CUP (2023) h/b 176pp £75.00 (ISBN 9781009235747)
This book does what it ‘says on the tin’. The first question (Who Was Lesbia?) to be revisited is the identity of Catullus’ Lesbia, who had been identified in the 19th century by Ludwig Schwabe as Clodia, wife, then widow, of Q. Metellus Celer (consul 60 BC). W. objects to Schwabe’s presentation: calling, with meticulous detail, on the resources of prosopography, chronology, geography and literary content (poem 36), W. comes up with another answer. After first dealing with the unthinking inadequacies of ‘two really excellent Catullan translations’ (Mulroy and Green), W. revives another candidate (albeit one who, though put forward in a lecture in 2010, was confessedly new to the reviewer): a much younger Clodia, daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher (consul 54 BC); this identification would accord well with Catullus calling his beloved puella (but what other word did the Romans have for a rather older lover?), living in a world of ‘casual arrogance and hedonism’ (W. waxes lyrical here). (Lesbius est pulcher, is punningly adduced as additional evidence [poem 79]). Whatever the truth—and W. puts forward an attractive thesis—we may be sure that Lesbia’s identity was well known at Rome. (C.J. Fordyce [1961] accepts the identification of Lesbia as Clodia Metelli, albeit with some cautious hedging of bets).
In his long chapter 2, How Many Books?, W. attempts to ascertain—or at least plausibly conjecture—the number of books (libelli) in which Catullus’ oeuvre was issued. Fixed points are almost non-existent: there is the dedication to Cornelius Nepos (but even there it is uncertain how much is included), and the apparent break after the death of his brother, giving a terminus ante quem, but there are far more questions than answers: for example, could a single long poem like 61 constitute a libellus? Would Catullus have kept poems of identical metrical value (e.g. hendecasyllables) together? How many copies might there have been of a given libellus? J.K. Schafer (2020), in a complex and detailed schema, detects ‘three authorially designed books’ (p.15), which W. regards as more complicated than is strictly necessary. And ‘the fact is that we know nothing for certain about what a libellus of Catullus’ time would look like’.
While considering Schafer’s proposal with due care, W. gives generous space to the many other hypotheses which have been put forward concerning the overall structure of the oeuvre: but hypotheses they remain. David Butterfield, following work of O. Skutsch in 1969, has raised a useful point about how Catullus’ hendecasyllables gained greater metrical freedom over time—it tells us that poem 1 was not written at the same time as poems 2-14—but that gets us little further. Wilamowitz, as W. tells us, asserted that Catullus ‘arranged his book of poems with the most careful reflection’, and it cannot be said that W., for all his carefully presented scholarship (which is always a pleasure to read), has brought us much further along the road. It needs to be added that Fordyce, in his very brief Appendix II, appears to regard the subject as barely worth detailed consideration: ‘Catullus certainly made a collection of his poems’—thus finding himself in agreement with Wilamowitz.
The next chapter, Where Was the Audience?, soon presents us with a problem: ‘That yacht that you are all looking at …’. But how on earth did a sea-going yacht get to Lake Garda? W. posits a real-life party, probably with distinguished guests, who knew how the yacht had reached Garda: the poem was written not for unknown readers, but for the guests assembled that day—and not for the typical imaginary ‘stranger’ or passer-by of a Greek (usually sepulchral) epigram. The people addressed in the plural in the instances given in this chapter are real people, whether at a grand party or gathered on street-side benches or in the Roman forum or at crossroads or a water-fountain—as Martial and Horace tell us. As W. comments, ‘All over Rome there were places where poems (and poets) might find an audience’.
In chapter 4, What Were the Long Poems? W. turns his attention to the ‘long’ poems. Not every poet was a Catullus, and poets who wished to have their work performed in public—perhaps alongside a revival of a play by Terence—had to enter the commissio in competition with others, for appraisal by the two commissiones (for whom, even after 2,000 years, one feels a certain sympathy). Of course, Horace didn’t have to compete: Maecenas saw to that. W. does not mention it, but one suspects that Lycophron’s Alexandra may also have been the subject of a public—or more probably elite—recitation. W. goes on to consider 63 (galliambics) in detail: not enough, he thinks, simply to agree with David Butterfield’s ‘remarkable and extraordinary’: where was it performed? Relying to some extent on Lucretius 4.978ff, W. believes that the work will have been specially commissioned—perhaps by the curule aediles—for performance at the ludi Megalenses of 55BC. Far from incidentally, galliambics, with their multiplicity of short syllables, cannot have been easy to compose in Latin (Greek would have been far easier—yet only two lines in that metre survive). The language of 63 does indeed betray the difficulties Catullus faced: see Fordyce, pp.262-3.
The final three chapters, W. tells us, are ‘free-standing studies’ and ‘supplementary material’. In the lengthy chapter 5, W. asks ‘How Gallic were the Transpadanes?’ Wilamowitz, we are reminded, attributed Catullus’ ease of expression to his ‘Gallic blood’; however, W. points out, after detailed discussion of the topic—note especially p.91 on 17 (‘O Colonia’) —that it is surprising that his Gallic ancestry was not noticed by ‘ill-wishers’ or subsequent biographers: we are in ‘novelists’ territory’, and significance should not be read into the Gallic-sounding cognomen ‘Catullus’.
In chapter 6, Why is Ariadne Naked?, W. ‘collects the evidence for a long and flourishing tradition of erotic entertainment on the Roman stage’. The Ludi Florales are central to this, and W. cites freely from Valerius Maximus, Seneca, Ovid, Ausonius, and Martial to prove his point. Lactantius tells us that the Games are celebrated with ‘every type of licentiousness’—and something more can be learnt from the Historia Augusta’s biography of Elagabalus. Of course, dancing featured—the dancer Dionysia claimed 200,000 sesterces (says Cicero) for a single performance. To return to Catullus, W. hopes that there is sufficient evidence to justify his suggestion that 64 could have been performed on stage, as a ‘mime libretto’, despite the scattered and enigmatic nature of the evidence; what this chapter does show is that Roman audiences enjoyed the sight of naked women (often prostitutes) on stage: quelle surprise! Fordyce treats 64, naturally, only as a poem. It is worth noting that the frequent description of 64 as an ‘epyllion’, however convenient, has no ancient authority: see Fordyce, note1 on p.272.
The final chapter—Clodia: Some Imaginary Lives—takes an enjoyable look at some of the fiction involving Clodia: authors discussed are Jack Lindsay, W.G. Hardy, Sir Pierson Dixon, Robert de Maria and Kenneth Benton: inaccuracies are legion, as they are in Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March (despite a ‘splendid portrait’ of Clodia). Only Rex Warner’s Julius Caesar earns W.’s commendation; and all the authors identify Clodia as Clodia Metelli. Finally, Daisy Dunn (Catullus’ Bedspread) and Frederic Raphael’s A Thousand Kisses share the ambition to recreate Catullus’ life and times for a 21st C readership. Your reviewer has to confess ignorance of both works.
W. describes his book as the work of ‘an old man in a hurry’. But whether or not its main theses find acceptance, it is also a carefully argued work of scholarship, with admirably full footnotes (albeit in a minuscule fount). Perhaps not too much should be made of W.’s apparent avoidance of any reference to C.J. Fordyce’s (notoriously far from complete) Commentary of 1961: at least he appears in the Bibliography, itself of mercifully constrained length. There is an Index and an index Locorum. The rather high cost of £75 would presumably come down if a paperback edition is projected—as one may reasonably hope.
Colin Leach