Catullus' Bedspread

by Daisy Dunn

  24 See King (2004) pp. 13–18 and his discussion of Strabo Geography 1.3.6.

  25 Garum was consumed in Greece since at least the fifth century BC; it is mentioned in Athenaeus 2.67c.

  26 Martial Epigrams 11.27.

  27 Seneca the Younger Epistle 95.

  28 Pliny Natural History 31.44.

  29 From the Geoponika 20.46.

  30 Wiseman (1987) pp. 339–40 identified an amphora from Spain, which carried the name C. Valerius Catullus. It was of the type used to carry garum (Dressel type 7–11. CIL 15.4756). Wiseman established a connection between the garum industry and the Valerii Catulli. On salting fish in this area see Strabo Geography 7.6.2; Polybius Histories 4.38.

  31 On the fish plant at Baelo see Bekker-Nielsen (2005) pp. 52–72.

  32 Pliny Natural History 9.92.

  X: Canvas

  1 Isidorus Origines 6.12.1. It is unclear whether it was by Aratus, or written in the style of Aratus, who was known for writing poetry on the constellations.

  2 In the Suda it says Cinna took Parthenius from Bithynia when Mithridates was defeated, so probably 66 BC, although some scholars argue for 73 BC. On Parthenius, see Lightfoot (1999). On Cinna setting him free: Suda Pi 664.

  3 Macrobius Saturnalia 5.17.18.

  4 On the Greek verbosity of Bithynians see Pliny the Younger Epistles 5.20.

  5 Erycius Palatine Anthology 7.377.

  6 Isidorus Origines 6.5 with Cicero de finibus 3.2.7. The books Lucullus had on Stoicism probably came from the library he acquired from Mithridates.

  7 Cinna’s ‘Zmyrna’ required a commentary, see Suetonius de grammaticis 18.

  8 Fragment of Cinna’s Zmyrna, cit. Servius ad Verg. G. 1.288.

  9 Sculpture with dedication to Loukios Mustios Herakles, first century BC, from Smyrna; on display in the Museo Maffeiano Lapidario, Verona.

  10 Cinna as tribune: Appian Bellum civile 2.147; Plutarch Caesar 68.

  11 Tacitus Dialogus 34 notes that Calvus was not much older than twenty-one when he started making impressive legal speeches.

  12 Calvus Fragment 16. Propertius 2.34.89–90 mentioned Calvus’ singing of the death of Quintilia. See earlier note in Chapter 3 on the possibility that Quintilia was Calvus’ wife.

  13 Homer Odyssey 12.70; Pindar Pythian 4; Varro Argonautica.

  14 Strabo Geography 11.2.19; Appian Mithridatic Wars 103.

  15 For much of its history, the Western world had known no mountain range more remote than the Caucasus. Its remoteness gave rise to stories, see Herodotus Histories 1.203 on the Greeks’ picture of its villages of primitive, uncouth peasants who painted their bodies and had sex out in the open like wild beasts.

  16 Appian Mithridatic Wars 103.

  17 Apollonius Argonautica 3.844–68.

  18 In the 1980s adventurer Tim Severin constructed a twenty-oared ship from pine and encountered the same struggles as his crew retraced the journey that Apollonius described. See Severin’s book based on the adventure (1985).

  19 The lower depths of the Black Sea are so toxic that no one could survive the descent. Not even molluscs can live in such conditions, which is what makes this sea so promising. Argo or not, the first ever ship to sail this sea, at least, is almost certainly still down there, lifeless on the seabed. Robert Ballard, the explorer who excavated the Titanic, has already lifted a number of ancient wreckages from its beds. But with the remains of every ship – perhaps 50,000 – that ever swam there and sank still resting in the darkness, there is no telling if or when the very oldest ship among them will be found (Dahlby, 2001, and see King, 2004, p. 18).

  20 On currus for ship see Gaisser (2007) p. 253.

  21 In anger at Prometheus giving men fire, the gods were said to have sent diseases and the first woman, Pandora, to earth. This set the path for the times subsequent to the Golden Age. See Servius ad Verg. E 6.42; Hesiod Theogony 570 and Works and Days 70; 100; and 43–8 on the Golden Age type of life that might have persisted had Prometheus not intervened in the divine order.

  22 Hesiod Works and Days 236–37; Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 467–68; Horace Carmina 1.3.27–33.

  23 Several academics have commented on the Golden Age imagery of 64.38–42; Pasquali (1920, p. 17) may have been the first. As many also comment, the presence of rust on tools undermines the Golden Age picture, see Bramble (1970, p. 39). Fitzgerald (1995, pp. 148–49) and Konstan (1977, p. 31) are rare in appreciating the importance of the Golden Age to the poem.

  24 Heracles released Prometheus in a scene in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Lyomenos, the third play in his Prometheus trilogy. The play is now lost but for some fragments.

