Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T12:15:58.210Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dismembering Cominius: Political Violence and Iambic Aggression in Catullus 108

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2022

Robert Cowan Open the ORCID record for Robert Cowan [Opens in a new window]
Robert Cowan*
Affiliation:
The University of Sydney Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Carmen 108 is one of the most neglected and unloved in the Catullan corpus. When it is mentioned in scholarship, it is either as a distastefully extreme instance of iambic invective or the object of a prosopographical exercise in identifying the addressee, Cominius. Gnilka alone has tried to situate it in the context of late Republican political violence, in particularly public lynching. Instead of isolating these two aspects of the poem from each other, this article argues that c. 108 is a self-conscious exploration of the interaction between poetic form and hors-texte. The terms of the invective situate it firmly within the tradition of Archilochean and Hipponactean iambos and it may even allude directly to a fragment of the latter. Yet the threats of violence are transformed when recontextualized within the world of the late Republic, where such literary violence was very much a reality. The poem performs a symbolic dismemberment of Cominius’ body, but one that cannot be safely separated from acts of mob violence in the period. The pragmatics of Catullan iambos explores the limits of verbal violence as speech-act and the point at which hate-speech becomes indistinguishable from the violence it incites.

Keywords

CatullusHipponaxArchilochusHoraceOvidiambosviolencelate Republicpragmaticshate-speech
Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 55 , 2021 , pp. 53 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexandrou, M. (2016), ‘Hipponax and the Odyssey: Subverting Text and Intertext’, in Efstathiou, A. and Karamanou, I. (eds.), Homeric Receptions Across Generic and Cultural Contexts. Berlin, 31–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allan, W. (ed.) (2019), Greek Elegy and Iambus: A Selection. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Arena, V. (2013), Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Bremmer, J. (1983), ‘Scapegoat Rituals in Ancient Greece’, HSCPh 87, 299–320.Google Scholar
Brown, C. (1997), ‘Iambos’, in Gerber, D. E. (ed.), A Companion to the Greek Lyric Poets. Leiden, 13–88.Google Scholar
Brown, C. (2018), ‘Picturing a Truth: Beast Fable, Early Iambos, and Semonides on the Creation of Women’, Mouseion 15, 29–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, C. (2009), ‘Iambos’, in Budelmann, F. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric. Cambridge, 149–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, C. (2018), ‘Narrative, Authority, and Blame’, Mouseion 15, 7–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Compton, T. (2006), Victim of the Muses: Poet as Scapegoat, Warrior, and Hero in Greco-Roman and Indo-European Myth and History. Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Cowan, E. (2015), ‘Caesar's One Fatal Wound: Suetonius Divus Iulius 82.3’, HSCPh 108, 361–76.Google Scholar
Cowan, R. (2015), ‘On Not Being Archilochus Properly: Cato, Catullus and the Idea of Iambos’, MD 74, 9–52.Google Scholar
Cowan, R. (2017), ‘Bloated Buskins: Seneca and the Satiric Idea of Tragedy’, Ramus 46, 75–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Degani, E. (1984), Studi su Ipponatte. Bari.Google Scholar
Degani, E. (ed.) (1991), Hipponactis Fragmenta et Testimonia. 2nd edition. Stuttgart and Leipzig.Google Scholar
Degl'Innocenti Pierini, R. (2003), ‘Le tentazioni giambiche del poeta elegiaco: Ovidio esule e i suoi nemici’, in Gazich, R. (ed.), Fecunda licentia. Tradizione e innovazione in Ovidio elegiac. Milano, 119–49.Google Scholar
Du Quesnay, I. and Woodman, T. (2012), ‘Epilogue’, in Catullus: Poems, Books, Readers. Cambridge, 255–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, R. (1876), A Commentary on Catullus. Oxford.Google Scholar
Faraone, C. A. (2004), ‘Hipponax Fragment 128W: Epic Parody or Expulsive Incantation?’ ClAnt 23, 209–45.Google Scholar
Farrell, J. (1999), ‘The Ovidian Body: Poetic Body and Poetic Text’, in Barchiesi, A., Hardie, P. and Hinds, S. E. (eds.), Ovidian Transformations. Cambridge, 113–36Google Scholar
Farrell, J. (2007), ‘Horace's Body, Horace's Books’, in Heyworth, S. J., Fowler, P. G., and Harrison, S. J. (eds.), Classical Constructions: Papers in Memory of Don Fowler, Classicist and Epicurean. Oxford, 174–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fletcher, K. B. F. (2017), ‘Catullus’ “ATM”: The Word Order of Carmen 16.1 and the Roman Hierarchy of Sexual Humiliation’, CPh 112, 487–92.Google Scholar
