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Embracing the Young Man in Love: Catullus 75 and the Comic Adulescens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

James Uden
James Uden*
Affiliation:
The University of sydney
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Extract

In the prologue of Terence's Eunuchus, written, according to the didascalia, in 161 BC, the author of the play defends himself against the charge of literary theft. He denies completely any knowledge on his part that the Greek plays he had combined to produce his own play had already been translated into Latin. In the alternative, he argues against the charge of comic theft by way of the very nature of stock characters. ‘If’, argues Terence, ‘a man isn't allowed to make use of the same characters [personae] as other writers, how, all the more, is he allowed to write of the running slave, to make his matrons good and his prostitutes wicked, his hanger-on greedy, his soldier arrogant; how is he allowed to have a child substituted, an old man deceived through his slave, to love, to hate, to be suspicious?’ This last line — amare odisse suspicari — aims to evoke the characteristic attitude of the comic adulescens, whose emotional vacillation is presented as just another stock aspect of the genre, a literary inheritance as clich6d as any of the comedy's archetypal stock characters. ‘Nothing is said nowadays which hasn't been said before’, concludes Terence. Mid second century BC, and the Latin literary lover is already afflicted by textual, as much as emotional, exhaustion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 40 , 2006 , pp. 19 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 2006

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References

1 Ter, . Eun. 35–40 Google Scholar: quod sipersonis isdem huic uti non licet, ∣ qui magis licet currentem servom scribere, ∣ bonos matronas facere, meretrices malas, ∣ parasitum edacem, gloriosum militem, I puerum supponi, falli per servom senem, ∣ amare odisse suspicari? Ail translations are my own, unless otherwise noted.

2 Eun. 41: nullumst iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius.

3 See now Goldberg, S., Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic: Poetry and its Reception (Cambridge 2005) 100–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar on Catullus' connections to comedy, although he also notes that ‘it is not… the kind of question that Catullan scholarship likes to entertain’ (102). Goldberg's book was published after this paper was accepted, but I have attempted to respond to its many insights where possible.

4 Cf. Canili. 109.3-4: di magni, facile ut vere promittere possil, ∣ atque id sincere dicat et ex animo, and Ter, . Eun. 175 Google Scholar: utinam istuc verbum ex animo ac vere díceres. See Konstan, D., ‘Love in Terence's Eunuch: The Origins of Erotic Subjectivity’, AJP 107 (1986) 369-93 at 391 Google Scholar.

5 Minarmi, A., ‘Conflitto d' amore: Terenzio in Catullo’, Orpheus 4 (1983) 93–103 Google Scholar = Minarmi, A., Studi Terenziani (Bologna 1987) 59–79 Google Scholar, on Ter, . Eun. 70–3Google Scholar.

6 ‘An Interpretation of Catullus VIII’, Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 15 (1909) 139–51Google Scholar.

7 Skinner, M., ‘Catullus 8: The Comic Amator as Eiron ’, CJ 66 (1970) 298-305 at 305 Google Scholar.

8 ‘Catullo, che sente l'amore come foedus sacro, che spera in una Lesbia fedele da amare non solo come amica, ma con un affetto simile a quello dell'amore paterno, ricorda i giovani di Terenzio nella loro aspirazione a un legame saldo e duraturo: hoc beneficio utrique ab utrisque vero devincimini ∣ ut numquam ulla amori vostro incidere possit calamitas (Heaut. 394-5)’: Minarmi (n. 5) 79.

9 Image – Music – Text (trans. Heath, S.) (London 1977) 148 Google Scholar.

10 My focus here will largely be on intertextualities between Catullus 75 and Roman, rather than Greek, new comedy. It has been argued that Roman comedy was more popularly performed and read in the late Republic than Greek new comedy, which makes Roman comedy the more significant to my efforts to investigate the reception of Catullus' poetry in its contemporary cultural context; on this see Fantham, E., ‘Roman Experience of Menander in the Late Republic and Early Empire’, TAPA 114 (1984) 299–304 Google Scholar. It has also been suggested that certain motifs in Roman comedy which I invoke later in the paper are unique to Roman comedy (see below n. 39 and accompanying text). I do not, however, mean to suggest that there are no intertextual connections between Catullus' poetry and Greek new comedy.

