Classical Literature by Richard Jenkyns

Author:Richard Jenkyns
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465097982
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2016-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

CATULLUS (c.84–c.54 BC) came from Verona, north of the River Po, in the region which was officially Cisalpine Gaul until it was incorporated into Italy in the later 40s. It was a prosperous area, distant from Rome but richer than most of peninsular Italy, and it was to produce some of the leading figures of his and the next generation, among them the poets Virgil and Cinna and the historian Livy, as well as a number of lesser men. The assertive sophistication of the educated provincial can be detected in some of Catullus’ verse. His poems can be classed into three groups. There are epigrams, in elegiacs; shorter poems in a variety of metres, mostly light in character; and a small number of longer pieces. Many of the shorter poems are the effusions of a young man about town: there is much talk of elegance and savoir faire, and mockery of those who lack these qualities; there is banter with his friends, and rough, sometimes gross, obscenity. Some of these pieces are finely turned, others surprisingly weak. But his most recurrent theme is love, especially love for the woman whom he disguises under the Greek name Lesbia.

Before Catullus, the little love poetry that existed in Latin paraphrased or imitated Greek epigram. He began something dramatically new, and he drew the next generations after him: for half a century and more Latin poetry was to be saturated in the theme of love. It dominated the verse of Catullus, Gallus, Tibullus, Propertius and much of Ovid. It is a large part of Horace’s Songs. Virgil explored it in the Bucolics; Propertius was right to hail him as one of the love poets. And Virgil ended the Georgics, a didactic poem, with something fairly rare in literature at any time, a story of passion burning within marriage, and indeed beyond death. His Aeneid put Dido’s tragedy at its heart and celebrated the faithful love of the Trojan warriors Nisus and Euryalus. And then abruptly the theme vanished from Latin verse, as suddenly as it had appeared. It is natural to ask why.

As with Greek love poetry, it was crucial that the beloved could say no. In theory a Roman woman was entirely in the power of the head of her family; but whatever the law said, in the early first century there emerged an aristocratic milieu within which women could in effect do as they liked. Catullus’ Lesbia was such a person. We have good evidence that she was a sister of Cicero’s enemy Clodius – the very Clodia whom he attacked in his speech For Caelius, or possibly one of her sisters. It really does seem to be true: a young provincial aristocrat came to Rome, fell in love with the wrong woman, was driven to put his passion into verse, and changed the literature of Europe. Gallus’ beloved was different: a glamorous Greek courtesan, whose favours Mark Antony enjoyed, and who impressed even Cicero by the charm of her company. The

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