Forsdyke, S. L. (2008), ‘Street Theatre and Popular Justice in Ancient Greece: Shaming, Stoning and Starving Offenders inside and outside the Courts’, P&P 201, 3–50.Google Scholar
Gnilka, C. (1973), ‘Lynchjustiz bei Catull’, RhM 116, 256–69.Google Scholar
Gras, M. (1984), ‘Cité grecque et lapidation’, in Du châtiment dans la cité. Supplices corporels et peine de mort dans le monde antique. Paris, 75–89.Google Scholar
Griffin, M. (1973), ‘The Tribune C. Cornelius’, JRS 63, 196–213.Google Scholar
Guida, A. (1994), ‘La condanna del ghiottone (Ipponatte fr. 128 West = 126 Degani)’, ZPE 104, 23–4.Google Scholar
Hartz, C. (2007), Catulls Epigramme im Kontext hellenistischer Dichtung. Berlin/New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, J. N. (2016), ‘Anger, Bile, and the Poet's Body in the Archilochean Tradition’, in Swift and Carey (2016), 310–39.Google Scholar
Hawkins, S. (2012), ‘On the Oscanism salaputium in Catullus 53’, TAPhA 142, 329–53.Google Scholar
Hawkins, S. (2018), ‘Catullus c. 11 and the Iambic Herald’, Paideia 73, 1605–16.Google Scholar
Hawkins, S. (2019), ‘Archilochus 222W and 39W: Allusion and Reception, Hesiod and Catullus’, Philologus 163, 16–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, T. (2014), Iambic Poetics in the Roman Empire. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, T. (2016), ‘Bupalus in Scheria: Hipponax's Odyssean Transcontextualizations’, in Swift and Carey (2016), 229–52.Google Scholar
Heyworth, S. J. (2001), ‘Catullian Iambics, Catullian Iambi’, in Cavarzere, A., Aloni, A. and Barchiesi, A. (eds.), Iambic Ideas: Essays on a Poetic Tradition from Archaic Greece to the Late Roman Empire. Lanham, 117–40.Google Scholar
Holzberg, N. (2002), Catull. Der Dichter und sein erotisches Werk. München.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, G. O. (2012), ‘Booking lovers: Desire and Design in Catullus’, in Du Quesnay, I. and Woodman, T. (eds.), Catullus: Poems, Books, Readers. Cambridge, 48–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingleheart, J. (2014), ‘Play on the Proper Names of Individuals in the Catullan Corpus: Wordplay, the Iambic Tradition, and the Late Republican Culture of Public Abuse’, JRS 104, 51–72.Google Scholar
Irwin, E. (1998), ‘Biography, Fiction, and the Archilochean ainos’, JHS 118, 177–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaster, R. (ed.) (2006), Cicero: Speech on Behalf of Publius Sestius. Oxford.Google Scholar
Keith, A. M. (1994), ‘corpus eroticum: Elegiac Poetics and Elegiac puellae in Ovid's Amores’, CW 88, 27–40.Google Scholar
Keith, A. M. (1999), ‘Slender Verse: Roman Elegy and Ancient Rhetorical Theory’, Mnemosyne 52, 41–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, A. (forthcoming), ‘Homer and Hipponax’, in Cazzato, V. and Prodi, E. (eds.), The Limping Muse: Hipponax the Poet. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Kennedy, D. F. (2018), ‘Dismemberment and the Critics: Seneca's Phaedra’, in Gale, M. R. and Scourfield, J. H. D. (eds.), Texts and Violence in the Roman World. Cambridge, 215–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koenen, L. (1977), ‘Horaz, Catull und Hipponax’, ZPE 26, 73–93.Google Scholar
Koster, S. (1980), Die Invektive in der griechischen und römischen Literatur. Meisenheim am Glam.Google Scholar
Krasne, D. (2012), ‘The Pedant's Curse: Obscurity and Identity in Ovid's Ibis’, Dictynna 9 http://dictynna.revues.org/912Google Scholar
Kroll, W. (ed.) (1922), C. Valerius Catullus. Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Krostenko, B. (2000), ‘Arbitria Vrbanitatis: Language, Style, and Characterization in Catullus cc. 39 and 37’, ClAnt 20, 239–72.Google Scholar
Lacey, W. K. (1970), ‘Boni atque improbi’, G&R 17, 3–16.Google Scholar
Lavigne, D. (2010), ‘Catullus 8 and Catullan Iambos’, SyllClass 21, 65–92.Google Scholar
Lennartz, K. (2010), Iambos: philologische Untersuchungen zur Geschichte einer Gattung in der Antike. Wiesbaden.Google Scholar
Lewis, R. G. (ed.) (2006), Asconius: Commentaries on Speeches of Cicero. Oxford.Google Scholar
Lintott, A. (1999 [1968]), Violence in Republican Rome. 2nd edition. Oxford.Google Scholar
Malcovati, E. (ed.) (1972), L. Annaei Flori quae exstant. 2nd edition. Rome.Google Scholar
