vellet: the subjunctive imperfect in the protasis of a general condition with the imperfect indicative in the apodosis is a construction rarely found in writers of the republican period, though it is not infrequent in Livy and later writers.
[3] sperabat: used to flatter himself.
[4] quantum poterat: i. e. with so great an effort after distinctness and precision that he fairly shouted the words out at the top of his voice.
[5-6] The point of these two parenthetical verses (cf. the verse introduced by credo in Catul. 2.8) seems to be that this super-aspiration was considered to be a characteristic of low-born and uneducated people (Gell. 13.6.3); and as the relations cited are all on the mother's side, it looks as though the ancestry of Arrius in the female line had already been the subject of jest among his acquaintances (cf. Cicero's remark concerning him in Cic. Brut. 243 “infimo loco natus” ). The point of liber as an adjective and not a proper name is then clear, if infimo loco be understood of the condition of slavery: his maternal uncle (perhaps only one of his uncles on that side) was a libertus, and the social standing of the entire family is thus indicated.
[7] misso: sc. on some public service; perhaps with his friend Crassus, who assumed the governorship of Syria in 55 B.C.
[8] audibant: with the form cf. Catul. 64.319n. custodibant.
[8] leniter et leviter: i. e. though the people left behind misused aspirates, they did not at any rate bellow out so horribly their mispronunciations.
[9] postilla: a word of older Latin for the later postea, perhaps, however, still used colloquially in the time of Catullus.
[11] Ionios fluctus: that part of the Mediterranean Sea lying west and northwest of Greece, and hence the first sea encountered by Arrius on his journey. The report of its fate was, then, but a foretaste of what was to come to the Romans who had hoped for relief on the departure of Arrius.