  25 Haupt (1875–76) 2.73 seems to have been first to recognise this disparity.

  XI: The boxwood Argo

  1 Herodotus Histories 7.30.

  2 I follow here Ovid’s description of the origins of Cybele’s arrival in Rome at Fasti 4.179–372.

  3 Ovid Fasti 4.303.

  4 Ovid Fasti 4.309–10.

  5 It was said that Claudia Quinta was a descendant of Clausus, one of the men who helped Aeneas to found Rome. Cicero spoke of Clodia as a relation of Claudia Quinta.

  6 The predecessor was Gaius Papirius Carbo, who was later condemned. There is some suggestion that Memmius was hailed as an imperator during his time in Bithynia, meaning that he must have confronted an enemy, but this honour is more likely to have been bestowed upon him for his work in an earlier expedition. See discussion in Corey Brennan (2000) p. 405.

  7 Strabo Geography 7.3.18.

  8 Cinna cit. Isidorus 19.4.7.

  9 Strabo Geography 12.3.10.

  10 It was meant to be a river, but as Pliny the Younger observed in a letter to Trajan (Epistles 10.99), it had in fact become a sewer.

  11 Juvenal Satires 15.127–28.

  12 Horace Odes 3.2.28–9.

  13 Svennung explained that it was possible, (1954) pp. 109–24, cit. Putnam (1962) p. 10.

  14 Alfred, Lord Tennyson Frater Ave Atque Vale.

  15 Ezra Pound Cantos 78.492.

  16 See analysis of the so-called ‘Grotto of Catullus’ in Roffia (2005) p. 41.

  17 The location of the finds is beneath Rooms 73, 88, and 111 of the later villa. Account based on information retrieved at the museum at Sirmio and Roffia (2005) pp. 21–2.

  18 Some of these objects might have been Augustan, but most can be dated only loosely.

  19 Most fragments have been dated to after 20 BC, but some look slightly earlier, encapsulating the so-called Second Style of wall painting, which coincides with Catullus’ dates.

  20 See Morgan (2010) p. 128.

  21 See Beard (2014) pp. 72 and 239n.12, ‘Cackles or giggles or ripples?’ The Latin poet Laevius used the same verb earlier in the century, but not of water, cit. Nonius 209.

  22 Cicero Pro Caelio 36. In 45 BC Cicero would seek to purchase them. The right bank was predominantly occupied by traders.

  23 Like Pompeii, just south along the coast, Baiae sat on Mount Vesuvius’ path. The volcanic Phlegraean Fields which run beneath it have puckered the land through seismic shifts up and down, but mainly down: much of ancient Baiae now wallows deep beneath the sea of the Bay of Naples. It was to the surprise of the locals that landslides, triggered by heavy flooding in January 2014, uncovered part of Baiae’s ancient walls for the first time in centuries.

  24 D’Arms (1970) p. 42.

  25 Horace Epistles 1.83.

  26 Seneca the Younger Epistle 51.

  27 Diodorus Siculus Library of History 36.3.

  28 Reference to hair oil, Quinn (2000) p. 123.

  29 It seems likely that Veranius and Fabullus first made a trip to Spain, from which they brought Catullus back napkins, and later served under Piso in Macedonia.

  30 Evoking much the same picture, a eulogy was set up centuries later in Poets’ Corner to honour seventeenth-century poet Samuel Butler: ‘While Butler, needy wretch!, was yet alive, no generous patron would a dinner give: see him, when starved to death and turned
to dust, presented with a monumental bust! …’

  31 Egnatius might have been an Epicurean poet by that name who, like Lucretius, wrote a book ‘on the nature of things’, de rerum natura, in several volumes. This Egnatius’ work is now fragmentary, but Macrobius preserves some of the fragments at Saturnalia 6.5.2; 6.5.12.

  32 Pollio was born in 76 BC (cf. Tacitus Dialogus 34) and manhood typically began at the age of sixteen. Catullus perhaps refers to him as a ‘boy’ because of his precocious talent. Pollio wrote Histories and was celebrated for both his writing and oratory.

  XII: Godly rumbling

  1 For this account of the tensions over Cicero’s recall see Dio Roman History 38.30; 39.6–11.

  2 Cicero Pro Sestio 77.

  3 Dio Roman History 39.20; Cicero de Haruspicum Responso 9.

  4 The Saturnalia had in fact swollen to a week-long festival by the late Republic.

  5 It was fortunate for Clodius that Cicero had just recently helped Pompey to take control of Rome’s grain supply; the hungry and disaffected were always quickest to riot, so it looked feasible that the upheaval was caused rather by the desperate during the time of a grain shortage.

