SOURCE: "Catullus," in The Latin Love Poets: From Catullus to Horace, Oxford at the University Press, 1980, pp. 19-61.

[Below, Lyne discusses Catullus's love poetry, focusing closely on the Lesbia poems and demonstrating Catullus's enormous influence on the themes, forms, and style of later poetry.]

1. Introduction

Catullus was born circa 84 B.C. and died about thirty years later. He came from a well-to-do family in provincial Verona but soon moved to Rome, which he henceforth regarded as his home (poem '68'.34-5).

I shall now assume that the Lesbia concerned in his finest love poetry is Clodia, wife of Metellus.… Catullus therefore loved a lady who acted the courtesan.… He wished (he says so: e.g. poem '109') to solemnize and perpetuate a kind of 'whole love'; he wanted to commit himself, and he wanted his beloved to commit herself, to their love in the way that conventional Roman society committed itself—in theory—to marriage. A problematic aspiration. Catullus' love and life must have been fraught with tension. Out of it came his love poetry: life transmuted into art.

The more sympathetic we are at the outset to the problems intrinsic in Catullus' love, the more receptive we may he to his poetry. A few more moments of preliminary thought are in order. The personality and impact of Clodia should be pondered. Caelius' and Cicero's fairly vicious picture of her is hardly the whole truth. But it is some of the truth and Catullus often enough shows himself aware of it. On the other hand Clodia can be the 'fair goddess', the light upon which the sweetness of life depends. She must have had qualities to inspire such devotion: we are not simply witnessing the discrepancy between the face the world sees and the hallucinated vision of a sentimental fool. Clodia must have had elements of both the sublime and the abysmal, baffling to her lover. And promiscuity in a lover is a curious thing. It is a strange but psychologically explicable fact (observed by Marcel Proust among others) that the very availability of available and widely attractive women can be just the thing to excite or exacerbate dreams of unique possession among romantic but unfortunate lovers.

Tension is inherent in Catullus' life and love, his aspirations are made up of probably incompatible elements. Here are the sources, or rather the matter, of much of his love poetry. We could say in fact that Catullus' Lesbia love poetry boils down to being either an attempt to express his conception of love and his aspirations in it; or to an attempt to communicate the wonderfully significant trivia of an affair going well or only marginally badly; or to an attempt to express feelings consequent upon a knowledge of failed ideals. But that of course is vastly to over-simplify. And one doesn't boil down poetry. We must shift our mode of approach.

It is vital … for us to respond to the fact that Catullus' love poetry springs from his life; it is vital to remember that poetry for Catullus was a medium of communication. But we must not become too focused on what is communicated—on content rather than form, in so far as these two are separable. Certainly we must not fall a prey simply to abstracting and eulogizing Catullan ideas, ideals, and feelings. Unconventional and remarkable as these may have been, they will hardly have been unique or unrivalled. Other people before Catullus loved and hated simultaneously—and indeed virtually said as much. If we want to find out what is truly great and unique about Catullus, we must study the process whereby Catullan life his thoughts and feelings, are transmuted into art. We must study his different methods of fixing the chameleon nature of feelings, the intangible quality of moments, the indefinable essence of an ideal, in the enduring substance of literature.

2. The importance of Lesbia

There is one general feature of Catullus' Lesbia love poetry that we must notice. It is a strikingly original feature which stands out but which is insufficiently remarked. Whereas Catullus the lover of Clodia is special but not of momentous importance, Catullus the poet-lover of Lesbia is unique in his time and incalculably important. Catullus is, so far as we can judge, the first poet in Greek or Latin who decided to write about a particular love-affair in depth in a related collection of poems. Compare and contrast two influential predecessors, the archaic Greek poetess Sappho and the Alexandrian epigrammatist Meleager. The former of course said startling and original things about love in startling and original ways; it is likely enough too that she addressed numbers of poems to favourites like Anactoria and Atthis. Meleager writes numerous epigrams to Zenophila—and Heliodora, and the boy Myiscus. But a profound, systematic, and continuing exploration of a single relationship through poems which relate to and illuminate each other—this is not in these lover-poets' manner or nature. It is not in any ancient poet's manner or nature before Catullus. There is no precedent in ancient literature for Catullus and Lesbia.

And 'Lesbia' we might say (to look ahead for a moment) is Catullus' single most important bequest to Latin (and subsequent) literature. For after Catullus numerous lover-poets found that they too were irresistibly committed to loving a figure like Lesbia and unavoidably compelled to write related cycles of poems about her. Some indeed had to enhance or perhaps invent all-engulfing love-affairs about which then perforce to write. Such can be the influence of art on art and art on life. Such was the influence of Catullus' Lesbia poetry; and a study of the great Latin love poets properly starts with him. Catullus' poems relating the ecstasy, suffering, and ambivalences of a romantic commitment to one dominating mistress set the fashion for other such poetry. And all this, together with the love poetry of anti-romantic reaction, forms a coherent genre of literature: Latin Love Poetry.

3. The Lesbia Epigrams

It is clear that Catullus experimented with different methods of communicating the feelings of love. Interestingly, his most original work is (I think) not his best. I start by looking at his most original work, the Lesbia epigrams. (For convenience's sake I refer to poems '69-116', which are all in elegiac metre, as the 'epigrams', and to poems '1-60', which are in a variety of lyric metres, as the 'polymetrics'.)

Catullus had remarkable ideals in love; he was profoundly interested in the strange and conflicting emotions of love. It is natural that he should want to analyse these ideals and feelings in his poetry. It is also natural, incidentally, that this desire to analyse should become more acute when reality began more obviously to fall short of ideals. That is simple psychology. It is when ideals are might-have-beens that one is impelled to analyse them; it is the feelings consequent upon failure that one scrutinizes, morbidly and obsessively. In the optimism of a present happiness ideals are an irrelevant abstraction and feelings too natural for analysis.

Catullus attempts to analyse ideals and feelings in the epigrams. The desire to analyse (usually morbidly) fuels a succession of poems in this part of his work. Such poems make up most of the Lesbia epigrams. And it is only in the epigrams that we find such analyses. The typical Lesbia epigram is therefore analytical, endeavouring to isolate what it was that was in the lovers' grasp, what it was that went wrong, what were the feelings that were then in consequence generated.

Catullus' methods in these poems are startlingly original. He takes over but transforms the traditional erotic epigram In the hands of the Greek epigrammatists like Callimachus or their Roman imitators like Q. Lutatius Catulus this had been a vehicle of wit, pathos, or sentiment. Typically it enacted or suggested some often stock little scene or drama which was brought to a neat and pointed end. Epigram's structure lent itself naturally to antithesis (hexameter alternates with pentameter, couplet with couplet, and so on) and this was regularly used to enhance the pointed pathos, sentiment, or wit. Note for instance the following piece by Philodemus, a contemporary of Cicero:

'I know, graceful girl, how to kiss when I am
   kissed,
and again I know how to bite when I am
   bitten.
Don't pain me too much—someone who loves
   you.
Don't wish to provoke the grievous anger of
   the Muses against you.'
So I continually cried and forewarned
but you were as deaf to my words as is the
   lonian sea.
So now you wail and weep mightily.
I sit in Naias' lap.

Philodemus uses the antithetical pattern of pentameter and hexameter in the first couplet to emphasize the range of his potential amorous response: reciprocation or retaliation as the occasion demands. And he organizes antithesis in the structure as a whole. At the exact turning-point in the poem we are greeted with the surprise that the first four lines were in fact quoted speech from a past occasion, a warning that, in the event, has been unheeded (the ancient reader or hearer of course did not get the clue provided by modern quotation marks). Past time is contrasted neatly with present time. The final couplet provides a typically epigrammatic conclusion. Philodemus' present happy state is sketched, and the first girl's folly dramatically (in the literal sense of the word) demonstrated. Again antithesis of hexameter and pentameter accentuates the effect.

This is the form that Catullus chooses for his analytical poetry. But his handling of it transforms it. He almost entirely expels all the dramatic element. The suggestions of situation (as in Philodemus' poem) or other little enacted scenes … which typified the genre—these are all jettisoned. Catullus in fact leaves himself with just the bare bones of the epigram form. His motives are comprehensible and recoverable. The epigram thus laid bare offered him opportunities not only for succinct analytical statement; he could also exploit the antithetical structure for his own ends. By (for example) balancing his own ideas against a common view of mankind he could point and emphasize his own originality just as Philodemus accentuates his own felicity by putting it in the balance with the misery of the heedless girl.

However, having evolved himself a clever and promising form, what language was Catullus to use? Given that the kind of whole love that he aspired to was hardly a familiar phenomenon, its analytical expression naturally presented problems. He had to evolve his own vocabulary. One method that he hit upon I have already hinted at. Since Roman marriage was founded in theory upon principles of mutual consent and commitment, principles which were basic to Catullus' conception of love, marriage might provide him with some of his needs; and (as we shall see) it did.

But only rather special occasions could be served in this way. Catullus needed a more general vocabulary of commitment. Now if Rome lacked a vocabulary for profound commitment in love, it did have a highly developed code, and therefore language, of social commitment. And here Catullus found more of what he was looking for.

