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BEING BEATVS IN CATULLUS’ POEMS 9, 10, 22 and 23

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2021

Leah O'Hearn
Leah O'Hearn*
Affiliation:
La Trobe University
*
L.O'[email protected]
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Extract

      sat es beatus (Catull. 23.27)

In the aggressively philosophical poem 23, Catullus attempts to change Furius’ mind about how he perceives his poverty, ‘advice’ which has been identified as either Stoic or Epicurean. Irrespective of the precise school of thought, it is clear that the poet ridicules Furius in eudaimonistic language. The poet of social commentary seeks to define the beatus uir. In fact, the term beatus has rich philosophical resonance and Catullus uses it in several other poems where attitudes to wealth form a significant backdrop to the poet's social posturing. Catullus was no philosopher. He employs the language and ideas of different schools, and, while his work does not reflect a coherent philosophical position, he was writing at a time when public discourse increasingly drew upon philosophical language and topoi. I will examine Catullus’ use of the term beatus in poems 9, 10, 22 and 23 to demonstrate that the poet draws a contrast between its different meanings across these pairs of adjacent poems. I will argue that Catullus contrasts the eudaimonistic and material meanings of the word to show the differences between clear-sighted wisdom and deceptive pleasures, between the good life and a life filled with goods.

Type
Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 691 - 706
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

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References

1 Unless noted otherwise, I use the text of Thomson, D.F.S., Catullus (Toronto, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Scholarship has generally connected Catullus with Epicureanism: see Giuffrida, P., L'epicureismo nella letteratura latina nel 1 sec. av. Cristo, vol. 2 (Turin, 1950)Google Scholar and the rebuttal by Granarolo, J., L’œuvre de Catulle: Aspects religieux, éthiques et stylistiques (Paris, 1967), 205–24Google Scholar; Godwin, J., ‘The ironic Epicurean in poems 23, 114, 115’, Paideia 73 (2018), 837–51Google Scholar; and Németh, B., ‘Notes on Catullus, c. 23’, AClass 7 (1971), 33–41Google Scholar explores possible Epicurean ideas in particular poems, while in ‘Risus ineptus (Cat. 37 bzw. 39): ein Diptychon’, AAntHung 38 (1998), 215–21 Németh argues that Egnatius (poems 37 and 39) was the known Epicurean poet; J. Uden, ‘Epicurean banality in Catullus’ (forthcoming) supports this identification, arguing that Egnatius’ Epicurean principles (and Cornificius’ Stoic principles in poem 38) are banalized to the level of social gaff. More broadly, Booth, J., ‘All in the mind: sickness in Catullus 76’, in Gill, C. and Braund, S. (edd.), The Passions in Roman Thought and Literature (Cambridge, 1997), 150–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar analysed poem 76 against the doctrines of Hellenistic philosophy and found these unhelpful, but K. Volk, ‘Philosophy’, in R. Gibson and C. Whitton (edd.), The Cambridge Critical Guide to Latin Studies (Cambridge, forthcoming) now suggests that the poem hides its (failed) Epicureanism well.

3 I will also remark upon beatus at Catull. 14.10, 37.14, 45.25, 51.15, 61.150 and 68a.14 to support my contention that Catullus exploits the term's varied senses. On authorial arrangement, see Skinner, M.B., ‘Authorial arrangement of the collection: debate past and present’, in Skinner, M.B. (ed.), A Companion to Catullus (Malden, MA, 2007), 35–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Catullus exploits the pairing technique most often in the polymetrics (e.g. poems 2 and 3, 23 and 24, 28 and 29), but cf. poems 114 and 115. See Barbaud, T., Catulle: Une poétique de l'indicible (Leuven, 2006), 9–11Google Scholar and n. 22 on the ‘poème doublé’ in Catullus and their use in Hellenistic anthologies, especially by Meleager who pairs poems at, for example, Anth. Pal. 5.136 and 137, 5.151 and 152, and 5.165 and 166. On Meleager's influence upon Catullus as an editor, see Gutzwiller, K., ‘Catullus and the garland of Meleager’, in Quesnay, I. Du and Woodman, T. (edd.), Catullus: Poems, Books, Readers (Cambridge, 2012), 79–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For overviews of philosophy at Rome, see Long, A.A., ‘Roman philosophy’, in Sedley, D. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Philosophy (Cambridge, 2003), 184–210, at 184Google Scholar; Griffin, M., ‘Philosophy, politics, and politicians at Rome’, in Griffin, M. and Barnes, J. (edd.), Philosophia Togata II (Oxford, 1989), 1–37Google Scholar; and Volk (n. 2).

5 M.C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness. Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge, 2001 [rev. ed.]) analyses the changing role of luck in the good life in tragedy, Plato and Aristotle. Cicero says that philosophy arms one against Fortune (Tusc. 5.19).

6 Philosophical distinctions between internal and external goods come to have a rhetorical dimension, e.g. Rhet. Her. 3.10–15; Cic. Inv. rhet. 2.177–8 and De or. 2.342.

7 See Arist. Eth. Nic. 1099a31–b8 on external goods, including friendship and wealth, and see 1178b34–5 on health. I include health, a bodily good, as an external good following Roche, T.D., ‘Happiness and the external goods’, in Polansky, R. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Cambridge, 2014), 34–63, at 37Google Scholar.

