Clodia Metelli

Roman political figure

• Born: c. 95 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Rome (now in Italy)
• Died: After 45 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Rome (now in Italy)

Clodia was an important political helper to her brother, Publius Clodius Pulcher, as well as the inspiration for much of Catullus’s lyric poetry.

Early Life

As is the case with many figures of the ancient world, especially women, very little is definitively known about Clodia (KLOH-dee-ah), the second of three daughters of Appius Claudius Pulcher. Much of what is known about her is based on hearsay, gossip, and the testimony of hostile sources.

The Claudian family was one of the oldest and most respected patrician clans in Rome: Clodia’s father, uncle, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, and great-great-great-grandfather were all consuls and therefore high office holders in republican Rome. One of her ancestors, Appius Claudius Caecus (“The Blind”), had built the first Roman aqueduct and began the first portion of the Via Appia, named in his honor.

After her younger brother, Publius Clodius Pulcher, transferred himself out of the patrician class and began to spell his name in the plebeian or common fashion, Clodia imitated him as a gesture of political support. She undoubtedly received a strong education, grounded in Greek and Latin literature and philosophy. Like other aristocratic and cultivated women of the time, she probably played a lyre, danced, and delighted in droll sayings and witticisms. Cicero, the great Roman statesman and orator, calls her a poetess in his speech Pro Caelio (56 b.c.e.; English translation in The Orations, 1741-1743), a defense speech that he transforms into a vituperative attack on what he calls Clodia’s loose morals and promiscuous sexuality. Though her brothers enjoyed the tutoring of Ateius Praetextatus, a famous Latin grammarian and teacher of rhetoric, Clodia, as a woman, would not have been schooled in public speaking or oratory.

Her particular branch of the Claudian family was renowned for its beauty—hence, the surname Pulcher—and Clodia was, from all accounts, an attractive woman. Though probably married at a much younger age some years before, Clodia had wed her first cousin, Quintus Caecilius Metellus, by 62 b.c.e., according to Cicero, who frequently mentions her in his letters. Though her politically ambitious husband served as consul in 60, Clodia’s support was centered mostly on her brother.

Clodius had come to prominence in 65, after an embezzlement prosecution of Catiline, the future “revolutionary.” In 61, however, Clodius faced potentially lethal political fallout when he tried to infiltrate an all-women religious festival, that of the Bona Dea, or Good Goddess. Clodius had sneaked into the ritual disguised as a woman and was subsequently charged with sacrilege. Narrowly acquitted by a (probably bribed) jury, he forever afterward loathed Cicero, whom he had asked to provide an alibi and who had refused. Their subsequent mutual antipathy contributed much to Cicero’s unflattering and vindictive portrait of Clodia in the Pro Caelio.

During this period, sometime before 59, another man entered Clodia’s life. The poet Gaius Valerius Catullus revolutionized Latin poetry with his passionate lyric and personal style. Most authorities agree that the mistress of whom he writes in both tender and terrible fashion—his “Lesbia”—was none other than Clodia. Although the facts behind their affair are obscured by the question of how much of Catullus’s poetic persona was autobiographical, his verse describes a tumultuous relationship that ends bitterly, prompting him to write scathing invective in place of tributes to beauty and charm.

In 59, Clodia’s husband Caecilius died suddenly, and three years later, in the Pro Caelio, Cicero suggested that Clodia had poisoned him. This, like much of Cicero’s portrait in this speech, is character assassination and must be approached very critically. The following year brought Clodia and her brother into even more prominence, when Clodius was elected tribune of the Plebs. This position, eminently suitable for a rabble-rousing demagogue like Clodius, enabled him finally to enact revenge on Cicero. He secured the passage of a law that sent into exile anyone guilty of condemning a Roman citizen to death without trial. Cicero had, during his consulship of 63, ordered conspirators in the so-called Catiline Conspiracy to be killed without a hearing. The orator was forced into exile, while Clodius and his henchmen burned down his house.