Rome was in essence an aristocratic society and possessed an elaborately developed code of social conduct, a code determining the mode and standards of relations and obligations among its upper classes. All aristocratic societies evolve such codes: norms of morality and responsibility upon whose general acceptance (in the relevant classes) they depend for their cohesion, indeed existence. These norms are of course ultimately founded only upon convention; but they are so socially vital that they gather an aura of untouchability, even sacrosanctity. And a virtually technical terminology grows up, a terminology of 'proper behaviour': a vocabulary of highly and particularly charged words, capturing the obligations of aristocracy.

The Roman social code was deeply felt and, as a rule elaborately practiced. Virtually every page of the correspondence of Cicero (to name one obvious source) attests both code and terminology. I mention here simply the essential elements. Fides ('fidelity', 'integrity') was, or should be, the foundation of all actions and relationships; one conducted oneself in accordance with pietas ('sense of loyalty', 'conscientiousness'). One had a profound sense of officium ('service', 'dutifulness'); one was pleased, indeed compelled, to find and to display gratia ('favour'). Embracing and applying all these and other ideas was the extensive, sometimes very formal relationship connoted by amicitia: a complex and profound 'friendship' implying at best mutual obligation, mutual affection, and mutual pleasure. Amicitia was, among the Roman aristocracy, the essence of any proper relationship, private or public, business or pleasure. So: fides, pietas, officium, gratia, amicitia: these and other such ideas are the bases of Roman aristocratic conduct and the pillars of its society. (The English glosses are of course woefully inadequate. The nuances of a vocabulary of correct social conduct are very hard to recover and even harder to translate succinctly, once the society in question has vanished or changed.)

It is this language, the highly-charged language of Roman aristocratic fellowship, that Catullus tried to adapt to the purpose of communicating what he saw as important aspects of love. It was an unconventional tactic, but in a way, in the circumstances, natural enough. Lovers had not yet worked out a language of mutual commitment; society had, so Catullus used it. (In an analogous way, English love poets have availed themselves of the language of Christian devotion and commitment.) It is worth stressing, I think, that there is not really any question here of metaphor. Catullus did actually conceive of love or part of love as a form of amicitia; he did actually think that love ought to involve the sort of ideals and standards that were inherent or theoretically inherent in the aristocratic code; and therefore he used that language. The procedure was rather faute de mieux and liable perhaps to incongruity as well as vagueness: there must always have been a danger of prosaicness, of heaviness, in using words like officium and pietas of love. But because the aristocratic code involved ideas and terms which matched or closely approximated to Catullus' own feelings about love, it was a logical step to talk in the same way—without any thought of metaphor.

I ought to take this opportunity to refute explicitly one highly misleading statement—that in the Lesbia epigrams Catullus uses the 'Vocabulary of Political Alliance', 'the (almost technical) terminology of the workings of party politics and political alliances at Rome', 'the metaphor … of a political alliance'. The origin of this seemingly incredible claim (what could induce a romantic lover-poet to picture his relationship metaphorically in terms of the workings of party politics?) is easy to uncover—and to explain. And it has its interest. True, the language of Catullus' Lesbia epigrams does closely resemble the language used by Roman politicians. But that is for a simple reason. Men in political life also used the language of aristocratic commitment and obligation; and they did this very naturally. In Roman society government was almost exclusively in the hands of a technically amateur aristocracy; there was no professional machinery of political parties as we know them; there was no profession of politics in the sense that we would mean it. Nobles formed alliances and understandings with each other (which might indeed have the effect of parties) following the normal procedures of their society and class, and in theory respecting the usual obligations and standards; and when 'new men' like Cicero came along they fell into the pattern of their betters. Political life in Rome was, in origin and essence, an extension of the normal life of aristocratic society or rather just one department of it. And naturally therefore it followed, or purported to follow, the traditional code of behaviour; and naturally it used the customary terminology: amicitia, officium, etc. Political life and Catullus simply had a common source for their terminology. But while politics, being an increasingly cynical business, tended to debase it, Catullus tried to protect and exalt it.

So: to express some of his unconventional ideas about love Catullus sought to adapt the still emotive language of aristocratic obligation; and he deployed it in a stripped-down epigram form. I begin with a convenient but not the most obvious example: poem '75'.

huc est mens deducta tua mea Lesbia culpa
atque ita se officio perdidit ipsa suo,
ut iam nec bene uelle queat tibi, si optima
   fias,
nec desistere amare, omnia si facias.

Lesbia, by your wrongdoing my mind has
   been forced so far

and by its own dutifulness so destroyed itself,
that now, should you become a paragon, it
   could have no affection for you;
and whatever you should do, it could not but
   go on loving you.

In this poem Catullus confronts and attempts to analyse despairing, ambivalent feelings. He reports the confusion of his present mental state, seeking to identify the components of that confusion; and he reports the source of the confusion. We may compare the famous and lauded analysis of ambivalence, poem '85':

odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
   nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

I hate and love. Perhaps you ask why I do
   this?
I do not know; but I feel it happen and am in
   torment.

But '75' is a more probing analysis of a more complex ambivalence.

In the second couplet of '75', Catullus informs us that even if Lesbia should become a paragon, he could not now feel 'affection' for her; but nothing she might do could stop him 'loving' her. The source of this ambivalence is stated in the first couplet; the second couplet is all in consequence of (ut) the first.

In part the ambivalence is due to the effect on Catullus' mental state of Lesbia's 'wrongdoing', culpa (culpa embraces the notions of blame, offence, and more particularly sexual infidelity); and in part it is due to the effect of his own 'dutifulness'. It should be stressed that both of these items have contributed to both aspects of the ambivalence; that is the implication of the syntax. Only if we appreciate this shall we appreciate the full message of the poem.

Thus the consequence of Lesbia's 'wrongdoing' (line 1) is to be seen in the fact that Catullus is incapable of 'affection' and in the fact that he remains irrevocably passionate about her (we infer that 'loving' means in particular 'passionately loving': see below). The second part of this is striking, though comprehensible. Other people besides Catullus have found that a lover's faithlessness far from diminishes passion, indeed leads to it. More striking perhaps are the implications of line 2. Why should Catullus' own 'dutifulness' lead to his ceasing to feel 'affection' for Lesbia but his continued 'loving'? That seems not so clear. We need a better understanding of terms like bella uelle and officium. Does Catullus guide us towards such an understanding?

We should first note how the antithetical potential of the epigram form is being exploited to point meaning. bene uelle is formally contrasted with amare; the terms are presumably semantically contrasted. bene uelle seems to cover emphatically unsexual affection; so we may assume amare covers strongly sexual love: passion. Antithesis in short helps to confine the general and vague term amare to a specific function.

But we need more help, with bene uelle and officium. We need in fact the knowledge that a contemporary reader would have had instinctively and which Catullus presupposes. Both bene uelle and officium are emotive and charged terms within the language of aristocratic obligation. officium covers the duty, the service that one undertakes for amici—that one delights to undertake for them; and it covers one's sense of that duty. It also carries with it a clear implication of reciprocity: officium by definition deserves, and within sincere amicitia duly obtains, officium in return. Not so clearly in Catullus' relationship with Lesbia. And bene uelle is one of the characteristic terms to express the generous feelings that underlie the relationship of amicus to amicus. It is one of the definitions and one of the splendours of amicitia that one bene uult, one feels a disinterested warmth for an amicus.

The technical terms show the framework in which Catullus is thinking: amicitia; the terms were so particular and resonant for a Roman that this patent fact did not have to be stated. Once upon a time, we gather, Catullus had believed that a very special bond of fellowship existed between himself and Lesbia—their own amicitia. Because of that belief he assiduously displayed his 'dutifulness'. Evidently, however, Lesbia failed to reciprocate in the manner demanded by such a relationship. The belief in the existence of the relationship had therefore to be abandoned. That meant inevitably that the special generosity of feeling (beneuolentia) that he had felt or thought to feel for Lesbia had also to go; for it can only exist in such a relationship. But passion of course could persist, being independent of amicitia; and human nature being human nature, no doubt it would. The logic of the poem becomes clearer.

So Lesbia's failure to reciprocate officium—and her culpa—led to Catullus' abandonment of belief in amicitia and to the results consequent upon that, chronicled in the second couplet. But Catullus phrases himself more distinctively, and pathetically, than our summary implies: 'My mind has so destroyed itself by its own dutifulness.' Catullus acknowledges that the idea of amicitia had been his, that he had behaved with regard to Lesbia according to the exalted standards of a relationship of his creation, of his imagination. His unilateral observance of this ideal led to the demonstration that such an ideal was unfounded; Catullus set himself up for his cruel disappointment and in part therefore caused it. All this he admits, in the powerful and pathetic second line.

I turn now to the famous poem '76'. Again we find a poem riven with ambivalence: a man loathing a relationship has to pray to the gods to help him break it. There is (on more than one account) an interesting comparison to be made between '76' and '8'. … In poem '8' Catullus tries to come to terms with Lesbia's loss of interest in him; in '76' he tries to effect a conclusion to the affair himself and come to terms with that. The situation of '76' is more tragic than that of '8'; its utterance is far more bitter suiting its strange and unkind birth.

siqua recordanti benefacta priora uoluptas
est homini, cum se cogitat esse pium,
nec sanctam uiolasse fidem, nec foedere in
   ullo
diuum ad fallendos numine abusum homines,
multa parata manent in longa aetate, Catulle,
ex hoc ingrato gaudia amore tibi.
nam quaecumque homines bene cuiquam aut
   dicere possunt
aut facere, haec a te dictaque factaque sunt.
omnia quae ingratae perierunt credita menti.
quare iam te cur amplius excrucies?
quin tu animo offirmas atque istinc teque
   reducis,
et dis inuitis desinis esse miser?
difficile est longum subito deponere amorem,
difficile est, uerum hoc qua lubes efficias:
una salus haec est, hoc est tibi peruincendum,
hoc facias, siue id non pote siue pote.
o di, si uestrum est misereri, aut si quibus
   umquam
extremam iam ipsa in morte tulistis opem,
me miserum aspicite et, si uitam puriter egi,
eripite hanc pestem perniciemque mihi
quae mihi subrepens imos ut torpor in artus
expulit ex omni pectore laetitias.
non iam illud quaero, contra me ut diligat illa,
aut, quod non potis est, esse pudica uelit:
ipse ualere opto et taetrum hunc deponere
   morbum.
o di, reddite mi hoc pro pietate mea.

