Q. Lutatius Catulus, Marius‟s co-consul in 102 BCE and one of Sulla‟s supporters in the conflict between the two dynastic generals before his eventual suicide in 87 BCE, was also a poet who worked in epigram during the formative years of personal Latin poetry.152 How much he actually wrote, and how much that writing influenced later poetry, is unclear.153 But in his two extant epigrams we can see the beginnings of a phenomenon that Catullus and the Roman Elegists develop more fully later: each of Catulus‟s poems blends the learning and themes of Hellenistic epigram, collections of which were just beginning to circulate around Rome in Catulus‟s lifetime, with aspects of the Roman stage, especially in the form of palliata comedy.154
The shorter epigram (fr.2 Courtney) is remarkably Catullan in its encomiastic joy, similar in many ways to Catullus‟s poem 9 (Veranius, omnibus e meis amicis) and poem
152 The dating of Catulus‟s, and in fact all of early Latin epigram, is difficult; see Wheeler (1934, 69),
Castorina (1968, 17), Ross (1969, 140-142), Mariscal (1993, 59), Cameron (1993, 51-56), and Courtney (1993, 70-92) for various arguments placing the five preserved examples somewhere between 130 and 90 BCE. I use the term “personal poetry” here to mean “poetry that is presented by a singular speaking
persona,” in contrast to mimetic (e.g., Roman drama) or narrative (e.g., Latin epic) poetry, and do not mean
to suggest anything about the biographical poet‟s personal emotions or thoughts.
153 Clausen (1964, 187) and Ross (1969, 152) claim that this poem was an idle diversion for a man with
primarily political and military leanings, though I think Cicero‟s ready citation of Catulus fr.2 (De Natura Deorum 1.79), Gellius‟s later praise of its quality (19.9.10), and the apparent increase in interest in
Hellenistic literature at Rome in this period (see Van Sickle 1988 and Cameron 1993, 47-56) belie such readily dismissive interpretations. I am inclined to believe that Catulus (and the other Latin epigrammatists) were not dilettantes and in fact wrote much more that is lost, especially in light of the fact that Cicero and Gellius quote the extant pieces in the same manner as they do the work of more substantially-preserved poets. See also Vardi (2000) for the possibility that the epigrams preserved by Gellius were part of a larger anthology, which might well have included more of their work that has since been lost.
154
For the introduction of Hellenistic epigram at Rome in this period, see Ross (1969, 139-152) and Cameron (1993, 47-56).
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31 (paene insularum, Sirmio, insularumque / ocelle). The epigram praises the famous
Roman comic actor Roscius, invoking Theocritus, Meleager, and Alexandrian etymologizing along the way:155
constiteram exorientem Auroram forte salutans 1 cum subito a laeva Roscius exoritur,
pace mihi liceat, caelestes, dicere vestra
mortalis visus pulchrior esse deo. 4 Catulus fr.2 Courtney
I stood, by chance, greeting the rising Dawn, when suddenly from my left Roscius rises, may I say, by your leave, heavenly ones, a mortal seeming more beautiful than a god.
Catulus‟s use of Hellenistic epigram, along with etymological play on the connection between the words Aurora, exorior, roscidus, and Roscius,156 to describe a figure from the Roman stage is remarkable, because we can see already in this early period an attempt to combine this newly-introduced elite poetry from Alexandria with popular public entertainments of palliata Comedy.
The longer extant epigram of Catulus (fr.1 Courtney), and the one most important for our purposes here, combines Hellenistic epigram and Roman Comedy even more fully by using the language of the palliata to adapt Callimachus Epigr. 41 Pf., a Greek poem on lovesick aporia:
155 See Courtney (1993 ad loc.) for the Greek sources Catulus invokes in this epigram, including Theocritus
18.26-8 (Ἀὼρ ἀνηέλλοιζα καλὸν διέθανε ππόζυπον, / πόηνια Νύξ, ηό ηε λεςκὸν ἔαπ σειμῶνορ ἀνένηορ· / ὧδε καὶ ἁ σπςζέα Ἑλένα διεθαίνεη‟ ἐν ἁμῖν) and Meleager AP 12.127.1 (εἰνόδιον ζηείσονηα μεζαμβπινὸν εἶδον Ἄλεξιν).
156 The rising of Dawn (exorientemAurora) is accompanied generally by the appearance of dew (ros, from
which Aurora‟s name was sometimes derived in antiquity), and, specifically in this epigram, by the appearance of Roscius rising (exoritur)from the left. See Mariscal (1993) and Weber (1996) for a fuller discussion of the etymological play in this epigram.
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aufugit mi animus; credo, ut solet, ad Theotimum 1 devenit. sic est; perfugium illud habet.
quid si non interdixem ne illunc fugitivum mitteret ad se intro, sed magis eiceret?
ibimus quaesitum. verum, ne ipsi teneamur, 5 formido. quid ago? da, Venus, consilium. 6 Catulus fr.1 Courtney
My soul has fled me; I believe, as usual, to Theotimus he‟s gone. That‟s how it is; he has that refuge. What if I didn‟t forbid him from taking that fugitive in to himself, but instead said to toss him out? We‟ll go to look for him. But we‟ll be caught ourselves, I‟m afraid. What do I do? Advise me, Venus.
