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Catullus and the Poetics of Incest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

Lindsay Watson
Lindsay Watson*
Affiliation:
The University of Sydney
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Extract

Catullus is fascinated by the subject of incest. In the last third of his collection, no less than eight pieces are devoted to this particular topic. There are, in addition, thematically significant mentions of the practice in poems 59, 64 and 67. Furthermore, China's Zmyrna, the neo-Callimachean virtues of which are famously touted in poem 95, dealt centrally with the incest of the eponymous heroine and her father Cinyras. To put the matter crudely, then, the incest-theme surfaces in roughly ten per cent of Catullus' surviving poems. But the bulk of such allusions are clustered in poems 69-116, most particularly in the cycle on Gellius (74, 88-91), who, while not disdaining an oral-genital fling with a male partner (80), suffers, according to Catullus, from a psychologically and somatically unhealthy obsession with bedding his closest female relatives. Of especial importance is poem 79, Lesbius est pulcher: it will be discussed at the close of the paper.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 40 , 2006 , pp. 35 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 2006

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References

1 Thanks are due to Martin Stone and the anonymous reader for Antichthon for their criticisms of an earlier version of this article.

2 Poems 74,78, 79,88-91, 111.

3 59.1, 64.403-4, 67.19-30. On the incest theme in the first of these, see Nappa, C., ‘Catullus 59: Rufa among the Graves’, CPh 94 (1999) 329-35 at 330–2Google Scholar.

4 As we know from a surviving line of Cinna's epyllion, at scelus incesto Smymae crescebat in aluo (frag. 7 Courtney). Interestingly, in his Ἐρωτικὰ Παθήματα, Parthenius, often thought to have been an important influence on the Latin neoterics ( Clausen, W.V., GRBS 5 [1964] 187 Google Scholar; Crowther, N.B., Mnemosyne 29 [1976] 65 n. 2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar), devoted much space to the subject of incest (2.2, 5.2-4, 11, 13, 17, 28.1, 31, 33, also Supplementum Hellenisticum 646 = frag. 33 Lightfoot).

5 See particularly poems 89 and 91.

6 See e.g. L. and Watson, P., Martial. Select Epigrams (Cambridge 2003) 255–6Google Scholar.

7 Or, as many believe, half-sister: see Cox, Cheryl Anne, ‘Incest, Inheritance and the Political Forum in Fifth-Century Athens’, CJ 85 (1989) 34–46 at 40 n. 21Google Scholar.

8 Cimon: Plut, . Cim. 4.5–7, 15.2-3Google Scholar; Alcibiades senior and junior: Antisthenes ap. Athen. 220c, Lysias 14.28. Further see Cox, (n. 7) for rumours about incestuous activities conducted by the leading families of Classical Athens. See also Hippon. frags 12, 70.7-8 West, with Miralles, C. and Pòrtalas, J., The Poetry of Hipponax (Rome 1988) 45–69 Google Scholar (mother-son).

9 Which is not of course to suggest that accusations of incest were not routinely traded in a Roman context: Cicero, for example, was suspected of committing incest with his daughter Tullia ([Sall] Inv. in Cic. 2.2 Google Scholar, Dio 46.18.6). See also Krenkel, W.A., ‘Sex und politische Biographie’, WZR 29 (1980) 65–76 Google Scholar. I am merely concerned here with the particular color which Catullus imparts to the theme.

10 The belief which seems to underlie these lines is that membership of the elite caste of the magi (which was acquired by inheritance) was kept by means of incest within the narrowest possible biological confines. For thoughts along these lines, see especially Philo On the Special Laws 3.13–14 Google Scholar, quoted in the text below. Cf. also Ov, . Met. 10.331–5Google Scholar, Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp. 3.205 Google Scholar (on Persians and other parties who approve of incest). The sense of the difficult lines 3-4, which most commentators pass over in silence, is well expressed by Kroll ad loc.: ‘Dass der Magier aus der Verbindung von Mutter und Sohn entsprungen sein muss, trifft nicht zu und ist von Catull voreilig aus der communis opinio Uber sie gefolgert, übrigens auch durch den Bedingungssatz abgeschwächt. Dieser knüpft an oportet an und soll Entsetzen über diese superstitio ausdrücken: man könnte sich denken, dass auch ein auf normale Weise erzeugter Mensch magus wird, aber die persische Religion verlangt es so.’