During his enemy’s absence, Clodius’s power grew. He enlisted mobs of troublemakers to disrupt governmental proceedings, while growing ever more popular with the common people. Clodia’s personal influence must have increased as well; by now she had replaced Catullus with another lover, the politico Marcus Caelius Rufus, and was famous for her luxurious parties, glittering salons, and indolent pleasure-seeking.

Life’s Work

When Cicero returned from exile in 57, he soon found an opportunity for avenging himself on Clodius. Marcus Caelius Rufus, an up-and-coming political force, young blade, and protégé of Cicero, was brought up on charges of immorality, theft, and attempted murder by none other than his former lover Clodia. Cicero, rather than attacking the merits of the case, deflected attention from his client’s notorious reputation by attacking, with unsurpassed rhetoric, pungent wit, and biting sarcasm, Clodia herself.

The very fact that Cicero chose to attack Clodia reveals the undoubted power and unprecedented influence she wielded politically as well as her vulnerability to such public visibility. As a woman, she could not defend herself, and Cicero, not wishing to play the bully, cleverly employed humor and ridicule to humiliate her, rather than attack her directly. Clodius was beyond his reach, but Clodia was within his sights.

Cicero constantly refers to her as the organizer and source of the prosecution scheme and even attributes the acquittal of Sextus Cloelius, one of Publius’s goons and the arsonist of Cicero’s own house, to Clodia’s feminine influence. Certainly, it may be inferred, Clodia was at the height of her political power, and Cicero was keen to destroy her.

A masterpiece of biting invective, the Pro Caelio depicts Clodia as a thoroughly depraved woman, a monster driven by sexual appetites and even the incestuous lover of her younger brother. Cicero calls her a whore, a “Medusa of the Palatine” (the fashionable district where she lived) who attracted the naturally rambunctious Marcus Caelius with her profligate ways and sexual allure. Cicero claims that Clodia threw indecent parties and that she reveled in a garden she created along the banks of the river Tiber, where she watched the young men bathe nude and chose lovers whenever she wanted. In short, he castigates her sexual freedom, power, and assertiveness and mocks her wealthy, independent, pleasure-loving lifestyle.

Although most early historians were eager to accept his attacks at face value, Cicero’s real message is more important metaphorically than literally: Women were not supposed to interfere in politics, and neither were they to initiate sexual encounters. Both activities were reserved for men. Because Clodia’s political power resided in her influence, reputation, and social standing, Cicero could not attack her politically, as he could her brother. Instead, he exploited the metaphor of her aggressive sexuality to substitute for her true crime: political involvement.

Whether or not Clodia was as sexually adventurous as Cicero suggests is a matter of speculation. However, the orator’s criticisms were amplified by those of Catullus, who, after the termination of his affair with Clodia (apparently broken off by her), viciously attacked his former lover. In several poems, he complains of her infidelity; in others, he abuses her with violent and obscene verse.

Again, the portrait that emerges must be attributed to not only a jilted and jealous lover but also a carefully crafted poetic persona. The true details will never be known, as Clodia—like virtually every woman in the ancient world—does not speak in her own voice. However, Catullus’s poetry was certainly published and circulated in her time, and the hostile combination of orator and poet effectively eliminated Clodia’s political career. She nearly disappears from even Cicero’s correspondence after the debacle of the Pro Caelio.

Catullus died only a few years later, probably about 54 b.c.e. Clodius continued his street-fighting, gangland style politics; he vacillated in support between Caesar and Pompey and truly stood for no one but himself. His increasingly violent tactics may have been due, in part, to the loss of social influence he suffered at the hands of Cicero, after which Clodia could no longer be such a visible partner in his schemes. On January 18, 53, Clodius was murdered on the Appian Way by the gang of a rival demagogue, Titus Annius Milo. The plebeians rioted in the Forum and burned the Senate House as his funeral pyre.