11 Cicero, for example, invokes Caecilius and Terence as typical Latin comic writers (Opt. Gen. 3); cf. Plin, . Ep. 6.21.1 Google Scholar (Plautus and Terence as the paradigmatic examples of Latin new comedy); Quint. 10.1.99-100 (Caecilius, Plautus, Terence, the representative examples of Latin comedy). We have only scattered mentions of other writers of new comedy until the 5th century Querolus: so we know of Fundanius ( Hor, . Sat. 1.10.42 Google Scholar) and Vergilius Romanus ( Plin, . Ep. 6.21.1–4 Google Scholar).

12 verum homines notos sumere odiosum est, cum et illud incertum sit, velintne ei sese nominari, et nemo vobis magis notus fiiturus sit quam est hic Eutychus… (‘But it is odious to choose familiar men as examples, when it is also unclear whether they would want to be named, and no-one would be more familiar to you than would this [character] Eutychus …’). On Cicero's allusions to Roman comedy, see Wright, F.W., Cicero and the Theater (Menasha, Wisconsin 1931)Google Scholar; Geffcken, K., Comedy in the Pro Caelio: with an Appendix on the In Clodium et Curionem (Leiden 1973)Google Scholar; Leigh, M., ‘The Pro Caelio and Comedy’, CPh 99 (2004) 300–35Google Scholar.

13 See generally Griffin, J., Latin Poets and Roman Life (London 1985), esp. chap. 10Google Scholar, ‘The Influence of Drama’.

14 See Day, A.A., The Origins of Latin Love-Elegy (Oxford 1938) 85–101 Google Scholar, with the bibliography there cited; Yardley, J.C., ‘Comic Influences in Propertius’, Phoenix 26 (1972) 134–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 See Hor, . Ep. 2.1.177–213 Google Scholar and Suet, . Aug. 89.1 Google Scholar, with Feeney, D., ‘ Una cum scriptore meo: Poetry, Principale and the Traditions of Literary History in the Epistle to Augustus ’, in Woodman, T. and Feeney, D. (eds), Traditions and Contexts in the Poetry of Horace (Cambridge 2002) 182–4Google Scholar.

16 Ep. 2.1.60–1Google Scholar: hos ediscit et hos arto stipata theatro ∣ special Roma potens. Goldberg (n. 3) 58-60 denies, on tenuous grounds, that these words refer to actual theatrical performances of the comedies. He argues that the theatres of the time were lavish and large and could not be described as artus; yet the word does not mean ‘poky’, as he translates it, but ‘crowded’, a meaning which follows naturally from stipata (cf. OLD s.v. ‘artus’ 9; Stat, . Theb. 11.273 Google Scholar). He also argues that the context of the remark is not exclusively dramatic; but the Latin seems to me to move with perfectly good sense from epic writers to dramatic writers from lines 57 onwards. However, even if Horace is, as Goldberg suggests, using the idea of ‘packing into a narrow theatre’ figuratively to describe the fondness of the Augustan readership for reading the comedies (rather than seeing them performed), it does not materially affect my argument about the popularity of the comedies in the late Republic.

17 So, Brown, R.D., Lucretius on Love and Sex (Leiden 1987) 135–6Google Scholar; Rosivach, V., ‘Lucretius 4.1123-40’, AJP 101 (1980)401–3Google Scholar.

