuck among the willow thickets on an unknown riverbank. My text, then, is this: Ita sola postilla, germana soror, errare videbar tardaque vestigare et quaerere te neque posse in de capessere: semita nulla pedem stabilibat.