Mankin, D. (ed.) (1995), Horace: Epodes. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Mayer, R. G. (1983), ‘Catullus’ Divorce’ CQ 33, 297–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millar, F. (1998), The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic. Ann Arbor.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, J. D. (1990), ‘The Death of Cinna the Poet’, CQ 40, 558–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, Ll. (2010), Musa Pedestris: Metre and Meaning in Roman Verse. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, Ll. (2019), ‘“To Heaven on a Hook” (Dio Cass. 60.35.4): Ennius, Lucilius and an Ineffectual Council of the Gods in Aeneid 10’, CQ 69, 636–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Most, G. W. (1992), ‘Disiecti membra poetae: The Rhetoric of Dismemberment in Neronian Poetry’, in Hexter, R. and Selden, D. (eds.), Innovations of Antiquity. New York, 391–419.Google Scholar
Mouritsen, H. (2001), Plebs and Politics in the Late Roman Republic. CambridgeCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mouritsen, H. (2017), Politics in the Roman Republic. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mynors, R. A. B. (ed.) (1958), C. Valerii Catulli: Carmina. Oxford.Google Scholar
Neudling, C. L. (1955), A Prosopography to Catullus. Oxford.Google Scholar
Newman, J. K. (1990), Roman Catullus and the Modification of the Alexandrian Sensibility. Hildesheim.Google Scholar
Nippel, W. (1995), Public Order in Ancient Rome. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owen, S. G. (ed.) (1915), P. Ovidi Nasonis: Tristium Libri Quinque; Ibis; Ex Ponto Libri Quattuor; Halieutica Fragmenta. Oxford.Google Scholar
Pease, A. S. (1907), ‘Notes on Stoning among the Greeks and Romans’, TAPhA 38, 5–18.Google Scholar
Quinn, K. (ed.) (1970), Catullus: The Poems. London.Google Scholar
Richlin, A. (1988), ‘Systems of Food Imagery in Catullus’, CW 81, 355–63.Google Scholar
Rosivach, V. (1987), ‘Execution by Stoning in Athens’, ClAnt 6, 232–48.Google Scholar
Rotstein, A. (2010), The Idea of Iambos. Oxford.Google Scholar
Russell, A. (2016), ‘Why did Clodius Shut the Shops? The Rhetoric of Mobilizing a Crowd in the Late Republic’, Historia 65, 186–210.Google Scholar
Schiesaro, A. (2011), ‘Ibis redibis’, MD 67, 79–150.Google Scholar
Schwabe, L. (1862), Quaestiones Catullianae. Giessen.Google Scholar
Shackleton Bailey, D. (ed.) (2008), Q. Horatius Flaccus: Opera. 4th edition. Berlin.Google Scholar
Skinner, M. B. (2003), Catullus in Verona: A Reading of the Elegiac Libellus, Poems 65–116. Columbus, OH.Google Scholar
Staley, G. (2010), Seneca and the Idea of Tragedy. Oxford.Google Scholar
Stone, A. M. (2005), ‘Optimates: An Archaeology’, in Welch, K. and Hillard, T. W. (eds.) Roman Crossings: Theory and Practice in the Roman Republic. Swansea, 59–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stroup, S. C. (2010), Catullus, Cicero, and a Society of Patrons: The Generation of the Text. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swift, L. (ed.) (2019), Archilochus: The Poems. Oxford.Google Scholar
Swift, L. and Carey, C. (eds.) (2016), Iambus and Elegy: New Approaches. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Syndikus, H.-P. (1987), Catull: Eine Interpretation. Dritter Teil: Die Epigramme (69–116). Darmstadt.Google Scholar
Tatum, W. J. (2007), ‘Social Commentary and Political Invective’, in Skinner, M. (ed.), A Companion to Catullus. Blackwell, 333–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Telò, M. (2019), ‘Iambic Horror: Shivers and Brokenness in Archilochus and Hipponax’, in Kurke, L., Weiss, N. A., and Foster, M. (eds.), Genre in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry: Theories and Models. Leiden, 271–97.Google Scholar
Thomson, D. F. S. (ed.) (1997), Catullus. Toronto.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Usener, H. (1901), ‘Italische Volksjustiz’, RhM 56, 1–28.Google Scholar
Vine, B. (2009), ‘A Hipponactean Echo in Catullus (Frigus, 44.20)’, CPh 104, 213–16.Google Scholar
Watson, L. C. (1991), Arae: The Curse-Poetry of Antiquity. Leeds.Google Scholar
Watson, L. C. (2003), A Commentary on Horace's Epodes. Oxford.Google Scholar
Watson, L. C. (2009), ‘Catullus and the Brothel-Creepers: Carmen 37’, Antichthon 43, 123–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
West, M. L. (1974), Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus. Berlin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiseman, T. P. (1974), Cinna the Poet and Other Roman Essays. Leicester.Google Scholar
Wiseman, T. P. (1985), Catullus and his World: A Reappraisal. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Worman, N. (2008), Abusive Mouths in Classical Athens. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wray, D. (2001), Catullus and the Poetics of Roman Manhood. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zetzel, J. E. G. (1996), ‘Natural Law and Poetic Justice: A Carneadean Debate in Cicero and Virgil’, CPh 91, 297–319.Google Scholar