If there is any pleasure for a man in recollecting his former kindnesses—
when he reflects on his conscientiousness,
that he has not outraged sacred fidelity, nor in
   any pact
misused the gods' authority in order to
   deceive his fellow men—
then there are many pleasures laid up in store
   for you Catullus,
in the long life ahead of you,
resulting from this love of yours that has
   received no thanks.
For whatever men can do in the way of
   kindness of word or deed for anyone
this you have done, kindnesses of word and
   deed.
But it's all been thrown away, an investment
   in a thankless heart.
Wherefore, why will you now torture yourself
   further?
Why do you not stiffen your resolve, bring
   yourself back
and cease to be wretched in despite of
   heaven?
It is hard suddenly to set aside a long love.
It is hard. But achieve it in any way you can.
This is your one deliverance, it must be
   completely won.
Do this—whether it is possible or not.
Gods, if it is your wont to pity, if ever
you have brought help at the last to people
   even in the hour of death,
look at me in my wretchedness and if I have
   lived an unstained life
tear out from me this disastrous disease
which creeping to the extremities of my limbs
   like a numbness
has driven all joy from my heart.
I do not now ask that she should return my
   love,
or want to be what she cannot be, decent.
I pray that I may be healthy, and set aside
   this foul disease. Gods, grant me this, for
   my conscientiousness.

Our first reaction to the beginning of this poem may be one of incredulity. Catullus may seem to be associating himself with people who are in general charitable, conscientious, faithful, and scrupulous; if (he seems to be saying) there is pleasure for such saintly folk in mulling over their goodness, there is pleasure in store for him. The suggestion of possible pleasure is of course ironical. But that does not affect the pretentiousness of the apparent claim.

Things are not as bad as they seem. In the sixth line Catullus limits the range of his own virtue to his love-affair: 'there are many pleasures … for you … resulting from this love of yours'; and it is in fact a very particular company of virtuous people with whom he is associating himself in the first five lines: those who have been virtuous in the particular relationship of 'amicitia.' For virtually all the key words in 1-6 (benefacta, plus, sancta fides, and indeed ingratus; cf. gratia) are part of the semi-technical terminology of aristocratic obligation and therefore evoke that particular situation. benefacta (cf. beneficia, benefacere, benigne facere) is the only term yet to be fixed as semi-technical: benefacta are the 'kindnesses' that earn one amici, that keep amici, that are naturally and without solicitation exchanged between 'friends' in formal and informal ways.

Catullus means therefore in the opening lines of '76' that if anyone can have pleasure from pondering conscientious behaviour in amicitia, he can; he, if anyone, has displayed that kind of pietas. This he does mean to claim: for he has indeed faithfully observed a very special amicitia, one he himself conceived, a relationship of affection and loyalty with a lover. And what is more, he persisted for a long time in the face of lack of proper reciprocity, a leek of due gratia: ex ingrato amore. Here is the same sort of statement as in '75' and the same plaint; and Catullus adapts the same type of language to communicate it, only here more extensively.

But now he wishes to end the ill-starred affair. The rest of the poem shows Catullus trying to accomplish and come to terms with such an end, describing the feelings and thoughts involved. So it is a dynamic rather than a static analysis of feeling—and more besides. The poem enacts Catullus declaring and trying to impose his will upon intense and ambivalent shifts of feeling. We seem to witness this actually happening. Note particularly the questions at lines 10-12 and the prayer at 17, all revealing wavering of purpose. In a sense therefore the poem is, as well as dynamic, dramatic (in the literal sense of the word)—and very immediately so. It almost seems to be itself a drama, an emotional event actually happening, rather than an artistically composed re-enaction.

It is this immediacy that is the cause of certain poetical faults. Catullus is not distanced from feeling in the way that an artist should be, and emotion runs away with language producing laxity of expression, incoherence, and confusing hyperbole.

Our account of lines 1-6 was certainly right. But an initial misunderstanding was forgivable. Catullus leans very heavily on an instinctive appreciation of the scope of his amicitia vocabulary. We eventually grasp what he means but the poem's composition in those lines scarcely compels a proper understanding. At line 7 expression is even more lax and more liable to mislead: nam quaecumque homines …, 'whatever men can do …' Catullus actually says here (whatever he meant) that any good in word or deed that men can perform for anyone (cuiquam), this he has done. The range of the couplet is in fact strictly (whatever the intention) unlimited. Note too for example si uitam puriter egi (19). In what sense has Catullus led a spotless life? Presumably (or perhaps) he means: in regard to Lesbia. But he does not say so. Nor is there any technical amicitia nuance to puriter which might help to define and confine it. The effect of such language is to imply an outrageous and implausible self-righteousness. And there is much else at the end of the poem that is clearly emotional and unmeant hyperbole—but I do not think I need to labour examples.

A study of poem '76' once more shows us Catullus attempting to analyse feelings; and once more it shows us him adapting the language of amicitia to that end. Interestingly, too, it is dramatic: the analysis and description of feeling occur within an action. But it is a poetic failure. It is itself more of a dramatic event, an emotional and fairly direct description of feeling, than an artistically created drama (examples of which we shall see below). The latter is, the former obviously is not, promising poetry. Because it is an event rather than art we find laxity of expression incompatible with art. We see here, I think, one obvious danger of 'analytical poetry'. A poet who deals with emotions so directly risks letting emotion run away with expression.

In the course of poem '76' Catullus uses the word foedus ('treaty' or 'pact'). This is a vital word in Catullan love poetry, but unfortunately its implications are disputed. We must identify them. The study will lead us into a general and important topic.

Foedus is used in contexts of amicitia, but it is reserved for occasions when an exceptionally strong or formal degree of commitment is at issue. Just as international treaties, foedera, were 'ratified by solemn oaths and to break them was perjury', so the same sanctity applied or should apply to pacts of social obligation. For this reason it is much rarer than other amicitia- terminology, indeed hardly classes as one of the usual technical terms.

A good place in which to observe its special force as a term of aristocratic obligation is Cicero's letter to Crassus making his peace with the 'triumvirs'. Here Cicero demonstrably intends an especial solemnity, indeed has the full sense 'treaty' in mind: 'I want you to consider that what I write here is going to have the force of a treaty (foedus) not of a letter; and what I promise you and take upon myself, I shall observe most sacredly (sanctissime) and pursue most diligently.' We can note too the pained passion with which the exiled Ovid reproaches a friend who scorned the 'sacred and venerable name of amicitia' while others sympathized with him who had 'not been joined by any foedus'. It suits Ovid, who has an axe to grind, to propound a very elevated view of friendship, and foedus in these circumstances is a useful term. And Catullus, in poem '76' (line 3), clearly thinks that when a foedus exists between amici it is literally sacred, protected by the authority of the gods. He himself (he implies) has honoured his relationship with Lesbia as though it were not only amicitia but special and sanctified amicitia: a foedus.

But foedus has another and very particular function in Catullus. He uses it directly or indirectly of marriage. His two certain examples of this occur in his mythological poem on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, poem '64'. Line 335: nullus amor tali coniunxit foedere amantes,/ qualis adest Thetidi, qualis concordia Peleo ('no love ever joined lovers in such a foedus'—as Peleus' and Thetis' love did); and line 373: accipiat coniunx felici foedere diuam,/ dedatur cupido iam dudum nupta marito ('let the husband receive the goddess [i.e. his bride] in happy foedus …'). Now this is a use which is well paralleled after Catullus; but as far as I can judge it is unparalleled before him. It seems therefore that the idea of referring to a marriage as a foedus is Catullus' invention—and that later poets are following his precedent. This is plausible enough. Foedus is a particularly happy choice for the marriage of Peleus and Thetis and so may well have been made specially for it: the connotations of foedus suitably stress the unparalleled degree of reciprocity and sanctity that this romantic, mythical marriage (in Catullus' version) apparently possessed.

Foedus therefore can refer in Catullus to an ideal—'pact' of marriage. Let us put this fact on one side for a moment, and consider another fact. At times Catullus talks of his own relationship with Lesbia in terms of marriage; marriage, like amicitia, afforded him vocabulary to express things in love which were difficult to express in normal erotic terminology. I mentioned this above, and we shall shortly observe a striking and extended example in poem '68'. But note too poem '70':

nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle
  quam mihi, non si se luppiter ipse petat.
dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti,
  in uento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.

My woman says that she prefers to marry no
   one
rather than me, not if Jupiter himself should
   court her.
That's what she says: but what a woman says
   to her passionate lover
ought to be written on the wind and on
   rushing water.