11 Details in Kroll ad loc. For the divinatory activities of the magi, see also Clemen, C., Die griechischen und lateinischen Nachrichten über die persische Religion (Glessen 1920) 212–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 ‘Das Bild erscheint dem Römer bei seiner Verachtung fremder Kulte besonders lacherlich’ (Kroll ad loc.).

13 Paus. 5.27.6 on Persian fire-ritual: ; Strab. 1533.15: .

14 Xanthus of Lydia FGrH iiic 765 F 31:. The following words may or may not be attributable to Xanthus.

15 : Diels-Kranz, , Vorsokratiker ii. 408 Google Scholar.

16 Eur, . Andr. 173–5Google Scholar.

17 Antisthenes loc. cit. (n. 8); Diod. Sic. 1.27.1: Strab. 15.3.20: (the Magi) ; Pausan. 1.7.1 (quoted n. 44 below); Felix, Minucius Octavius 31 Google Scholar with the edition of H.A. Holden (Cambridge 1853) ad loc., who gives a full list of protests by the Christian Fathers and others; Hopkins, Keith, ‘Brother-Sister Marriage in Roman Egypt’, CSSH 22 (1980) 303–54 at 354 n. 89Google Scholar; Colson, F.H. (ed.), Loeb, Philo vol. 7 (Cambridge Mass. 1937) 632 Google Scholar.

18 Cf. Ov, . Met. 10.347–8Google Scholar: tune eris et maths paelex et adultera patris? / tune soror nati genetrixque uocabere fratris?, with Börner, ibid. 520-1; Canill. 111.3-4: sed cuiuis quamuis potius succumbere par est / quam matrem fratres expatruo…; Mart. 2.4.

19 This alienation is particularly underscored by the ironic designation of Gellius' incestuous liaison as coniugium: the choice of noun, the Latin term for marital union ( Treggiari, S., Roman Marriage [Oxford 1991] 6 Google Scholar) emphasises the fact that marriage between mother and son, while abominated by the Romans (nefanaum), was officially sanctioned in Persian usage. The remark of Hickson-Hahn, Frances, ‘What's So Funny? Laughter and Incest in Invective Humor?’, Syllecta Classica 9 (1998) 1–36 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ‘even to use the term coniugium of an incestuous relationship created a paradox since mother and son did not have the legal capacity for marriage' (IS), does not go far enough. Nemeth, B., ‘Zu der Interpretation von Catulls 90. Gedicht’, ACD 15 (1979) 43–50 Google Scholar bizarrely contends that poem 90 has little to do with the subject of incest or Persian usage, but is a Lucretian-style attack on religion in general.

20 For the supposed universality of the incest taboo, see nn. 17 and 28.

21 cum… sorore, 88.1; tamque ualens… tamque uenusta soror, 89.2; germanam, 91.4.

22 Uncle's wife: 74, 88.3, 89.3.

23 Other female relatives: 89.3-4. Lesbia too is propositioned (91), for the simple reason that, as the mistress of Catullus, who is Gellius' friend, she ought to be off limits.

24 Skinner, Marilyn B., Catullus in Verona: A Reading of the Elegiac Libellas, Poems 65-116 (Columbus Ohio 2003) 86 Google Scholar acutely characterises lines 7-8 as ‘the ultimate act of incest, self-fellation’.

25 ‘Here Catullus obviously has in mind Homer's‘ II. xiv.201 ‘ (Ellis). Lenchantin, Thomson and Kroll ad loc. likewise cite the Homeric passage.