18 See also Goldberg (n. 3) 100. Of course, Catullus echoes this Plautine usage in poem 8.

19 See Muecke, F., Horace: Satires II (Warminster 1993) ad locGoogle Scholar. for additional notes and references.

20 Bieber, M., The History of the Greek and Roman Theatre, 2nd ed. (Princeton 1961) 150, 155 Google Scholar. The popularity of this figure seems to have survived throughout Roman history and even into late antiquity, where the pagan figure of the adulescens comes to signify, for Christian opponents of the theatre, die moral dangers of the stage. Lactantius, at Div. Inst. 6.27–31 Google Scholar, tendentiously describes the subject matter of comedy as ‘the rapes of virgins or love affairs with prostitutes’ (de stupris virginum aut amoribus meretricum), and warns that the more eloquent the writer is, the greater likelihood of his debased morals remaining in the audience's mind. Similarly, Augustine three times cites as a bad example for youths the scene from Terence's Eunuchus (lines 583-91) in which the adulescens Chaerea is inspired by a wall painting of Jupiter showering Danae to rape the object of his affections ( Conf. 1.16.26 Google Scholar; Civ. Dei. 2.7 Google Scholar; Ep. 91.4 Google Scholar).

21 At 4.69: de comoedia loquor, quae, si haec flagitia non probaremus, nulla esset omnino. It might be relevant here to note the associations between Venus and the theatre. Pompey the Great alleviated moral concerns surrounding the building of his permanent theatre by building above it a shrine to Venus, and he called the theatre itself his Veneris templum - something which Tertullian makes much of in condemning the lasciviousness of theatrical plays (De Spec. 95).

22 See Graver, Margaret, Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4 (Chicago and London 2002) 174–7Google Scholar.

23 At 4.68: totus vero iste, qui volgo appellatur amor… tantae levitatis est, ut nihil videam quodputem conferendum.

24 At 4.75: maxume autem, admonendus <est>, quantus sit furor amoris … perturbatio ipsa mentis in amore foeda per se est.

25 A Commentary on Catullus (Oxford 1889) 446 Google Scholar.

26 There is no scholarly consensus over which poems in the collection are genuinely by Theognis and which belong to the tradition initiated by him, but here I will call the poet Theognis for convenience.

27 Gerber, D.E., Greek Elegiac Poetry from the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries B.C. (Cambridge, Mass. 1999) 333 Google Scholar. Catull. 75.1-2 might also echo Theog. 1271, in which the Theognidean ego reproaches his boy love for ‘destroying his noble mind’ through lust.

28 Of course, θυμός has a broad semantic range, which can include the ‘mind’; LSJ s.v. θυμός (6); nevertheless, Catullus’ specific focus on the mind will be important to my later discussion.

29 LSJ s.v. φιλότης.

30 So, see e.g. 5.284, 12.104, 12.172; and generally, see Bishop, J.D., ‘Catullus 85: Structure, Hellenistic Parallels, and the Topos’, Latomus 30 (1971) 633–42Google Scholar.

31 Ter, . Eun. 70–2Google Scholar: nunc ego ∣ et illam scelestam esse et me miserum sentio: ∣ et taedet et amore ardeo … See Minarmi (n. 5), although the discussion there does not touch on Catull. 75 specifically.

32 So Ross, D., Style and Tradition in Catullus (Harvard 1968) 35 Google Scholar. The impression we get is similar to that in poems 73, 85 and 92, in which a question is asked within the poem challenging the speaker about the emotional state he is describing. The philosophical dialogue form which is thus evoked is absurdly at odds with the inherently irrational emotional state the speaker claims to expound.

33 levitates comicae parumne semper in ratione versantur.

34 parumne subtilUer disputai ille in Eunucho?

35 Ter, . Eun. 57–8Google Scholar: quae res in se neque consilium neque modum ∣ habet ullum, earn Consilio regere non potes.

36 Ross (n. 32) 90.

37 Ross, D., Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry: Gallus, Elegy and Rome (Cambridge 1975) 12 Google Scholar.

38 So, see e.g. E. Greene, ‘Catullus, Caesar and Roman Masculine Identity’, in this issue.

39 Zagagi, N., Tradition and Originality in Plautus: Studies in the Amatory Motifs m Plautine Comedy (Göttingen 1980) 106–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Plaut, . Bacc. 92–4Google Scholar.