One does not imagine that Lesbia meant her stated preference to marry Catullus too seriously, or that she thought very deeply about it. It will have been a casual, romantic indulgence. Why does Catullus react so bitterly, so scornfully? Because, presumably, he did take the idea seriously; he did have a belief that his life with Lesbia might be, or have been, in very true senses, in the best senses, if not in literal senses, marriage. (Notice incidentally how epigram's antithetical structure is again exploited: the second couplet is formally opposed to the first, and the contrast between protestation and reality thereby highlighted.)

So we now have two facts. (1) Catullus idiosyncratically and originally refers to an apparently ideal, mythical marriage as a foedus. (2) He is inclined to imagine his own love-affair as an ideal marriage. We must therefore interpret a poem in which he talks of his own affair as a foedus with care.

'Poem 109':

incundum, mea uita, mihi proponis amorem
  hunc nostrum inter nos perpetuumque fore.
di magni, facite ut uere promittere possit,
  atque id sincere dicat et ex animo,
ut liceat nobis tota perducere uita
  aeternum hoc sanctae foedus amicitiae.

You declare, my life, that this our love
will be between us 'delightful' and 'eternal'.
You gods, make it that she be capable of
   promising truly,
and that she say this candidly and from the
   heart.
Then we may be able throughout life to carry
   through
this eternal pact of inviolable friendship.

Here Catullus is (as in '70') echoing a declaration of Lesbia's: 'this love between us will be delightful, eternal.' He seems to be repeating her actual words: incundus ('delightful') was probably an a la mode word at the time for pleasant things or experiences, the sort of word Lesbia would use. Catullus clearly regards this rather glib declaration with scepticism However, if she should mean what she says, and mean it fully—and Catullus prays to that end fervently—then it would be possible for them to live out the Catullan ideal of a reciprocal relationship. And as he makes this point Catullus attempts an analytical description of that ideal: tota.… uita/aeternum hoc sanctae foedus amicitiae.

A key concept is 'eternity' and the basis of the definition seems, as was to be expected, to be the complex of ideas contained in amicitia (mutual pleasure, trust obligation, etc.). However amicitia is here exalted by the epithet sanctae—so that it is now something explicitly beyond the range of normal amicitia; and it also seems in some way to be transformed by foedus. Now it is possible that Catullus simply means to emphasize the sanctity and commitment of this special amicitia by using a word allied to the terminology that was reserved for exceptional cases. But considering that he is here effectively defining his ideal, considering that ideas of marriage seem to have been very close to his ideal, and considering that he elsewhere uses foedus of the pact of an ideal marriage—then I think that that is likely to be the intended significance here. Catullus is talking therefore of a 'marriage-pact of friendship', a lively phrase which connotes (among much else) a reciprocal relationship possessing the solemnity of marriage but founded on true affection.

If my interpretation is right, which all the pointers suggest it is, then we have an important observation to make. Catullus is, I think, directly confronting the problem facing the Roman lover which I mentioned at the end of the last chapter [not reprinted here], and going some way towards defining a solution. I remarked how some Roman lovers must have been tantalized to see that on the one hand an institution existed (marriage) which was suited to the solemnizing of whole love-—but it was abused; meanwhile, on the other hand, relatively whole love was confined to precarious, unformalized circumstances (the demi-monde). The 'marriage-pact of friendship', the foedus amicitiae, seems to me to be proffered as an at least partial resolution of this paradox. Achieving this a lover would achieve a fair synthesis: a relationship that was permanent, reciprocal, solemnized, and loving and sincere. And it is Catullus' belief, or at least it is his prayer, that it can be achieved.

Before we leave this poem let us note how Catullus, who obviously questions Lesbia's ability to live up to such an ideal, adumbrates his own capability and commitment. The foedus is to be maintained tota uita; if Catullus calls Lesbia mea uita in that context, it is a simple but eloquent statement of where he stands.

It is probable that when foedus occurs in other Lesbia epigrams it is meant to suggest not just the pact of a special amicitia but the pact of ideal marriage. This may be true of poem '76' but if so the ambiguity (for that is what it would have to be) is hardly perspicuous. More significant is poem '87'.

nulla potest mulier tantum se dicere amatam
   uere, quantum a me Lesbia amata mea est.
nulla fides ullo fuit umquam foedere tanta,
   quanta in amore tuo ex parte reperta mea
   est.

No woman can say that she has been so truly
   loved
as my Lesbia has been loved by me.
There has never ever been such great fidelity
   in any pact
as has been discovered on my part in my love for you.

Catullus is again looking back, analysing the degree and kind of his past devotion. In the first couplet he expresses himself in simple terms, in terms that others might use (uere amare). But this is insufficient or liable to be misunderstood: the words are too common. So he defines what he means by uere amare in the second couplet.

Two features throw emphasis on this definition. First, antithesis. The conventional language of the first couplet, set in the balance with the very different language of the second, highlights the unconventional and particularly Catullan nature of that second couplet. Antithesis invites us to probe its implications. The second feature is an easy-to-miss apostrophe. As Catullus turns to clarify his special love for Lesbia, he (very suitably) switches from third-person description to a second-person address, to Lesbia. The message becomes personal and particular.

Two formal devices therefore call attention to the individuality of the definition in lines 3-4. Given this I feel sure that the particularly Catullan sense of foedus is operative. The language is of course essentially that of 'aristocratic obligation' and one can translate simply in those terms. Thus: 'No fidelity was ever in any pact (of amicitia) so great as that discovered in my love for you.' But that must also imply: 'No fidelity was ever in any pact so great as that discovered in the pact of my love for you.' Catullus implies a love-foedus, that is, his conception of a foedus; he alludes by a neat and sweet ambiguity to his vision of love as an ideal marriage.

To sum up so far. Catullus has been trying to describe complex ideas and feelings: a special degree and nature of love; feelings of injury consequent upon bitter disappointment, including (very characteristically) ambivalence. To communicate some of his ideals he has used the language of aristocratic obligation. I stress that 'metaphor' is not here the word to apply. Catullus actually means that he feels or felt for Lesbia a kind of amicitia. Of course his was an exalted amicitia to which the values and therefore the basic, unqualified terms of the more conventional variety might only approximate. But it was amicitia none the less. He has also found it relevant to suggest that his relationship was in some senses 'marriage' And it is perhaps wrong, or an over-simplification, to call this metaphor. Catullus means that his relationship had, or might have had, the best essence of marriage. His vision was marriage—albeit again in an exalted form.

So, two unexpected areas of life are providing language to analyse Catullan erotic ideals. Catullus also made a very interesting attempt to use a third area of life—this time metaphorically: the family. 'Poem 72':

dicebas quondam solum te nosse Catullum,
Lesbia, nec prae me uelle tenere louem.
dilexi tum te non tantum ut uulgus amicam,
sed pater ut gnatos diligit et generos.
nunc te cognoui: quare etsi impensius uror,
multo mi tamen es uilior et leuior.
qui potis est, inquis? quad amantem iniuria
   talis
cogit amare magis, sed bene uelle minus.

Once upon a time Lesbia you used to say that
 Catullus was the only lover you knew,

that you did not wish to possess Jupiter before
   me.
I loved you then not just as ordinary people
   love their girlfriends,
but as a father loves his sons and sons-in-law.
Now I know you. Wherefore, although I burn
   more fiercely,
you are much cheaper, more paltry in my
   estimation.
'How can that be?', you say. Because such
   injustice
compels a lover to love more, to feel the
   warmth of true affection less.

The similarities of this poem to '70' and particularly to '75' are obvious. They are interesting too: for at crucial points Catullus says not only more but rather different things, and in different ways.

The structure of '72' again offers an antithesis, 'then' (1-4) against 'now' (5-8); and the one sets in relief the other in the usual way. I look at the second half first. It contains a striking use of amicitia language.

Nunc te cognoui … Now Catullus knows the true nature of Lesbia. In consequence his physical feelings are more intense (that is interesting, somewhat unexpected, but one instinctively understands it; cf. '75', above, but the greater intensity here is to be noted); his respect for her character much less (a more natural reaction). The final couplet purports to explain this ambivalence (qui potis est). Here we switch to amicitia language. Unlike poem 75, this poem lays the final blame for loss of generous warmth of feeling (bene uelle) fairly and squarely on Lesbia: on actions of hers, or rather the spirit informing her actions (iniuria, 'injustice'). Iniuria is a crucial term: it is precisely what, in the language of aristocratic relations, will destroy amicitia, implying severe things about the intent of the offender. Catullus means that Lesbia has not just committed wrongs against him (i.e. acts of infidelity), she has committed them with such wilful and inimical intent that the wholeness of Catullan love (exalted amicitia) is now impossible. So warmth of feeling is gone; but passion persists—indeed increases.

The last couplet therefore adds the cause of Catullus' paradoxical dilemma. But we might note that it does not explain how or why it takes the form it does, which is rather what qui potis est leads us to expect. That is a pity. I should like to have seen Catullus' explanation of why infidelity and offence excite greater sexual passion in the lover. However, having added the cause, all Catullus really does is restate his ambivalent dilemma in a tauter, more intimate, though perhaps not fully successful paradox.

To turn to the first half of the poem—to 'once upon a time'. Lesbia was then all specious protestations of devotion. Catullus echoes her words in the first couplet to set in relief an analysis of his own sincere feelings at the same time. 3-4: 'I loved you then not just as ordinary people love their girl-friends, but as a father loves his sons and sons-in-law'—perhaps one of the most famous lines in Catullus It is unique and it is brilliant and it does not quite come off.

