ABSTRACT
By way of a short introduction, it is perhaps useful to say that the author's reading of the poem bases itself on the assumption that the first five lines deal with the following three members of a Veronese family: the younger Balbus, his father, the older Balbu, and the wife of Balbus jr and the main target of the poem. She is also the virgo on the assumption that this virgo refers, paradoxically, to the sexual incapacity of her former husband from her time in Brixia. However much readers of Catullus are indebted to Hans Peter Syndikus for his discerning and sensitive art of interpretation it is hard to follow his main line of argument in his reading of Catullus 67. Badian has pointed to a “delightful aprosdoketon”. Until the word ianua is uttered, the listener/reader would believe that a young wife is being addressed as “dear to both her beloved husband and her father”.