ἣμιζύ μες τςσῆρ ἔηι ηὸ πνέον, ἥμιζς δ‟ οὐκ οἶδ‟ 1 εἴη‟ Ἔπορ εἴη‟ Ἀίδηρ ἥππαζε, πλὴν ἀθανέρ. ἦ ῥά ηιν‟ ἐρ παίδυν πάλιν ᾤσεηο; καὶ μὲν ἀπεῖπον πολλάκι· „ηὴν δπῆζηιν μὴ ὑποδέσεζθε νέοι‟. †οὐκιζςνιθηζον·† ἐκεῖζε γὰπ ἡ λιθόλεςζηορ 5 κείνη καὶ δύζεπυρ οἶδ‟ ὅηι πος ζηπέθεηαι. 6 Callimachus Epigr.41 Pfeiffer
Half of my soul still breaths, half I don‟t know
whether Love or Hades have taken it – only that it‟s gone. Has it gone back to one of the boys? I even warned them many times: “Don‟t take in that runaway, lads.” †Did I not talk with them?† That stone-worthy and hard-hearted soul, I know, is off wandering.
Catulus‟s adaptation brings into Latin many of the ideas and images in Callimachus‟s epigram, but the manner in which he does so is remarkable: as Pascucci (1979) and Perutelli (1990) have shown, he appropriates the Alexandrian poet‟s work using the language of Roman Comedy. This is most noticeable in Catulus‟s additions of ad
Theotimum / devenit (lines 1-2; cf. devenit ad Theotimum, Plautus Bacchides 318,
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mittere intro, Plautus Truculentus 718, 751, 756, etc...), as well as in many of the lexical
choices Catulus makes (e.g., perfugium in line 2, which appears in Plautus three times but never in Augustan poetry).157
But beyond merely clothing the Greek poem in Roman Comedy, Catulus‟s changes can be seen to alter the Greek source text by alluding to a specific scene from a Plautine play. Catulus‟s poem draws heavily on Callimachus, playing with the idea of a runaway soul and the speaker‟s need to find it and regain control of himself. But by invoking Plautus‟s Bacchides at the end of his opening line, ad Theotimum / devenit, Catulus modifies the tension in the poem. Whereas the Callimachean speaker seems to have an antagonistic relationship with his runaway soul, aggressively calling it “stone- worthy” and “hard-hearted” (lines 5 and 6), Catulus‟s speaker is tentative and indecisive, afraid and dependent on Venus‟s aid. In many ways, especially in his aporia and inability to function without external help, he mirrors the adulescens amator of Roman Comedy.
What is most interesting about the Plautine intertext that Catulus invokes here is that the character Theotimus is a red herring in the Bacchides. In order to hide the fact that his young master Mnesilochus has absconded with his father‟s money to buy a prostitute, the slave Chrysalus tells the old father Nicobulus that the money has been deposited with a fictional banker named Theotimus living far away in Ephesus. Chrysalus means to trap and mislead the senex while he and the young lover carry out their various erotic plans, and this trap stands behind the concerns of Catulus‟s speaker as well: he plans to go to Theotimus to find his missing soul, but he‟s afraid that he will be held up
157 See Pascucci (1979, 122-126) and Perutelli (1990, 261-262) for a comprehensive list of parallels
between Catulus fr.1 Courtney and Plautus and Terence, respectively. For a more thorough discussion of how this adaptation through Roman Comedy functions within the context of Catulus‟s translation, see Polt (2007, 28-63).
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(ibimus quaesitum. Verum, ne ipsi teneamur, / formido, lines 5-6) while his fugitive
animus cavorts behind his back. The speaker marks his soul as a fugitivus, putting it on a
level with the clever slaves of Roman Comedy, including Bacchides‟s Chrysalus who has set up the trap for the old man. So by invoking Plautus, Catulus‟s epigram pushes in a different direction than his Greek source. Whereas the speaker in Callimachus‟s poem rants and heaps insults upon his half-soul, Catulus‟s speaker plays simultaneously the roles of adulescens amator unable to function without Venus‟s help and of senex durus being fooled by clever rogues, caught in an indecisive struggle between fear and love on the one hand and trust and suspicion on the other.
In his analysis of these poems, Maltby (1997) concludes by summarizing the relationship of Catulus‟s work, and that of all five extant early Latin epigrams,158 to their Hellenistic sources and to Roman Comedy: “In spirit and in language the aristocratic authors of these epigrams are much closer to the Roman comedians Plautus and Terence and, like them, freely adapted their Hellenistic Greek models to the Roman idiom” (56). Directly or indirectly, these early Latin epigrammatists influenced later Roman poets, not least Catullus, who followed their precedent in his own poetry. Let us turn now to his poems and see how Catullus further develops this blending of Hellenistic epigram with the language, scenarios, and characters of Roman Comedy.
158 Besides the two epigrams discussed above, Gellius (Noctes Atticae 19.9) preserves two by Valerius
Aedituus and one by Porcius Licinus. See Courtney (1993 ad locc.) for these poets, who were roughly contemporary with Catulus.
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