What Catullus is trying to do is to communicate an indefinable feeling of unequivocal, committed love. He resorts to simile to illustrate it. And, clearly, an unequivocal, committed love is what a father feels, often enough, for his sons and sons-in-law. (The presence of generos, 'sons-in-law', should not trouble us; as Fordyce ad loc. says, their inclusion 'reflects a traditional attitude which puts the sons-in-law within the head of the family's protective concern'.) But the equation cannot be quite true. Paternal love embraces all sorts of other things, all sorts of motivations and feelings, that a lover could not and would not want to have. Catullus really means that some of his love resembled some of a father's; he did not actually love Lesbia as a father loves his sons and sons-in-law. We must interpret the simile selectively, eliminating much of our natural response. It is hardly completely informative, and hardly a complete poetical success. But it is a fascinatingly original attempt by Catullus to express things arguably quite out of his time.

Catullus' work in the Lesbia epigrams was brilliantly original. But it is not his best poetry. There are criticisms to be made which have literary-historical as well as aesthetic relevance. First a relatively minor point.

Analysis like this in epigram, while benefiting from the pointed antithetical form, runs the risk (because of the extreme compression) of inexactness. Analysis is the job of prose and scientists. Catullus tries to be careful about his use of words but he falls into traps. For example his use of amor and cognates is careless (and confusion over this word is in the circumstances if most understandable also most undesirable). In poem '87' he uses it (I take it) of whole love; in '75' of one part of love, passion. In poem '72' in the space of two lines he actually uses it in both these senses and produces a flawed sententia in the process. Or take the lauded odi et amo (85): is the sense of amo clear there? And what is the force of excrucior? Again, is not some of the special Catullan terminology, in particular foedus, very liable to be misunderstood? Yes, demonstrably: people have misunderstood it repeatedly.

Description of feelings also runs another risk, that of too immediate involvement, leading not just to inexact but to incoherent expression (poem '76').

These one might say are minor quibbles considering the magnitude of Catullus' originality. My next point is more serious. I think that Catullus' venture in the epigrams was bound to fail as poetry more or less by definition. If that seems a bold statement, it is one that the practice of later love poets tacitly supports.

Analysis and poetry are essentially conflicting occupations. To define the constituent elements of ideas and feelings can hardly be the proper function of poetry. For if one succeeds in doing it, one will also have succeeded in confining words to a particular sense in a tight and static syntax. And that is the character of scientific or philosophical prose, whose job therefore analysis properly is. My remark above ('analysis is the job of prose and scientists') has more profound implications. The poetic art is to stimulate the imagination, to suggest not define. All great poetry is a dynamic not a static texture in which words can (as it were) move, combining and recombining to yield shifting aspects of meaning. Unlike a successful analysis a great poem is not the same thing each time one picks it up. Nuances have realigned to suggest new aspects and new colours.

The relevance and truth of these comments will be confirmed as we proceed. I conclude my remarks on the Lesbia epigrams by recalling one which was, in one discreet respect, different and arguably more interesting: poem '87'. This is an epigram which I think starts to come alive, to become real poetry. The point to appreciate is the sudden apostrophe in the second couplet. For his very individual description of devotion Catullus suddenly switches from third to second person, and addresses Lesbia. The effect of this unexpected apostrophe is to startle the reader into thinking about the apostrophized person, into thinking about Lesbia. It brings Lesbia's personality suddenly into the reckoning; into indeed the poem. The words are now, suddenly, in an emotive context: we cannot call them merely analytical; they are in the literal sense dramatic. They exist in an implicit, artistically created drama—words of idealism addressed to the woman who shatters that idealism. Pathos haunts their utterance, other resonances and adumbrations—and suddenly an epigram is poetry.

4. The Lesbia Polymetrics

Adapting the epigram form for analysis Catullus had by and large ejected the dramatic element that had typified the genre. He had attempted to analyse thought and feeling, exploiting the antithetical structure that the form offered. In his Lesbia polymetrics his practice is completely different, and from one point of view conventional. The poems remain dramatic: each one enacts, suggests, or reacts to some specific 'drama'. It should be stressed that these poems are artistically composed re-enactions, and not veritable events like poem '76'. Now we may in fact—I think we demonstrably do—learn as much or more about Catullus' love and feelings, but we learn it indirectly: through the interaction of personality with personality or personality with event within a dramatic context. The kind of phenomenon we observed fleetingly in poem '87' is the rule in the Lesbia polymetrics.

What we are observing then is that Catullus decided upon two radically different strategies of love poetry, basically practicing one in the polymetrics and the other in the epigrams. (This is a slight over-simplification, but true in essence.) He therefore drew a sharp distinction between polymetric and elegiac short poems that had hardly existed before. There is a reason why he divided his work in this way. The metres that he favoured in the Lesbia polymetrics (hendecasyllables and scazons) offer less opportunity for pointed antithesis, but they are relatively close to the natural rhythms of Latin speech. They therefore suit dramatic poems, poems that artistically enact life.

Now the approach of the polymetrics is as I say basically more conventional. The feelings informing them tend, too, to be less agonizcd than those analysed in the epigrams. But less agonized feelings are not necessarily less profound or complex; and (of course) a more conventional poetical strategy does not inevitably mean inferior poems. And in fact Catullus transmogrifies his inherited form.

I start by looking at poem '7'.

quaeris, quot mihi basiationes
tuae, Lesbia, sint satis superque?
quam magnus numerus Libyssae harenae
lasarpiciferis facet Cyrenis
oraclum louts inter aestuosi
et Batti ueteris sacrum sepulcrum;
aut quam sidera multa, cum facet nox,
furtiuos hominum uident amores:
tam te basia multa basiare
uesano satis et super Catullo est,
quae nec pernumerare curios)
possint nec male fascinare lingua.

You ask me, how many kisses
are enough for me, Lesbia, enough and to
   spare?
As many as is the number of grains of Libyan
   sand
that lie in Silphium-bearing Cyrene
between the oracle of sweltering Jupiter
and the sacred tomb of Battus of old.
Or as many as the stars that, when night is
   silent,
witness people's love-affairs.
To kiss you so many kisses
is enough and to spare for mad Catullus,
kisses which busybodies would not be able to
   reckon up
nor an evil tongue bewitch.

The poem is addressed to Lesbia, answering a question from her. It is phrased as a piece of persuasion, aimed at Lesbia in a specific context. Its expression should therefore (we might expect) be tailored to suit her personality and mood. The poem exists in a carefully adumbrated dramatic situation, and Lesbia is part of the drama and therefore part of the poem as she was in a much more rudimentary way a part of poem '87'. The whole poem is living in the way that the final couplet of '87' was.

Let us follow the drama—the persuasion—through. We must note that although the piece is an artistic creation, an artifice, it is absolutely vital to respond to it as it is designed: as a drama.

The opening two lines suggest Lesbia's original question, the occasion of the drama. Lesbia has apparently found her lover's lavish attentions (cf. poem '5') a mite too much of a good thing. 'Just how many kisses do you want?' she has asked with an edge of impatience. This is the basic, assumed fact governing the shape of the poem. The task of Catullus' persuasion is to win a slightly wearied woman back into good humour and compliance

His basic tactic in response is candour. To the impatient 'How many kisses?' he answers 'An infinity'. In other words, to a question 'Are you insatiable?' he answers 'Yes'. There is obvious potential appeal in such candour. And the way it is deployed and amplified makes it, we must suppose, quite disarming.

Catullus starts the poem lightly. It is kisses (basia) which seem to have got on Lesbia's nerves, so he immediately clowns with the word and with her irritable question. He humorously travesties the question she presumably asked, namely quot basia …?, producing the comically pompous version quot basiationes … ? (basium is the colloquial word for 'kiss'; basiatio is a coinage on the analogy of osculatio, a word of high diction; it is therefore a colloquial word got up in overformal clothes). In this way he removes any edge to the question, already making Lesbia smile at her own objection.

The subsequent lines express the idea of 'infinity', an infinity of kisses, in two images. Both images are in essence obvious and well-paralleled illustrations of innumerability. But the first, the image of the grains of sand (3-6), has been extraordinarily embellished with learned elaboration. The second, the picture of the stars (7-8), contrasts by virtue of its warm simplicity. Why two so very differently handled images to illustrate one basic idea? Because (and this is vital to appreciate) Catullus is shaping and amplifying his reply to suit Lesbia's personality. He is candidly saying 'infinity', i.e. I am insatiable', but phrasing it in ways that will particularly appeal to her. Since the poem is as it were trying to win a case with a particular and individual person that is the obvious explanation for such particular and individual phrasing.

In fact the allusive details of 3-6 are so thick—laid as to border on caricature. Catullus embroiders the simple notion 'desert sand' with extravagant vigour. He is striking a pose, to flatter and amuse Lesbia. She, it is assumed, has the doctrina to see and understand all the allusions provided by the doctus poeta; she also has the wit to see through them. She can appreciate the learned coinage lasarpiciferis, and the wit and learning in louis aestuosi; she can detect the allusion to Callimachus in Batti and admire the artfully contrived alliteration of s's in the description of the desert (hearing the sound of winds in sand). She also knows the limits to plausible embellishment. Catullus is writing to her presupposing, and adapting to, her cultivation, her aesthetic sensibility, and her sense of humour.