41 Plaut, . Pseud. 13–15 Google Scholar.

42 Plaut, . Truc. 141–6Google Scholar.

43 Cf. esp. Plaut, . Cist. 460, 472 Google Scholar. Preston, K., Studies in the Diction of the Sermo Amatorius in Roman Comedy (Menasha, Wisconsin 1916) 57–60 Google Scholar.

44 Copley, F., ‘Emotional Conflict and its Significance in the Lesbia-Poems of Catullus’, AJP 70 (1949) 22–40 at 30Google Scholar.

45 More than half of the recorded occurrences of the phrase in the TLL are from Plautus; it also occurs in Terence, Ennius and Lucilius, and does not reappear until Franto, then Cassiodorus.

46 Senex amator: Plaut, . Cas. 464 Google Scholar, Merc. 245. Adulescens: Plaut, . Truc. 441 and 447 Google Scholar. Truc. 440-2 is particularly illustrative: the adulescens Diniarchus: scio mi infidelem numquam, dum vivat, fore. ∣ egone illam ut non amem? egone illi ut non bene velim? ∣ me potins non amabo quam huic desit amor (‘I know that she'll never be untrue to me as long as she lives. ∣ So why shouldn't I love her? Why shouldn't I wish her well? ∣ I'll stop loving myself rather than lose my love for her’).

47 Although Catullus at the time of writing would most probably have fallen within the broad age range which Varrò attributed to adulescentia (between 15 and 30: frag. 447 GRF [p.367]), the word adulescens in the late Republic does not merely describe an individual's age, but rather how a person ‘relates to others as a son, husband or father’: Leigh (n. 12) 305.

48 See Krostenko, B., Cicero, Catullus and the Language of Social Performance (Chicago, 1997) chap. 7, esp. 256–7Google Scholar.

49 The brilliant account of neoteric self-fashioning by Stephen Hinds is pivotal here: Hinds, S., Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge 1998) 74–83 Google Scholar.

50 Griffin (n. 13) 199-200.

51 See above n. 15 and accompanying text.

52 Cf. esp. poem 95b: parva mei mihi sint cordi monimenta … ∣ at populus tumido gaudeat Antimacho.

53 See Thomas, R., ‘New Comedy, Callimachus and Roman Poetry’, HSCP 83 (1979) 179–205 Google Scholar. Thomas (at 184) interprets Callim, . Ep. 28 Google Scholar Pf. as Callimachus' rejection of the stereotype of the lover in new comedy.

54 The Eunuchus was Terence's most popular play in his lifetime (see Suetonius, Life of Terence), and is more frequently quoted by Cicero than any other ancient comedy. Cf. Wright (n. 12): ‘The frequency of quotation from, and reference to, the Eunuchus show Cicero's fondness for the play and suggests acquaintance with it on the part of his correspondents and readers.’

55 See generally Bishop (n. 30).

56 For the interpretation of poems 36 and 95 as Catullus' stylistic statements of intent, see Clausen, W., ‘Callimachus and Latin Poetry’, GRBS 5 (1964) 181–96Google Scholar.

57 Certainly this is explicitly the case in Plin, . Ep. 4.14 Google Scholar, in which Pliny cites Catull. 16, although, of course, Pliny was writing in a changed social environment.

58 ‘What, after all, do the most learned men and the best poets publish about themselves in both their poems and their songs? Alcaeus — known as a brave man in his own country, but who writes poems about the love of youths! Indeed, Anacreon's entire corpus is love poetry. But of all these, it is evident from his writings that Ibycus of Rhegium truly blazed with passion the most’ (quid denique homines doctissimi et summi poetae de se ipsis et carminibus edunt et cantibus? fortis vir in sua re publica cognitus quae de iuvenum amore scribit Alcaeus! nam Anacreontis quidem tota poesis est amatoria, maxume vero omnium flagrasse amore Reginum Ibycum apparet ex scriptis).