  6 Cicero de Haruspicum Responso 24.

  7 In 57 BC, the Senate agreed that Rome should help Ptolemy regain his rule, and Ptolemy campaigned for Pompey, with whom he was friendly, to take control of the campaign himself. Then, however, a tribune blocked the measure, citing an oracle that forbade it. Ptolemy waited in Ephesus for a few years until negotiations reopened and he at last regained his throne.

  8 Pliny Natural History 27.2.

  9 Nicholson (1997) pp. 251–61 recognised the connection between ‘Rufus’, Caelius Rufus, and Bestia, and explained the references in Catullus’ poems to the ‘bad beast’ and goat.

  10 As Cicero knew, a certain Publius Asicius had been tried and acquitted for the murder of Dio. He perhaps thought that there was little point in addressing the charge of Caelius’ involvement in the deed, although he should have dealt with it more thoroughly than he did.

  11 Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 8.6.53.

  12 Cicero Pro Caelio 26.

  13 Cicero Pro Caelio 8.

  14 Ennius cit. Cicero Pro Caelio 8.

  15 Jenkyns (1982) pp. 90–7 argues against the idea that the crimes listed in Poem 64 relate to modern Rome; Konstan (1977) p. 101 takes the opposite view; cf. also Ross (1975) pp. 1–17.

  XIII: The Roman stage

  1 The mule image comes from Catullus Poem 17, in which he imagines an objectionable man trapped in a mire.

  2 See the account in Plutarch Cato the Younger.

  3 Tacitus Annals 14.20. A row of houses near today’s Largo Argentina preserves the mighty curve of his auditorium. On the row of houses built on the bow of the former auditorium, a modern theatre even hints knowingly at the once greater existence.

  4 Propertius 2.32.11–13; Ovid Ars Amatoria 1.67 and 3.387, on Pompeias umbras; Martial Epigrams 11.47.

  5 Cicero helped to purchase land for Caesar’s new forum, the Forum Iulium, which was completed by Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus, after Caesar died.

  6 The temple was destroyed by fire some decades later, but of the temple that the second emperor, Tiberius, constructed to replace it there remain three Corinthian columns with a small entablature resting on top. There was some history of ‘dishonourable people’ lurking behind the temple, see Plautus Curculio 4.1. On Clodius preventing access to the temple, see Cicero de Domo Sua 42. Nine column widths to the right of the temple, keeping the Palatine Hill on one’s left, lies the footprint of some ancient shops.

  7 Suetonius Caesar 53.

  8 From the first winter of Caesar’s Gallic governorship, when he established private quarters in Cisalpine Gaul, to the winter of 55–54 BC, as he prepared for his second British invasion, there was opportunity to meet Catullus’ father. On Caesar’s quarters see Gallic War 2.1.1; 5.1.2.

  9 Blue-skinned Britons: Caesar Gallic War 5.14. They probably used woad as a dye, which Vitruvius (7.14) said could be mixed with Selinusian or anularian chalk or clay to produce a deep blue colour. According to Pliny (Natural History 35.56), Selinusian was used by women as a cosmetic.

  10 Horace Satires 1.10.36.

  11 Cicero Brutus 261–62; et cit. Suetonius Caesar 56.

  12 Suetonius Caesar 4; Plutarch Caesar 3.

  13 Suetonius Caesar 56.

  14 Some scholars believe Caesar’s commentaries on the Gallic War were circulated as each book was completed; others suggest it was written in around 52 BC. I think it is likely Caesar would have published at least dispatches from it as the wars were still waging, to enhance the picture of his mounting glory.

  15 Pliny Natural History 36.7.

  16 Giglioli, 393 and Muenzer, col 966.48–50 cit. McDermott (1983) p. 295.

  17 ‘Ammia’, a form perhaps of ‘Ameana’, is a name found in several inscriptions found at Rome belonging to slaves or freedwomen, CIL 1239, 1330, 1398 cit. Neudling (1955) p. 3.

  18 Suetonius Caesar 51.

  19 Suetonius Caesar 47.

  20 Suetonius Caesar 54.

  21 Calvus Fragment I, the line probably describes Quintus Curius, a senator, who was a well-known gambler.

  22 Civilised: Caesar Gallic War 5.14.

  23 Caesar Gallic War 4.38.

  24 Horace Satires 2.5.40; 1.10.36–7. See commentary by Gowers (2012) pp. 323–24. Courtney (1993) p. 200, notes that Catullus 11 could be taken as a sarcastic reference to Furius Bibaculus’ Bellum Gallicum.

  25 Caesar Gallic War 4.17–19, summer 55 BC.

  26 As Pliny the Elder observed, Natural History 36.7, quoting Calvus Fragment 18.

  27 Suetonius emphasises Caesar’s role in offering forgiveness to those who offended him, whereas Tacitus said that Caesar put up with and let be Catullus’ poems and those of Furius Bibaculus too.