He also presupposes and adapts to a certain warmth and sentimentality. In 7-8 he switches to a tactic of 'appealing to the heart', dressing the idea of infinity in the tender image of the stars. We should note that it is Catullus who has made the image tender, and tender in a particularly relevant way. These are stars which 'witness the love-affairs of mankind when night is silent (and therefore conducive to furtiuus amor)'. The lines are attractively redolent of stolen love—love like Catullus' and Lesbia's. Catullus is, while saying 'an infinity', while saying in effect 'my love for you is insatiable', reminding Lesbia of the warm moments of their love-affair—tactfully and pertinently.

In 7-8, I suppose, is the centre of the poem's persuasion and the centre of the poem. But clearly one does not dally long over sentimentality with a woman like Lesbia. In line 9 Catullus returns swiftly to his note of clowning, concluding with a humorous reaffirmation of his insatiability. So many good things (the basia) might seem to be inviting nemesis in the shape of the malevolent spells of jealous ill-wishers. But the kisses will simply be too many to count and hence beyond such malevolence.

Such then are the tactics of Catullus' persuasion—a carefully packaged candour. First he casts the whole issue humorously (1); then cuts a dash (3 ff.); then he introduces tones of personal warmth (7-8), but finally returns swiftly to humour and clowning. We have watched these tactics in action; we have seemed to eavesdrop on a drama of persuasion. The poem offers us a living event transmuted into and immortalized by art.

And there is much to be learnt about the personality and psychology of the lovers from it: that should be clear. We have seen what Catullus regards as the right routes to Lesbia's good humour; and so the ingredients of the poem (humour, urbanity, extravagance, warmth, and a touch of sentimentality), and the proportion and ordering of those ingredients, must allow invaluable insight into the personalities of both Catullus and Lesbia and into how the two interact. In fact, if duly pondered, the poem tells us—indirectly—more about two people and their relations with one another than could ever be conveyed adequately by paraphrase. Or for that matter by analytical epigram.

Here is a point that we should identify clearly: the different potential as well as method of the dramatic poem compared with the analytical epigram. The poetical enactment of scene or situation can tell us things about feeling and personality that defy direct analysis. True, we are not given succinct and clear statement but things are adumbrated to us which statement could never encompass. We watch characters in a context and infer our knowledge. And language is expressive, not confined. The dramatic poem by giving its diction a living context encourages a subtle and suggestive verbal texture. That is richer than statement. One very simple example: amores in poem '7' occurring in a living exchange between Catullus and Lesbia and hinting persuasively at their stolen love is more suggestive, more emotive, more meaningful in the literal sense of that word) than any use of amor in any of the analytical epigrams.

Another fine and very interesting example of a dramatic poem is poem '8':

miser Catulle, desinas ineptire,
et quod uides perisse perditum ducas.
fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles,
cum uentitabas quo puella ducebat
amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla.
ibi illa multa cum iocosa fiebant
quae tu uolebas nec puella nolebat,
fulsere uere candidi tibi soles.
nunc iam illa non uolt: tu quoque impotens
   noli,
nec quae fugit sectare, nec miser uiue,
sed obstinata mente perfer, obdura.
uale, puella. iam Catullus obdurat,
nec te requiret nec rogabit inuitam.
at tu dolebis, cum rogaberis nulla.
scelesta, uae te, quae tibi manes uita?
quis nunc te adibit? cui uideberis bella?
quem nunc amabis? cuius esse diceris?
quem basiabis? cui labella mordebis?
at tu, Catulle, destinatus obdura.

My poor Catullus, do stop being foolish,
and what you see is gone, well realize it's
   lost.
Once upon a time the sun shone bright for
   you,
when you used to follow where she led
(a girl beloved by me as no girl will ever be).
Then, when there were those many playful
   intimacies,
which you so wanted and she was not averse
   to,
truly the sun shone bright for you.
Now she is disinclined. So you also,
   undisciplined fellow,
don't chase a fugitive, don't live in misery,
sear up, apply your mind resolutely, be firm.
Goodbye, girl. Now Catullus is being firm.
He won't seek you back nor ask favours from
   you thus unwilling.
But you'll be sorry when no one asks your
   favours.
Wretched girl, pity on you! What life awaits
   you?
Who will now approach you? Who will think
   you pretty?
Whom will you love now? Whose will you be
   said to be?
Whom will you kiss? trite whose lips?
But Catullus!—be fixed, be firm!

The poem suggests its dramatic background: Lesbia is finished with Catullus. One should not I think get the impression that Catullus regards this as the end to end all ends—the poem is very much tinged with humour which rather precludes such an interpretation. Nevertheless, Catullus must face the worst; and the poem conveys his consequent feelings and reactions. They are of course ambivalent. Catullus wants to be proud and firm in the separation; but he wistfully longs for a return to the old days.

The poem conveys these feelings (and all the subtle ramifications which I shall not try to paraphrase) by, precisely, dramatizing them. It is of course difficult to dramatize one man's ambivalence. But Catullus has found a way. His basic tactic is the self-address. A strong Catullus addresses a weak Catullus and the interaction of the two produces a lively and suggestive event. So again we have a drama (as in poem '7'), albeit ingeniously contrived; again we witness a piece of action, transmuted into art, from which we intuit our knowledge of feeling.

Strong Catullus bids Weak Catullus be sensible and realistic. He admits that once upon a time things were marvelous; he even evokes those days rather patronizingly (3 ff.): fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles …; and he manages to insinuate that the happiness of the time was not only at the expense of some Catullan dignity but regarded with less than total enthusiasm by Lesbia ('when you used to follow where she led'; 'intimacies which you so wanted and she was not averse to', 4 and 7). So Strong Catullus admits that things were once upon a time marvelous.… And the memory has been too much for him. Strong Catullus has become lost, at one with Weak Catullus in romantic nostalgia. He repeats his evocation of the time of bliss but now emphatically without the patronizing tone: 'truly the sun shone bright for you (8)'. Ambivalence, and how its emphases shift, is being clearly—dramatically—conveyed to us. It is worth noting that there was an earlier sign that Strong Catullus' strength was not all it might be. He was addressing Weak Catullus in the separated second person singular in these lines; but he could not dissociate himself from the affecting cri, line 5, 'beloved by me as no girl will ever be'. (nobis there may in fact be a true plural, 'beloved by us': Strong Catullus associates himself momentarily and as it were unwittingly with Weak Catullus in his adoration.)

However, Strong Catullus reasserts himself and utters a sterner admonition to be firm: nunc iam illa non uult, etc. (9-12). After this Catullus seems united in obduracy: uale puella … He turns and dispassionately—or perhaps, we should rather say, vindictively—evokes for Lesbia the implications of a mateless future, a future without Catullus. at tu dolebis, cum rogaberis nulla.! scelesta, uae te, quae tibi manet uita? … (14 f.). But again sentiment—the Weak Catullus—soon intrudes. The first and glaring equivocation is in fact already there in 13, 'nor ask favours from you thus unwilling (inuitam)'. That is after all a formidable qualification of the bald uale puella. And we soon feel Catullus palpably slipping into sentiment. It becomes more and more plain that Catullus fears the answer to the repeated questions (quis nunc te adibit? …) is not going to be 'no one', and more and more plain that he wishes it might be himself. Another stern admonition is then required from Strong Catullus: at tu, Catulle, destinatus obdura—the end of the poem. Not, we should imagine, of the conflict. How the conflict then progressed is and is meant to be anybody's guess. We have witnessed an intentionally inconclusive event, moments of Catullus' inner life externally dramatized: ambivalence in action.

And that I maintain is a better way to be apprised of the nature and complexity of ambivalence than to read an attempted analysis of it (even the spontaneously dramatic analysis that '76' offers; '76' is very interesting to compare with poem '8'). Of course the famous epigrams of ambivalence deal with a different degree—perhaps even kind—of ambivalence; but to an extent they are tackling the same subject and they do it, I maintain, demonstrably less successfully, certainly less poetically than poem '8'. Here in poem '8' Catullus again composes an event for us, characters in a context. The event has to be contrived with more artifice than in poem '7': this time it is not Catullus and another character on stage, but Catullus and himself, Catullus in two capacities. He has in fact taken great trouble to contrive drama, so we can see what store he set on the poetic medium of drama. And it works. We respond to the interaction of personality with personality, and personality with event, within a context, analogously to poem '7'. And we infer the necessary messages rather than listen to someone trying to state them. Again language is not confined but encouraged to expressiveness by a living context. fulsere … candidi soles for example (note that candidus has connotations of good fortune as well as brightness, whiteness, and beauty) evokes past happiness better than a thousand paraphrases or epigrams could analyse. It is at once actual and symbolic; it feeds the imagination. Or test the power of uere here and in poem '87'. Our present context gives it implications of deep wistfulness and in turn (in retrospect) irony. It is, literally, more meaningful here than in poem '87'—than it would be in any use outside a living context. And amata … amabitur, an emotional utterance of total love, with, in context, repercussions of irony and pathos; where can you find such a resonant and therefore meaningful use of amo in the epigrams? We note incidentally that the connotations are quite different from those of am ores in poem '7'—because the context is quite different. In both poems Catullus has, by constructing or adumbrating a drama, provided the basis and stimulus for a rich verbal texture—a poetic texture. That is something that an analytical epigram with its lack of context and its pursuit of precision cannot (by definition) do.