26 Il. 14.214–21Google Scholar; Faraone, C., Ancient Greek Love Magic (Cambridge Mass. 1999) 97–110 Google Scholar.

27 Hes, Notably. Theog. 133–6Google Scholar. Roscher, , Lex. Myth. 5.395 Google Scholar s.v. ‘Tethys’ gives the relevant testimonia.

28 For this concept, see Hopkins (n. 17) 303-11.

29 Cf. Eur, . IT 1193 Google Scholar: ; Sen, . HF 1323–9Google Scholar with Fitch.

30 Of scholars, only Harrison, S.J., ‘Mythological Incest: Catullus 88’, CQ 46 (1996) 581–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has remarked the oddity of having the married brother-sister pair Oceanus and Tethys wash away the sin of incest. But his interpretation of the point is radically different from mine: ‘not even the mythologically incestuous couple Oceanus and Tethys can wash out Gellius' incest, though they are guilty of the offence themselves and might be thought likely to connive at it’ (582). In a brief account of poem 88, Hickson-Hahn (n. 19) remarks of lines 5-6: ‘Catullus may intend an ironic allusion to the incestuous relationship of these two immortal siblings’ (13).

31 The best evidence for the Roman perception that incest was a feature of Greek mythological tales is the lengthy catalogue of females who succumb to incestuous passions at Ov, . Ars Am. 1.283–340 Google Scholar: see Myerowitz, Molly, Ovid's Games of Love (Detroit 1985) 213–4, n. 31Google Scholar. For incestuous unions among Greek deities, cf. Hes, . Theog. 123–36Google Scholar (Nyx and Erebos, Gaia and Ouranos), Horn, . Od. 10.5–7 Google Scholar (the sons and daughters of Aeolus), Ov, . Met. 9.498–9Google Scholar (Kronos and Ops/Rhea, Oceanus and Tethys, Zeus and Hera).

32 Not least perhaps as a sometime reader of Theoc. Id 17, where the union of Zeus and Hera is used as a defence for the marriage of Ptolemy Philadetphus to his sister Arsinoe (128-34).

33 Dom. 92: et homo facetas inducís etiam sermonem urbanum ac uenustum, me dicere solere esse me Iouem, eundemque dictitare Mineruam esse sororem meant, non tam insolens sum, quod Iouem esse me dico, quam ineruditus, quod Mineruam sororem louts esse existimo, sed tarnen ego mihi sororem uirginem adscisco, tu sororem tuam uirginem esse non sisti, sed uide ne tu te soleas Iouem dicere, quod tu iure eandem sororem et uxorem appellare possis. It is possible that in styling Clodia βοῶπις, the Homeric epithet of Hera, Cicero means to allude to the incestuous union between Zeus and his sister ( Alt. 2.12.2,2.22.5Google Scholar).

34 See Tacitus Germania; Thompson, Lloyd A., Romans and Blacks (London and Oklahoma 1989)Google Scholar; Dench, E., From Barbarians to New Men. Greek, Roman and Modem Perceptions of Peoples from the Central Apennines (Oxford 1995)Google Scholar.

35 Seduction of his uncle's wife by Gellius, the theme of poem 74, would certainly have counted as incest in Roman eyes, their definition of incestum, in the sense of a prohibited sexual union, being much wider than ours ( Guarino, A., ‘Studi sul incestum ’, ZRG, röm Abt. 63 [1943] 175–268 Google Scholar; Hanard, G., ‘Inceste et société romaine républicaine: un essai d'interprétation ethno-juridique’, RBPh 64 [1986] 32–61)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Godwin ad loc.

37 For Harpocrates see also Canili. 102.4.

38 See Tinh, V. Tran Tam, Isis lactam. Corpus des monuments gréco-romains d'Isis allaitant Harpocrate (Leiden 1973)Google Scholar.