  28 Suetonius Caesar 49.

  29 Suetonius Caesar 73.

  30 Suetonius Caesar 52.

  XIV: A flower on the edge of the meadow

  1 The stepmother might have been the Palla whom Caelius Rufus had been accused of stealing property from during his trial in 56 BC.

  2 More than one reader of Catullus’ poetry has discerned in his grief over Lesbia, for example, a deeper comment on contemporary politics and life, see Ross (1975) pp. 1–17.

  3 Plutarch Crassus 16.2. Bactria lay in what is now Afghanistan, the Outer Sea was the Atlantic Ocean.

  4 Cicero ad Atticum 16.3 uses the term.

  5 Strabo Geography 5.3.11 says Tibur was visible from Rome.

  6 Strabo Geography 5.3.11.

  7 Streams: Horace Odes 1.7.

  8 Calvus’ legal experience included a successful defence of Gaius Cato, a tribune of 56 BC, who delayed the elections for the following year, and therefore contributed to the fact that seats would be empty at the start of 55 BC. Asinius Pollio, the brother of the man Catullus chastised for stealing his napkins, had been the prosecutor.

  9 So Tacitus Dialogus 21 praised Calvus’ ‘second speech’ against Vatinius, which was probably the speech before this accusation, made in 56 BC.

  10 Seneca Controversiae 7.4.6.

  11 Tacitus Dialogus 21 on lack of ingenium in general, not by comparison with Cicero. Tacitus nonetheless praised this speech above most of Calvus’ other speeches, of which he counted twenty-one booksful.

  12 Sappho Fragment 105c.

  Epilogue

  1 The note about public mourning comes from a short biographical passage included in the first and second printed editions of Catullus’ poems, by Gerolamo Squarzafico in 1472 and 1475. It is believed that he may have taken his information from a now lost biography by Suetonius. See Gaisser (1993) pp. 25–6.

  2 Cicero refers to him in the past tense in Brutus 283, which dates to this time.

  3 Cicero ad Atticum 12.42.

  4 I follow here the version of events given by Suetonius Caesar 85. Very similar accounts are given by Valerius Maximus Facta 9.9.1; Appi
an Civil Wars 2.147; Plutarch Caesar 68; Plutarch Brutus 20; Dio History 44.50. For the identification of this Cinna with the poet see Wiseman (1974) pp. 44–6.

  5 Plutarch Cicero 48.4.

  6 Asconius Commentaries on Cicero 30–1.

  7 After Clodius’ death, Fulvia remarried twice, the second time to Mark Antony.

  8 Suetonius Caligula 36.1.

  9 Wiseman (1987) pp. 348, 361–62 discusses each of these references.

  10 Juvenal Satires 12.1–82. The possibility of a connection between the family of Catullus and the Bithynian tax collector Terentius Hispo, of whom Hispulla might have been a relation, has been raised by Wiseman (1987) pp. 338–40.

  11 One has to look hard to find Catullus there today. Two magnificent ancient gates mark the ends of the city, like screens from a forgotten stage set. Catullus might have seen their foundations laid, but did not live long enough to appreciate their full majesty. Verona’s mighty amphitheatre anticipated Rome’s Colosseum by an impressive stretch of six emperors, but was only begun perhaps a hundred years after Catullus’ death. The Ponte Pietra, Verona’s oldest surviving bridge, is a more promising spot, carrying strollers over the fast-flowing Adige river to Verona’s luscious hills. Any buildings Catullus found on their incline, however, were cleared a short time after he lived to make way for a Roman theatre. The forum that lies beneath the market square, Piazza delle Erbe, was opened shortly after he died. The original gates, Porta Borsari and Porta Leoni, were built in the late Republic, when a ‘new’ Roman town was built in Verona, after 49 BC. The forum and Capitolium (at Corte Sgarzerie) date to this time. The construction of the Roman theatre the other side of the river eliminated any traces of an earlier Roman town there (with thanks to Riccardo Bertocchi, art historian, and Simon Thompson, archaeologist, of Verona).

  While on frantic days, Catullus might well have imagined how wonderful it would be to fly like Mercury on winged heels, today he has his own airport: Valerio Catullo. A smart residential terrace called Via Valerio Catullo branches off the old Roman road of Verona’s main thoroughfare, as if braced for the day Catullus comes back. One suspects that he would have felt decidedly more at home at the House of Juliet. The medieval courtyard here has become less suited to a Capulet than to someone who could have found beauty in the messages which litter it like graffiti on a brothel door. For decades lovers have pinned letters and poems and tear-drenched gauze to walls, dedications to make love flourish or broken hearts mend. One woman curses her husband for visiting a stranger’s bed. In the same breath, she begs him to come back to her. Another, French, celebrates her recent engagement and prays for a long life of love. Not all the messages are so sentimental. Someone has requested in hasty hand a ‘quickie’ at the Arco dei Gavi.