These are I think Catullus' best dramatic poems. But other polymetrics could have been selected to illustrate the technique. For instance poem '2', one of Catullus' most famous pieces:

passer, deliciae meae puellae,
quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere,
cui primum digitum dare appetenti
et acris soles incitare morsus,
cum desiderio meo nitenti
carum nescio quid lubet iocari,
et solaciolum sui doloris,
credo, ut tum grauis acquiescat ardor:
tecum ludere sicut ipsa possem
et tristis animi leuare curas!

Oh sparrow, my girl's darling!—
whom she is wont to play with, to hold in her
   bosom,
to whom she is wont to give her fingertip
   (you seek it)
and provoke eager pecks:
a favourite game for her
when her eyes shine with longing for me,
and a little solace for her anguish
to make her grievous passion abate—
Would that I could play with you as she
   does—
and alleviate the sad cares of my spirit.

(There is irony in doloris and grauis … ardor, and perhaps desiderio meo nitenti. I have emphasized 'grievous' in the translation in an attempt to bring out the tone.) Catullus and Lesbia are it seems perforce separated from one another; Lesbia is taking the separation better than Catullus. Through a witty address to Lesbia's pet bird Catullus manages to convey his current feelings: his pain at the separation which is considerably greater than Lesbia's, his rueful awareness of that fact that it is greater than Lesbia's; his jealousy of the fact that she can so easily divert herself in what should be her time of suffering; his jealousy of the way Lesbia casually disposes her affections; and so on. All this is wittily and tactfully communicated to Lesbia herself, and to us, via the dramatized address to Lesbia's pet.

Or take poem '11' (Furi et Aureli, comites Catulli). Here Catullus dramatizes a farewell to Lesbia that combines the bitterest of sarcastic repudiations with (I think) an appeal to ignore that repudiation. The feelings that inform such a poem and come across to us are of course highly complex. One could endeavour to spell it all out; but paraphrase would hardly encompass it all. That is one reason why Catullus composed in this dramatic way. A dramatic poem can embody extraordinary complexity, subtlety, or delicacy. It offers us life, transmuted into art: deftly selected scenes or moments artfully presented so as to stimulate an imaginative response. We share experience with the poet and thereby come to an intuitive appreciation of often inexpressible things. And that is a richer adventure than being told the expressible.

5. Aspects of 'Poem 68'

On one splendid occasion Catullus makes extensive use of myth in his love poetry. 'Poem 68' is probably the most extraordinary poem in Latin. It is clearly experimental in many respects and its quality highly uneven, laboured artificiality vying with sublimity. Not a small part of its extraordinariness lies in the disparate facets of Catullus' experience it covers: his relationship with Lesbia, the death of his brother. But I must confine my attentions to its function as a Lesbia love poem and in particular to the role played by the elaborate comparison with Laodamia and Protesilaus. And even here I must comment selectively. I quote some important passages.

is clausum lato patefecit limite campum,
isque domum nobis isque dedit dominae
ad quam communes exerceremus amores.
quo mea se molli candida diua pede
intulit et trito fulgentem in limine plantam
innixa arguta constituit solea,
coniugis ut quondam flagrans aduenit amore
Protesilaeam Laudamia domum
inceptam frustra, nondum cum sanguine sacro
hostia caelestis pacificasset ergs.
nil mihi tam ualde placeat, Ramnusia uirgo,
quod temere inuitis suscipiatur eris.
quam ieiuna plum desideret ara cruorem,
docta est amisso Laudamia uiro,
coniugis ante coacta noui dimittere collum,
quam ueniens una atque altera rursus hiems
noctibus in longis auidum saturasset amorem,
posset ut abrupto uinere coniugio,
quod scibant Parcae non longo tempore
   abesse,
si miles muros isset ad Iliacos.
(lines 67-86)

aut nihil aut paulo cui tum concedere digna
lux mea se nostrum contulit in gremium,
quam circumcursans hinc illinc saepe Cupido
fulgebat crocina candidus in tunica,
quae tamen etsi uno non est contenta Catullo,
rare uerecundae furta feremus erae,
ne nimium simus stultorum more molesti.
saepe etiam luno, maxima caelicolum,
coniugis in culpa flagrantem concoquit iram,
noscens omniuoli plurima furta louis.
atqui nec diuis homines componier aequum
   est—
(lines 131-41)

nec tamen illa mihi dextra deducta paterna
fragrantem Assyrio uenit odore domum,
sed furtiua dedit mire munuscula nocte,
ipsius ex ipso dempta uiri gremio.
quare illud satis est, si nobis is datur unis
quem lapide illa diem candidore notat.
(lines 143-8)

He opened up a fenced field with a broad
   path,
and he gave a house to me, and gave a house
   to a mistress,
a house where we might pursue the love we
   shared.
And my fair goddess betook herself there with
   gentle step;
she set her shining foot on the worn threshold,
halting, her sandal sounding—
Just as once upon a time burning with love
came Laodamia to the house of Protesilaus—
a house that was begun vainly, for not yet
   with holy blood
had a victim appeased the lords of heaven.
May nothing, maid of Ramnus [i.e. Nemesis],
   so mightily appeal to me
that it be undertaken rashly with our lords
   unwilling!
And how hungrily the altar desires the pious
   blood
Laodamia learnt, losing her husband:
compelled to loose her bridegroom from her

arms
before the coming of a first and a second
   winter
had satisfied their eager love in length of
   nights
so that, her marriage sundered, she might bear
   to live.
And that the Fates knew was close at hand
if once Protesilaus went to fight at Troy …
(67-86)

Hardly or not at all worthy to give place to
   her
she who is my light brought herself to my
   bosom.
Cupid, darting round on either side of her,
gleamed brightly in a saffron cloak.
And though she is not happy with Catullus
   alone
I shall bear with the affairs of my mistress,
   for they are rare and she is circumspect,
lest I should be too tedious, in the manner of
   boors.
Often even Juno, greatest of the heaven-dwellers
swallows burning anger due to her husband's
   infidelity,
knowing all-loving Jupiter's plenteous affairs.
And yet to compare men with gods is not
   right…
(131-41)

But she did not, conducted by her father's
   hand,
come to a house fragrant with Assyrian scent,
but granted me stolen favours in a night of
   wonder,
favours taken from her very husband's bosom.
And so it is enough if to me and only me is
   given
the day which she marks out with the whiter
   stone of luck.
(143-8)

Catullus is thanking a friend (Allius) for a service rendered. The service sounds relatively small; Allius put at his and Lesbia's disposal a house to make love in. But clearly what it meant to Catullus, the quality of the moments passed there (I shall come back to this), made the service in effect inestimable.

I start by looking at lines 70-2, quo mea se molli candida diua … These are in fact a fine example of Catullus' exploitation of dramatic situation, the technique of the Lesbia polymetrics; though here Catullus re-creates the drama in a report rather than an enactment. Lesbia is approaching the house lent by Allius; Catullus is already waiting within. We witness Catullus waiting. But the Lesbia he waits for seems positively numinous, a creature of dreams ('and my fair goddess betook herself there with gentle step. She set her shining foot on the worn threshold …'). We must ask, why? Why does she seem so numinous? The simple answer to that is: because that is how she seemed to Catullus at the time; because, to put it another way, of the special quality and effect of those particular moments. And Catullus now re-creates those moments for us, to impart understanding of them to us. Dramatic re-creation will give us an understanding of things hard to analyse.

The particularity of these moments is their condition of heightened expectancy. Catullus is in fact touching on a phenomenon which is probably familiar to all. It is by way of being a truth that expectation creates excitement, and excitement can magnify even mythicize the object of excited expectancy. Perhaps no beloved is ever quite so beautiful, so divine, as in the moments just before she arrives. That is a rather sombre but frequent fact of life that lovers with impressionable sensibilities have to face. That is anyway what Catullus is talking about. Lines 70-2 re-create his own romanticizing of Lesbia in the moments of expectation just before she arrived at the domus. And by re-creating the moments and the romanticizing, Catullus communicates to us an abundance of knowable but hardly expressible things: the power of romantic expectancy to magnify.

These lines in fact take us to a climactic and pivotal moment: the sound of Lesbia's shoe on the threshold. It is indeed a climactic moment, and it is pivotal. It is the high point of romance; but in seconds Lesbia will enter the house and then she will change. She must change. She will be a creature of flesh. However wonderful, she can hardly remain the candida diua. That was the creation of expectancy.

What Catullus now does (73 ff.) is remarkable. He holds the pivotal, climactic moment—through 58 lines. Lesbia's foot is frozen on the threshold while a massive simile (plus sundry diversions) develops: Laodamia. Why this huge simile? What does it represent?