39 For the connection between sucking the breast and sucking the penis, cf. Suet, . Tib. 44.1 Google Scholar. That irrumare and Arpocratem conjure up in lines 5-6 an image of the patruus as Harpocrates taking suck was noted by Kitchell, K.F., ‘ Et patruum reddidit Arpocratem: A Reinterpretation of Catullus, c. 74’, in Deroux, C. (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History III (Brussels 1983) 100–10Google Scholar. But whereas I view the scenario in 5-6 as potential (cf. the close of 88), and as whimsically assimilating the uncle to Harpocrates, in the familiar iconography, sucking his mother's breast, Kitchell regards the situation in 5-6 as real: Gellius is actually irrumating his uncle, signally increasing the letter's humiliation.

40 Plut, . De Iside et Osiride 358e Google Scholar.

41 It is objected by the referee for Antichthon that Gellius has seduced his uncle's wife, whereas it was brother-sister marriage that was practised in Egypt. But both kinds of sexual union were regarded as impermissible by the Romans, and, in the context of the Gellius cycle, it calls for no great imaginative leap to forge a connection of thought between one kind of incestuous union and another: for, with the sole exception of Lesbia, Gellius' heterosexual activities are exclusively incestuous in nature (poem 91), involving various female relatives by kinship or marriage: see nn. 21-3.

42 Brother-sister marriages in the Egyptian royal family: Hopkins (n. 17)311.

43 Ten or eleven full brother-sister marriages made by the Graeco-Macedonian rulers of Egypt: Shaw, Brent D., ‘Explaining Incest: Marriage between Brother and Sister in Graeco-Roman Egypt’, Man 27 (1992) 267-99 at 283 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 While the evidence for marriage between brothers and sisters in Egypt comes mainly from household census returns of the first to third centuries AD (Hopkins [n. 17], Shaw [n. 43], Bell, H. Idris, ‘Brother and Sister Marriage in Graeco-Roman Egypt’, Revue internationale des droits de l'Antiquité 2 [1949] 83–92 Google Scholar), there is no doubt that it was practised in the centuries Be by both ordinary Egyptians and Greek settlers of the Ptolemaic period: see Shaw (n. 43) 287, Cerny, J., ‘Consanguineous Marriages in Pharaonic Egypt’, JEA 40 (1956) 23–9Google Scholar. For complaints that Egyptian usage permitted marriage between brother and sister, cf. Pausan. 1.7.1: ; Philo, On the Special Laws 3.23 Google Scholar; Felix, Minucius Octavius 31 Google Scholar.

45 Although seduction of his uncle's wife is not incest in the legal sense (see Gaius 1.58-64 for a list of sexual unions prohibited under Roman law), there is no doubt that Catullus regarded it as such. In poem 89 he mentions, in connection with Gellius’ refusal to have sexual relations except with parties quod fas tangere non est, the wife of Gellius' uncle, Gellius' mother, sister and various puellae cognatae: evidently, to Catullus' mind, sexual congress on the part of Gellius with any of these counted as incest See further Franciosi, G., Clan gentilizio e strutture monogamiche. Contributo alla storia della famiglia romana I (Naples 1978) 173–99Google Scholar, for moral and other factors governing the Roman prohibition of incest. Thanks to Tom Hillard for bringing Franciosi to my attention.

46 Bettini, M., Anthropology and RomanCulture (Baltimore 1991) 14–38 Google Scholar.

47 The arrival of Claudius seems to have coincided with Gaius' presence at Lugdunum: cf. Fishwick, Duncan, ‘Claudius submersus ’, AJAH 3 (1978) 76–7Google Scholar and ‘A Ducking in the Tiber' (Dio 61 [60], 33, 80)’, AJAH 12 (1987 [1995]) 73–6Google Scholar, who posits that the strange treatment meted out to Claudius may reflect a peculiarly Celtic custom.

48 Dio 59.23.2.

49 … indignante ac fremente Gaio patruum potissimum ad se missum quasi ad puerum regendum…

50 The incongruity is underlined by the five-fold repetition of patruus.

51 A figure who exhibits in Catullus contextually appropriate associations of sexual fecklessness and cuckoldry. Cf. 17.12-13, with the discussion of Manson, M., ‘ Puer bimulus (Catulle 17. 12-13)’, MEFRM 90 (1978) 247–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Incest as nefas in Roman eyes: Com. Nep. praef. 4.

