Carmina by Catullus

First transcribed: c. 50 b.c.e. (English translation, 1893)

Type of work: Poetry

The Work:

The 116 carmina, or poems, of the corpus of Catullus do not appear in chronological order, nor do they separate mythic narrative from creatively recounted personal experience. Though their numberings differ in various editions, it is generally the case that the short lyric poems, which number about forty, appear first. Four longer poems often appear next, though in differing arrangements. Two of these poems are marriage hymns (epithalamia); another retells the story of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the father and mother of Achilles; and another retells the story of Attis, the self-castrated priest of the Moon goddess Cybele.

The last part of the collection comprises elegies, often introduced by the mythic tale of the lock of Berenice. The extraordinary variety of the collection paired with the merging of autobiographical and mythic elements as well as sophisticated use of meters make Catullus a singularity of the ancient world; they also account for the inspiration the poet provides for the modern world.

Catullus wrote in the age of Julius Caesar, an age of political corruption and decadence presaging the final years of the Republic. The period parallels the Alexandrine movement in Greek literature, though the learned sophistication of Alexandrian literature makes its appearance only in the cosmological poetry of Lucretius (c. 99-55 b.c.e.) or the philosophic works of Cicero (106-43 b.c.e.). The poems of Catullus represent something new for a Roman audience: a melding of personal history and fiction as well as a coherent love theme merging all the emotions that love inspires—happiness, anger, frustration, and melancholy.

The lyric poems tracing the narrator’s relationship to Lesbia likely are familiar to general readers. Lesbia is Catullus’s pseudonym for his mistress, Clodia Metelli, the wife of a patrician. Lesbia had been infamous for her scandalous behavior and numerous lovers. After a self-deprecating dedication of the collection to his patron Cornelius, Catullus turns to admiration of Lesbia’s sparrow because his mistress plays with it, feeds it, and holds it in her lap. The bird displaces the lover, and the lover marks the free access the bird enjoys. A mock elegy for the bird appears in the following poem. This poem also asks all Venuses and Cupids to mourn the sparrow that has just died, for it must make the journey to the realm of the dead.

A lyric poem often called “Phaselus” by readers of the Latin text records the swiftness of the narrator’s sailing ship and enumerates the exotic locales it visits. The poem represents Catullus’s bow to Alexandrian learned allusion; however, that his ship has grown slow with age and no longer sails allows a sensual implication. The emphasis on swiftness frequently links it to the carpe diem (“seize the day”) theme of the Lesbia poem that suggests that the brevity of life requires thousands of kisses to confuse the evil-eye curse of those who would wish the lovers bad fortune.

A poem noting the inelegant, rustic mistress of Flavius suggests that were she not so inelegant, he would be more forthcoming about her to Catullus and could celebrate her. The only conclusion is that Flavius is in love with some diseased wench and is afraid to confess it. This poem compares with another Lesbia poem, which asks how many kisses from her would constitute sufficiency and surfeit. Alexandrian learned allusion appears again by suggesting that the number of grains of Libyan sand, or stars on a clear night, or stolen loves of men would be a reasonable approximation of the required number of kisses from Lesbia.

Soon thereafter, it appears that the romance with Lesbia has ended. Catullus is an excluded lover, literally locked out of his mistress’s home. This poem is the oldest use of the exclusus amator (“excluded lover”) theme in Latin literature. As often occurs in Catullus, the Latin uses wordplay in its suggestion that Catullus remain obdura (“firm” or “hard”) in his resolution to resist any blandishments Lesbia may offer.

This wordplay often emerges in the homoerotic poems of Catullus, such as in the lyric to Asinius Marrucinus—manu sinistra/ non belle uteris (“your left hand/ you use not beautifully”) and tollis lintea neglegentiorum (“you lift the napkins of the more careless people”). The subject is the brother of Asinius Pollio, a politician, patron of the arts, and himself a historian (though his history of the civil wars has not survived). Another homoerotic poem, this one more clearly so, is that written to the effeminate Thallus, in which the poet asks return of his cloak, Saetaban napkin, and tablets lest they become trophies.

The lyric to Sirmio, Catullus’s villa at the southern end of the Lago di Garda, is a classic praise of love of home after long travels to distant lands. The farm personified welcomes the return of its master after his year on the staff of Gaius Memmius, the governor of Bithynia; the farm’s waters laugh with joy at Catullus’s return. A final bitter reference to Lesbia can be found in a lyric that appears soon after the lyric to Sirmio, in which Catullus asserts Lesbia is at a crossroads serving the lusts of high-minded descendants of Remus. This would make her a prostitute akin to the she-wolf that suckled the infant Romulus and Remus.

After about forty lyrics, the collection morphs into its long poems, one an epithalamium to Hymen. In this marriage hymn, the chorus of eager young men contrasts the chorus of modest young women in praise of the god of the wedding bed. There follows the Attis poem, its luridly sensational reference to the castrated priests of Cybele exemplifying the beginning of the exotic religious cults that would find an increasing number of adherents as imperial Rome continued to incorporate faraway territories.

References to Mount Ida, near Troy, offer transition to the Peleus and Thetis poem. Thetis can never become Jupiter’s mistress because she will then give birth to a deity who will overthrow him. Jupiter finds the mortal Peleus as his substitute, and Achilles is their offspring. He will die in the Trojan War, the victim of Paris, son of Priam, the king of Troy. Because Priam was aware that Paris’s theft of Helen would bring a war to Troy, he concealed Paris on Mount Ida as a shepherd, though to no avail.

Paradoxically, the poem that aptly sums up the entire collection is but two lines. It incorporates the two extremes of the poet’s personality and of the collection’s recurring themes: “I hate and I love. Perhaps you ask why I do this./ I do not know, but I know it to be so and I am tortured.”

Bibliography

Anconia, Ronnie. Writing Passion: A Catullus Reader. Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2004. Presents the text of forty-two poems of Catullus along with line-by-line commentary. The text is useful for the high school advanced-placement examination in Latin. Includes a bibliography and information on the social and historical background against which Catullus wrote his poems.

Dettmer, Helena. Love by the Numbers: Form and Meaning in the Poetry of Catullus. New York: Peter Lang, 1997. An examination of verse form and prosody and how the neoteric, or new, forms mesh with the Alexandrine movement.

Duff, J. Wight, and A. M. Duff. A Literary History of Rome: From the Origins to the Close of the Golden Age. 3d ed. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967. Remains a standard survey of the poems and is especially valuable for its historical commentary on the relationship of the Alexandrine movement and the neoteric approach of Catullus.

Luck, Georg. The Latin Love Elegy. 1960. Reprint. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1979. Though the extant Attis and Berenice poems by themselves would hardly indicate that Catullus was a major influence on the Latin love elegy, no less an elegiac poet than Propertius provides testimony that he was so. Reexamines Catullus’s use of elegiac techniques in both the longer poems and the shorter poems.

Ross, David O., Jr. Style and Tradition in Catullus. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969. Separates and defines the stylistic character of the collection. Ross discerns three varieties (polymetric poems, long poems, and epigrams) and relates them internally as well as externally through their historical context.

Wiseman, T. P. Catullus and His World: A Reappraisal. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1985. An excellent reconstruction of the historical background against which Catullus wrote. Wiseman focuses on Palatine society and the place of the patrician Clodia, the mistress Catullus calls Lesbia.