For one thing it means (I suppose) that Catullus in his reexperiencing of the events of the domus clings very tenaciously to the last seconds of the period of expectancy. That must make us have our doubts or fears about how reality matched romantic expectations. It certainly creates suspense. More importantly it means that Catullus has not yet conveyed all he wants to convey about those final moments. He has dramatically evoked the scene and communicated understanding that way, but still there are things he wants to say which he senses are unsaid. Therefore he enlists the assistance of comparison and myth. Why particularly Laodamia? The basic answer to that lies in Catullus' vision of his relationship with Lesbia as marriage. His sense of expectation while waiting not only elevated Lesbia into a goddess; it also set a marriage dream into motion. Therein in fact had lain much of the magic of Allius' service: it had enabled the actualization, for a while, of that dream. Line 68 is crucial. In Catullus' eyes Allius had given them not simply a place for a clandestine meeting but: isque domum nobis isque dedit dominae, 'he gave a house to me and to a (or its or my) mistress.' domus connotes 'home', the home of man and wife; and though the interpretation of dominae is problematic I think it is certain that it refers to Lesbia and that it means 'mistress'. And it means 'mistress' not in the sense of 'mistress of a slave' but 'mistress of a house', 'the lady': in combination with domus, domina can hardly mean anything else. Allius' kindness therefore had allowed the Catullan fancy of marriage to take shape: Catullus was the dominus awaiting the arrival of a beloved domina. He was a romantic husband waiting for a divine wife. A wife, who was, too, like Laodamia.

In a way Laodamia selected herself. Traditionally she was the loving, passionate wife par excellence, the beautiful, faithful wife par excellence, devoted to her husband to the extent that life was insupportable without him. In fact without him she was literally unable to live: note 106 ereptum est uita dulcius atque anima/coniugium, 'marriage snatched away that was sweeter than life, sweeter than her soul'; note too line 84. Laodamia is one of the most touching and appealing figures from the resonant world of mythology, certainly the most appealing wife. She connoted more to someone familiar with mythology than could ever have been stated. That is why Catullus used myth at this point—and Laodamia in particular. Since he was trying to illuminate and to maintain the vision he had possessed of Lesbia as a romantic devoted wife, Laodamia did rather suggest herself.

But the myth obviously had other and discordant implications and Catullus has other and profounder purposes in using it. He in fact selected the story of Laodamia because it could serve two broad functions. It could illuminate and maintain a romantic vision, as I have just described. It could also simultaneously darker things. At this point it is vital to stress that the use of myth here is not allegory: there is no 'one for one' correspondence between what illuminates and what is illuminated. Rather, the myth generates many implications on various levels. That is its great value. I can of course only hope to point to a few of them here.

And to focus some of them, it will be useful to look ahead: to the point where Lesbia actually crosses the threshold. In a last burst of fancy Catullus describes her entry (131-4). And then in lines that are still tender and loving he confronts the truth (135-48). The magic of expectancy has (as we anticipated) dissipated and Lesbia is no longer—she no longer could be—the creature of dreams. She is not a goddess, not a mythical faithful wife, not a wife or domina at all (emphatically not), and not even faithful in her adultery to Catullus. All this is explicitly stated. But Catullus will not make a fuss or be tediously insistent. He loves her and it is enough. Indeed Lesbia, Lesbia the creature of flesh, is dearer to him than life itself. That is the sense of the very last lines of the poem: mihi quae me carior ipso est/lux mea qua uiua uiuere dulce mihi est, 'she who is dearer to me than myself, my light of life; while she is alive, life is sweet for me.'

What we witness here in fact (from 131 on) is the step-by-step collapse of the romantic vision started in 70-2, then maintained and amplified in the myth of Laodamia. All the wonderful things that Laodamia was, Lesbia is not after all and is said not to be. Nevertheless, Catullus loves her—a moving declaration. Let us note in particular the final pathetic irony that the poem delivers. In those last two lines of the poem Catullus affirms precisely the transcending fidelity and devotion that he had attributed to Laodamia and, therefore, wishfully to Lesbia. Compare those lines with lines 84 and 106 mentioned above. It almost sounds as if Catullus chose and narrated the Laodamia myth with the very intention of setting up his own romanticizing for a cruel fall. And that I think is in a way exactly what he did do.

I think simply that Catullus' choice and manner of telling Laodamia's story not only issues from a desire to maintain and amplify a romantic vision of Lesbia; it also evidences a simultaneous awareness in the romancer that the vision is fantasy and bound to collapse. The implications of the myth are too unerringly at odds with truth in crucial respects for Catullus not to have had some sense of the discrepancy from the beginning. The emotional sources of the myth are therefore quite literally ambiguous: romanticizing and insight. Its purpose is to communicate a romanticism compromised by a sense of more sombre reality. And Catullus means us (I think) to have some awareness of the ambiguity in his mythical comparison virtually from the start. As his praises of Laodamia mount, so our awareness of the incongruity of the comparison should mount; and so should our sympathy for Catullus who is also aware of the incongruity but trying to cling to a romantic vision.

Further thought supports this line of interpretation; and both the romanticizing and the pathetic self-knowledge implicit in the myth are more pronounced than I have perhaps so far suggested. In the moments of expectancy of 70-2 and the immediately ensuing myth, Catullus is not just generally assimilating Lesbia to a wife. He sees these moments more precisely as the culmination of a wedding and views the future of their whole relationship as a romantic mythical marriage stretching before them. The text is in this respect quite explicit.

The myth opens with Laodamia's arrival at Protesilaus' house as a bride; and that (the arrival at a domus) is the immediate point of contact between the situation of the myth and the situation of Catullus and l, esbia. And the implication that Catullus imagined specifically a wedding is confirmed by the sequel. When the romantic vision of the myth is demolished, the idea of a wedding is specifically rebutted: note lines 143ff.: nec tamen illa mihi dextra deducta paterna/fragrantem Assyrio uenit odore domum,/sed furtiua dedit mira munuscula nocte. (The mira nox refers I think to the night in the domus of Allius, and Catullus is here emphatically admitting that Lesbia was not then his bride.) So: the expectancy of 70-2 caused Catullus not just to compare Lesbia to a wife (and to a goddess, etc.) but to imagine those moments as the climax of a wedding, and the future of their relationship stretching before them as a whole romantic mythical marriage. Or rather as a marriage like Protcsilaus' and Laodamia's. The comparison is of course disastrously equivocal, as becomes clear when we view it in this more exact way. The marriage of Protesilaus to Laodamia was indeed one of the most romantic and tender in mythology. It was also uniquely tragic, doomed from its inception. And Catullus emphasizes that fact by inventing or highlighting a detail: the pax deorum, the agreement of the gods to the marriage, had not been obtained by sacrifice at the outset (75-6); hence inevitably the tragic end followed. So Catullus' choice of myth supports his romantic vision; but it also radiates disaster. A domus that was incepta frustra (74-5) is an unhappy illustration for someone imagining a romantic domus for himself and his beloved. Catullus wishes and tries to believe in his 'marriage' to Lesbia; and he knows it is doomed. His choice of so ambiguous a myth implies and communicates just that. There was in fact a presentiment of the fantasy marriage's doom already in the dramatic scene of 70-2. Lesbia's foot knocking on the threshold is, whatever else, an unlucky omen for a bride.

Catullus therefore both in his initial dramatic re-creation and in his myth dreams and sees through his dreaming. Recreated drama allows us to intuit more than could ever be encompassed by statement. And so does myth: this is something we have not met before. Like drama myth allows us to infer the inexpressible; it suggests, adumbrates (it does not dictate), stimulating and drawing upon our imaginative response. Like drama, too, myth provides a living context for diction, encouraging a rich verbal texture; I shall not even begin to try to paraphrase the implications and repercussions in context of (for example) coniugis, amore, and domum in lines 73-4. The use of myth to assist in the illumination of personal feelings is one of the original and great accomplishments of this poem.

6. Conclusion

I shall now try to summarize the achievements of Catullus as a love poet. The first must be, in a word, 'Lesbia'. Catullus is the first ancient poet to treat a love-affair with one commanding lover in depth, in a related collection of mutually deepening poems. This had simply not happened before. But it will now be the fashion. Art will imitate art and life will imitate art and we shall observe how Propertius finds himself compelled to write about Cynthia, Tibullus about Delia, and Ovid about Corinna. And before them we know that Varro of Atax wrote about a Leucadia and Cornelius Gallus wrote about Lycoris (Cytheris); but their works are unfortunately lost. In this respect alone Catullus' influence was enormous.

He experimented with different methods of love poetry, some more successful than others; and that meant that lessons were available to be learnt by the next generation. His analytical epigrams, in spite of their originality of form and language, were not successful poetry. But they did pithily advertise his remarkable aspirations and feelings in love. The social implications of these aspirations I shall touch on in chapter four. But let us here note that the epigrams brought into the conscious awareness of succeeding poets something they might only have been unconsciously aware of: a sense of the great ambivalences that love can engender. And (I now make explicit a point so far only implicit) they promulgated the principles of a new erotic romanticism. Formulating a relationship of profound equality (amicitia, foedus-marriage) Catullus was in fact making a definably romantic statement. He was sacrificing in exchange for his ideal of love the pride of place that the male in a heterosexual affair might at that time reasonably have expected. It was not just that the object of an upper-class man's passionate love was traditionally his social inferior. She was his psychological inferior too (the constant Greek distinction between eron and eromenos or eromene is implicit in Roman thinking).

Catullus also richly developed the potential of the traditional dramatic poem. And perhaps there is his most consistently good poetry. The success of these poems and how it was achieved must have much impressed his followers. Finally in one poem, poem '68', he treated aspects of his relationship with Lesbia at great length in the elegiac metre; and he exploited not only dramatic re-creation but mythical narrative. The Alexandrian Greek poets had perfected the art of allusive, subjectively told myths in elegiacs. None, however, had used it systematically and explicitly like this to illuminate their own current feelings. This was another example of Catullus' that was to have most important and direct influence.