53 Haffter, H., ‘Politisches und Gesellschaftliches in der römischen Volkspoesie’, Hermes 87 (1959) 91–102 Google Scholar = id. Römische Politik und römische Politiker (Heidelberg 1967) 141-57; Ruffell, I., ‘Beyond Satire: Horace, Popular Invective and the Segregation of Literature’, JRS 93 (2003) 35-65 at 51-2, 56 Google Scholar.

54 Cic, . Att. 1.16.10,2.1.4,2.18.3,2.22.1Google Scholar, in Clod, et Cur. frag. 24 Crawford.

55 Ross, D.O. Jr., Style and Tradition in Catullus (Cambridge Mass. 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Rankin, H.D., ‘Catullus and Incest’, Eranos 74 (1976) 113–21 at 119-21Google Scholar; Skinner, M.B., ‘Pretty Lesbius’, TAPA 112 (1982) 197–208 Google Scholar; Forsyth, P.Y., ‘Catullus 79’, Latomus 49 (1985) 377–82Google Scholar; Tatum, W.J., ‘Catullus 79: Personal Invective or Political Discourse?’, PLLS 7 (1993) 31–45 Google Scholar; Butrica, J.L., ‘Clodius the “pulcher” in Catullus and Cicero’, CQ 52 (2002) 507–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Trappes-Lomax, J., ‘Kissing Clodius: A Note on Catullus 79’, PCPS 49 (2003) 155–7Google Scholar. See also Hickson-Hahn (n. 19), who analyses the various types of humour employed in Roman incest accusations (11-19 for Catullus).

57 All recent writers on poem 79 assume that ‘Lesbia’ is Clodia, probably Clodia Metelli, and ‘Lesbius’ her brother P. Clodius. The case is clearly put by Forsyth (n. 56) 377: it would be superfluous to repeat it here.

58 For malo used to express a sexual preference, cf. Canili. 45.21-2: unam Septimius misellus Acmen / mauult quam Syrias Britanniasque; Priap. 39.7-8: nane (sc. mentulam) mauult sibi quam deos priores … puella; Petr. 92.5; Juv. 6.166-8. Also relevant for its similarity of content is Canili. 72.1-2: dicebas quondam solum te nasse Catullum, / Lesbia, nec prae me uelle tenere Iouem. Butrica (n. 56) 508 unconvincingly denies a sexual colour to malit in 79.1.

59 In a reprise of an interpretation of pulcer developed in some detail by Skinner (n. 56), Butrica (n. 56) contends that Catullus 79 has nothing to do with rumours of incest: the point of pulcer is to criticise Clodius as an exoletus, as Cicero did in the lost in Clodium et Curionem of 61 BC and elsewhere. This appears to me a misreading. In the first place, it distorts the natural emphasis of line 1, which is that Lesbia prefers Lesbius as lover on account of his ‘pulchritude’, both familial and erotic. Second, it sidelines illegitimately the clear implication of sexual pairing that is suggested by the twinning of names: cf. 59.1, Rufa Rufulum fellat. Lastly, it ignores Catullus' patent fascination with the topic of incest. In view of all this, there seems no reason to suppose that in poem 79 Catullus has jettisoned the accusation of incest for another (admittedly well-documented) anti-Clodian smear.

60 Allegations of incest involving Clodius and Clodia Metelli/an unnamed sister: Cic, . Cael. 32, 36,38, 78 Google Scholar, Sest. 16,39 Google Scholar, Dom. 92 (quoted n. 33), Har. Resp. 9,27,38,39,42, Alt. 2. 1.5 Google Scholar, Plut, . Cic. 29.5 Google Scholar; incest with all three sisters: Fam. 1.9.15 Google Scholar, Har. Resp. 59, Plut, . Cic. 29.4 Google Scholar; with Clodia Luculli, his youngest sister: Cic, . Mil. 73 Google Scholar, Plut, . Lucuti. 38.1 Google Scholar, Caes. 10.5 Google Scholar. Obscene verses chanted against Clodius and Clodia for their supposed incest: Cic, . QF 2.3.2 Google Scholar. See further Moreau, Ph., Clodiana religio (Paris 1982) 169–74Google Scholar.

