4 - Sexual and Generic Tensions

Summary

THE ‘CATULLAN LAW’

The idea of the ‘Catullan’ in Renaissance verse was largely a matter of licence. It presented a risqué extension to the chart of decorum permissible to the humanist author. The ‘Catullan Law’ or Lex Catulliana, drawn from Catullus 16 and coming to the modern age by way of Martial, was invoked by many writers as a justification for bawdy content. This is relevant to the history of the basium genre in particular, as well as to the Neo-Catullan style and humanist obscenity more generally; for Catullus 16 was connected with the kiss from the very start:

Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,

Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,

Qui me ex versiculis meis putastis,

Quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.

Nam castum esse decet pium poetam

Ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est;

Qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem,

Si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici,

Et quod pruriat incitare possunt,

Non dico pueris, sed his pilosis

Qui duros nequeunt movere lumbos.

Vos, quod milia multa basiorum

Legistis, male me marem putatis?

Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.

(Catullus, ed. Thomson, p. 110)

I'll bum-fuck you and face-fuck you, Aurelius you cock-muncher, and Furius you catamite—who think me immodest because of my poems, since they are rather naughty [‘molliculi’]. For it befits the sacred poet to be chaste himself, though his poems need not be. They only have wit and charm if they are rather naughty and impudent, and can arouse the itch—I'm not talking about boys, but those hairy old chaps who can hardly move their stiff loins. Because you've read about my many thousands of kisses, you think I'm less virile? I'll bum-fuck you and I'll face-fuck you!

‘Vos, quod’ in line 12 was an early Renaissance correction (in MS R) for the corrupt ‘hosque’ and ‘vosque’ of earlier versions. It remains the standard reading today. The implication is that Furius and Aurelius have read some of Catullus's poems of kissing, and think him less virile on that account.