59 I am thinking, for example, of poem 93, in which Catullus says that he is not keen to know ‘whether Caesar is white or black’, such an ostentatious disavowal of interest in the most divisive public figure of Catullus' day that Quintilian (from the perspective of one living with far less freedom of speech) could brand Catullus' comment insania ( Inst. 11.1.38 Google Scholar).

60 See Graver (n.22) 175.

61 quando igitur virtus est adfectio animi constans conveniensque, laudabiles efficiens eos, in quibus est, et ipsa per se, sua sponte separata etiam utilitate laudabilis, ex ea prqficiscuntur honestae volúntales, sententiae, actiones omnisque recta ratio.

62 See Att. 12.38a.1Google Scholar, in which Cicero responds to Atticus' advice that he should do something to prove his strength of mind to his doubters and critics, and attests his philosophical writings of this period as proof of his mental self-control. Cf. Att. 12.20 Google Scholar and 12.40. See Graver (n. 22) xxxii on the dating of the writing of the Tusculan Disputations to the summer of 45.

63 I am thinking, of course, of poem 49, although the exact nature of the relationship between the two men on the basis of this ambiguous poem is open to debate.

64 For a thoughtful consideration of how Catullus' view of love is similar to, and different from, views of love in Hellenistic philosophy, see Booth, J., ‘All in the Mind: Sickness in Catullus 76’, in Braund, S. and Gill, C. (eds), The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature (Cambridge 1997) 160–7Google Scholar.

65 See Griffin, M., ‘Philosophy, Politics and Politicians in Rome’, in Griffin, M. and Barnes, J. (eds), Philosophia Togata: Essays on Philosophy and Roman Society (Oxford 1989)Google Scholar.

66 Cf. Cic, . Tuse. 3.11 Google Scholar: ‘So those who are said to have gone out of control, they are so called, because they are not in control of their mind, over which nature has assigned rule over the soul’ (qui igitur exisse ex potestate dicuntur, idcirco dicuntur, quia non sini in polestate mentis, cui regnum totius animi a natura tributum est).

67 Walsh, P.G., Cicero: On Obligations (Oxford 2000) xvii Google Scholar. ‘Peri tou kathēkontos' had been the title of works on ethics by Zeno, Cleanthes, Chyssipus and Panaetius, and had ‘acquired the status of a specialised Stoic term, “appropriate behaviour directed towards virtue”.’

68 Cf. Eco, U., Postscript to a ‘The Name of the Rose‘ (New York and London)Google Scholar on postmodern lovers, cited by Fowler, D., Roman Constructions: Readings in Postmodern Latin (Oxford 2000) 274 Google Scholar.

69 Nietzsche, F., The Gay Science (trans. Kaufmann, W.) (New York 1974) 132–3Google Scholar.

70 Barthes, R., A Lover's Discourse: Fragments (trans. Howard, R.) (New York 1977) 129 Google Scholar. Cf. id., Sade / Fourier / Loyola (trans. R. Miller) (Baltimore and London 1976) 7-8: ‘Nothing is more depressing than to imagine the Text as an intellectual object (for reflection, analysis, comparison, mirroring etc). The text is an object of pleasure. The bliss of the text is often only stylistic … However, at times the pleasure of the text is achieved more deeply (and then is when we can truly say there is a Text): whenever the “literary” Text (the Book) transmigrates into our life, whenever another writing (the Other's writing) succeeds in writing fragments of our own daily lives … our daily life then itself becomes a theatre whose scenery is our own social habitat.’

71 Thank you to the organisers of the Symposium on ‘Catullus in the Tree-House’ at the University of Newcasde in December 2004, Marguerite Johnson and Terry Ryan. Many thanks to James Zetzel, to Antichthon's anonymous reader, and especially to Marguerite Johnson for patient commentary on my written work. I dedicate this wholly unworthy article to my friend Charles Tesoriere (1973-2005).