61 On balance, uendat seems better regarded as jussive rather than potential subjunctive: Lesbius is welcome to do the unthinkable, sell into slavery Catullus' gens, if the condition expressed by the si clause should actually be fulfilled (but of course it will not). With uendat potential the sense becomes ‘Lesbius would sell into slavery Catullus and his clan, if he succeeds in finding three kisses etc’ But it is difficult to see how Lesbius' selling Catullus and his clan could result from his lighting upon three acquaintances prepared to kiss him (the paraphrase by Quinn, who views uendat as potential, ‘Lesbius is the man to commit a major crime just to get [my italics] a few friendly greetings’, illegitimately reverses the chronological relationship between protasis and apodosis, which is predicated on the anteriority of the protasis). As for the tense of reppererit, which those who view uendat as potential incline to regard as perfect subjunctive, the evidence for the use of the perfect subjunctive in the required sense (‘if he were to have found’) is very tenuous in Classical Latin at least: cf. Handford, S.A., The Latin Subjunctive (London 1947) §§141–2Google Scholar. The verb is better treated as future perfect.

62 For incest as an aristocratic vice, cf. Suet, . Cal. 23.1 Google Scholar (Caligula boasted that his mother was the result of incest committed by Augustus with his daughter Julia); Rankin (n. 56) 120. While arguing that its implication in poem 79 is one of patrician exclusiveness, Tatuiti (n. 56) 34 rightly observes that Catullus did not invariably regard incest in this light.

63 It should be noted that Clodia Metelli, whom, in common with most scholars, I take to be Catullus' Lesbia, may have been Clodius' half-sister, rather than full sister: cf. Tatum, W.J., The Patrician Tribune. Publius Clodius Pulcher (London 1999) 33–6Google Scholar. But political invective leaves no room for such genealogical niceties: whenever Cicero accuses Clodius of incest with Clodia Metelli, or an unidentified sister who is probably Clodia Metelli, he uses soror or its cognates. In any case, and in contrast to Athens and Sparta, intercourse with a half- or a full sibling counted at Rome equally as incest.

64 Cf. Rankin (n. 56) 120.

65 As Tatuiti (n. 63) demonstrates passim, Clodius, notwithstanding his notorious transition to the plebs, was acutely aware of his patrician heritage and the political advantages to be gained from it. Similarly Wiseman, T.P., Clio's Cosmetics (Leicester 1979) 124 Google Scholar observes that Clodius the new-made plebeian did not attempt to disguise the fact that he was a patrician Claudius still.

66 The oddity of this idea has generated various attempts to explain it: e.g. Ellis ad loc. thought that Catullum (line 3) might stand for ‘Catullus and his property'; Skinner (n. 56) 203 that uendat alludes obliquely to Clodius' readiness to sell, i.e. prostitute, himself; while Tatum (n. 56) 38-9 postulates that Catullus is picking up on the deliberately alarming idea, floated by Cicero in the De Domo, that Clodius will, in conjunction with greedy nobiles, expropriate the property of wealthy but non-elite Romans, as he had Cicero's under the lex de exsilio Ciceronis.

67 I am not persuaded by the argument of Trappes-Lomax (n. 56) that suauia cannot refer to (non-sexual) kisses exchanged between male acquaintances, so called 'social kissing'. Trappes-Lomax contends that there is no evidence for this before the Empire. But we know that the practice was already widespread in the time of Tiberius ( Suet, . Tib. 34.2 Google Scholar), and when Plin, . NH 26.3 Google Scholar talks of the skin disease mentagra which was introduced to Italy by a knight who had picked up the infection in Asia, and was spread among upper-class males by their practice of exchanging kisses of greeting, he is speaking of the origins of the disease, not of the origins of social kissing, which seems to have been established long before then. Trappes-Lomax is obliged to discount various references in Catullus and Cicero to asexual kisses exchanged between males by resort to special pleading: these represent not social kisses, but kisses delivered with marked enthusiasm.