Clodia reappears in the historical record toward the end of Cicero’s life (he died in 43). In a letter to his friend Atticus, he remarks that Clodia owned some property he would like to buy and comments that she does not need the money. Ironically, he and Clodia had been on friendly terms prior to the Pro Caelio; Plutarch claims she wanted Cicero to marry her and that his wife, Terentia, was jealous of the beautiful society woman.

Clodia’s biography reveals more of male attitudes toward assertiveness in women than it does of her own motivations and activities. As a Roman woman, she bequeathed no record to posterity, no poems or speeches in rebuttal or confession. Her importance stands in relief against the background of hostility with which she is described.

Significance

Clodia’s significance is that of her characterization. Catullus’s poetry is timeless; lyrical and tawdry, emotional and contemplative, his “Lesbia” motif served as a model for other, later poets, most notably Sextus Propertius, who wished to find their own mistress-muse to immortalize. Most scholars accept Apuleius’s attribution of Lesbia as Clodia, and she was very likely identified with the poems up through his era (c. 125-170 c.e.). The poetry served to emblemize Clodia/Lesbia as the prototypical “bad” woman, the sexual adventurer who ruined young men. This misogynistic view permeated later love poetry and writing about women—the sixth of Juvenal’s Saturae (100-127 c.e.; Satires, 1693), for example—through the modern era. Scholarship has often accepted Catullus’s construction of Clodia/Lesbia at face value, thus minimizing the poet’s own inventiveness and unfairly condemning Clodia.

The influence of Cicero on later historians guaranteed that his metaphor—sexual license substituting for political boundary-crossing—would live on. His depiction of Clodia can be glimpsed in works of the later historians Tacitus and Suetonius, most notably in portraits of Imperial women like Valeria Messallina, Agrippina the Younger, and Poppaea Sabina. By the time of Tacitus (c. 56-120 c.e.), the specter of sexually voracious women wreaking havoc, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, was a standard of historiography. Weak or unsuccessful rulers were inevitably dominated by lusty female viragos. Cicero’s implication about Clodia—that she did not shrink from murder—becomes standard fare with the later ladies.

Perhaps the most pernicious significance of the Clodia portrait has been in the realm of classical scholarship. For far too long, scholars blindly and unquestioningly accepted the testimony of her hostile male biographers. Clodia’s own voice will never be recovered, but the shrill shouts of ancient critics should not be amplified by the acquiescent drones of their contemporaries. This characterization of Clodia has held sway for too long; it is up to current and future scholars to ensure than Clodia herself attains the significance her alter ego has long enjoyed. Fortunately, with the advent of feminist theory, academics have begun to search for a more balanced view.

Indeed, for many feminists, Clodia the woman—she who wielded power and defied public convention, on whatever level—is inspirational, reminding one to analyze, investigate, and continually question one’s sources, contemporary and ancient. After more than two thousand years, Clodia may yet find a seat at the table.

Bibliography

Dixon, Suzanne. Reading Roman Women: Sources, Genres, and Real Life. London: Duckworth, 2001. Chapter 9 is devoted to Clodia, an excellent source that discusses the difficulty in reconstructing accurate biographies of ancient women. Includes index, map, and bibliography.

Gruen, Erich S. The Last Generation of the Roman Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. The foremost history of this turbulent era by an eminent historian. Gruen reveals the political machinations of Cicero, Clodius, and Clodia. Includes index and bibliography.

Lefkowitz, Mary R., and Maureen B. Fant. Women’s Life in Ancient Greece and Rome: A Source Book in Translation. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. An invaluable compendium of primary sources in translation, with background information and analysis. Contains selections from Cicero’s Pro Caelio. Includes index and bibliography.

Skinner, Marilyn B. “Clodia Metelli.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 113 (1983): 273-287. A seminal feminist analysis and reconstruction of Clodia that discusses Cicero’s motives and Catullus’s anger.

Wiseman, T. P. Catullus and His World: A Reappraisal. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Discusses the poet’s affair with Clodia in chapter 2. Includes index and bibliography.