68 For the aversion felt by Greeks and Romans for practitioners of oral sex, see conveniently Tatum (n. 56) 43 n. 25; Krenkel, W., ‘Fellatio and Inumano’, WZR 29 (1980) 77–88 Google Scholar; id. ‘Tonguing’, WZR 30 (1981) 37-54. For unwillingness to kiss a cunnilinctor, Kroll ad loc. appositely quotes Suet. Gramm. 23: <Remmius Palaemon> maxime flagrabat libidinibus in mulieres, usque ad infamiam oris; dicto quoque non infaceto notatum ferunt cuiusdam, qui cum in turba osculum sibi ingerentem … deuitare non posset, uis tu, inquit, magister, quotiens festinantem aliquem uides, abligurire?, where see Kaster. In Mart. 12.59 one of the undesirables who presses kisses on an unnamed addressee is a recens… cunnilingus (10).

69 So the focus on the two siblings would suggest, though the possibility cannot be entirely ruled out that some other party is involved: Gellius, who commits incest with his female relatives (74, 88-91), is also the fellator of Victor (80). Forsyth (n. 56) sees in lines 3-4 a reference to fellatio, an idea which Butrica (n. 56) 509 n. 9 and 512 appears to endorse. But a leap from the idea of incest with one's sister in lines 1 -2 to that of fellatio in lines 3-4 seems to destroy the cohesion of the epigram.

70 … praegustatori libidinum tuarum (sc. Clodi), nomini egentissimo et facinerosissimo, Sex. Cloelio, socio tui sanguinis, qui sua lingua etiam sororem tuam a te abalienauit, with the discussion of Corbeill, A., Controlling Laughter. Political Humor in the Late Republic (Princeton 1996) 114–7Google Scholar, who acutely notes that ‘the adjective limiting the tongue - sua (his own)… implies another tongue, a tua lingua, Clodius', that has been active at some time in the past.’ For the name Sextos Cloelius (not, as used to be thought, Sextos Clodius), cf. Bailey, D.R. Shackleton, CQ 10 (1960) 41–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Gallus, while not personally indulging in incest, actively promotes it and is likely to become himself the victim of it. He is thus in a sense guilty of lenocinhun, a highly unacceptable practice in Roman eyes. Not only this, but as apatruus who connives at incest, he is, like the patruus of 111 who commits incestum with Aufillena, acting in ways radically at odds with the socially determined role of the censorious paternal uncle (see above): as did Domitian when he allegedly had incestuous relations with his niece Julia (Juv. 2.29-33). On the place of 111 in Catullus' incest cycle, see Skinner (n. 24) 136.

72 North, J A., ‘Religious Toleration in Republican Rome’, PCPS 25 (1979) 85–103 Google Scholar; Gordon, R., ‘Religion in the Roman Empire: The Civic Compromise and its Limits’, in Beard, M. and North, J. (eds), Pagan Priests (Ithaca 1990) 235–55Google Scholar.

73 ‘Who was Gellius?’, in Wiseman, T.P., Cinna the Poet and other Roman Essays (Leicester 1974) 119–29Google Scholar.

74 A further connection between Lesbius and Gellius, less relevant to the present argument, is noted by Tatum, W.J., ‘Friendship, Politics and Literature in Catullus: Poems 1, 65 and 66, 116’, CQ 47 (1997) 482–500 at 499CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘like Lesbius, Gellius represents the noble whose presumed prerogatives shunt aside Catullus' claims to Lesbia's affections.’ On thematic links between Lesbius and Gellius within the incest cycle, see Skinner (n. 24) 90-1, 108, who interestingly reads the subject of incest in Catullus as a ‘figurative gesture towards covert political deals’ (89).

75 Disappointment of expectation being a major theme in Catullus.