8 Aristotle distinguished between friendships based on goodness, pleasure and utility, e.g. Eth. Nic. 1155b17–27.

9 e.g. Epicurus, Sent. Vat. 52: ἡ φιλία περιχορεύει τὴν οἰκουμένην κηρύττουσα δὴ πᾶσιν ἡμῖν ἐγείρεσθαι ἐπὶ τὸν μακαρισμόν. See Evans, M., ‘Can Epicureans be friends?’, AncPhil 24 (2004), 407–24Google Scholar for possible Epicurean justifications of friendship in light of the philosophy's egoistic hedonism.

10 Philodemus offers the most complete extant discussion of Epicurean attitudes to wealth; see Yona, S., Epicurean Ethics in Horace: The Psychology of Satire (Oxford, 2018), 34–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 On health as a preferred indifferent, see Graver, M., Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago, 2007), 49, 151–3, 159–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on the Stoic conception of ‘external goods’ as unimportant for eudaimonia, see Nussbaum, M.C., The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, 2009), 361–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 See M. Graver, Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4 (Chicago, 2002), xxxix: examples include beata uita (Cic. Fin. 2.41; Tusc. 5.18), as well as bene et beate uiuere (Cic. Parad. 1.15), bene beateque uiuendo (Fin. 1.5), and si et boni et beati uolumus esse, omnia adiumenta et auxilia petamus bene beateque uiuendi (Tusc. 4.84). For Seneca's use of the phrase beata uita, see e.g. Sen. Dial. 4.13.2, the many examples in Dial. 7 (or Ad Gallionem de Vita Beata), Ben. 3.33.5 and Ep. 85. Horace uses beatus frequently (and beata uita just once at Sat. 2.4.95), but Lucretius uses beatus only at 5.165 to refer to the gods.

13 For beatus as ‘happy’, see Enn. Ann. 280 and Cic. Fam. 7.28.1; ‘lucky’, Plaut. Truc. 808.

14 e.g. Hor. Carm. 2.19.13–14 and 3.26.9, and Prop. 2.28.26.

15 For beatus as materially ‘rich’, see Plaut. Curc. 371–3, Cic. Nat. D. 3.81, Hor. Carm. 1.29.1–2 and Prop. 2.26b.25.

16 beatus (as well as felix and fortunatus) corresponds to a range of Greek terms such as μάκαρ, μακάριος, ὄλβιος, εὐτυχής and εὐδαίμων, according to G.L. Dirichlet, ‘De veterum macarismis’, RGVV 14.4 (Geissen, 1914), 1–72, at 10–13, 23–4. A more recent study by C. De Heer, Makar, Eudaimon, Olbios, Eutychia: A Study of the Semantic Field Denoting Happiness in Ancient Greek to the End of the Fifth Century b.c. (Amsterdam, 1969) covers a narrower period than Dirichlet and does not examine Latin usage. The key point for my argument is that beatus covers a potentially conflicting range of meanings.

17 Wiseman, T.P., Catullan Questions (Leicester, 1969), 13nGoogle Scholar. 3 mused: ‘There may also be a play on beatiorem in poem 9 and 10.17: “Veranius is back from Spain, I'm lucky; I'm back from Bithynia, I wasn't lucky.”’ Cf. Segal, C.P., ‘The order of Catullus, poems 2–11’, Latomus 27 (1968), 305–21, at 316Google Scholar n. 2.

18 See Segal (n. 17), 308 and 316; Wiseman (n. 17), 9 and 12–13; Rankin, H.D., ‘The progress of pessimism in Catullus, poems 2–11’, Latomus 31 (1972), 744–51Google Scholar; Skinner, M.B., Catullus’ Passer: The Arrangement of the Book of Polymetric Poems (New York, 1981), 48 and 57–9Google Scholar; Hubbard, T.K., ‘The Catullan libellus’, Philologus 127 (1983), 218–37, at 229–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dettmer, H., Love by the Numbers: Form and Meaning in the Poetry of Catullus (New York, 1997), 27–9Google Scholar.

19 K. Quinn, Catullus: The Poems (London, 19732), ad loc. represents the standard view of poem 9. On the Lesbia narrative ordering poems 1–14, see Segal (n. 17), 319; Ferrero, L., Interpretazione di Catullo (Turin, 1955), 221Google Scholar; Holzberg, N., Catull: Der Dichter und sein erotisches Werk (Munich, 2002), 73–4Google Scholar asserts that poems such as 9 and 10 play a secondary role to the Lesbia cycle and argues that the happiness of poem 9 soothes the unhappiness of poem 8.

20 M.B. Skinner, Catullus in Verona: A Reading of the Elegiac Libellus, Poems 65–116 (Columbus, 2003), xxiv–xxvi reviews the mechanics of the scroll and the possibility of understanding the Catullan corpus sequentially. I agree with Wray, D., Catullus and the Poetics of Roman Manhood (Cambridge, 2001), 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar that a ‘Winkerlian “first reading” of Catullus … will almost immediately break down before the collection's insistence on being read in several directions at once’. However, see M. Lewis, ‘Narrativising Catullus: a never-ending story’, MHJ 41.2 (2013), 1–19, at 14–16 for a convincing argument regarding the narrativization of poems 1–11 (perhaps even poems 1–26).

21 Only poems 9 and 13 are addressed to Veranius and Fabullus separately. Poems 12, 28 and 47 reveal their provincial service.

22 Skinner, M.B., ‘Among those present: Catullus 44 and 10’, Helios 28 (2001), 57–73Google Scholar, at 66 captures the ironic distance between the poet and ‘Catullus’, the poem's exaggerated comic character. Though I call this character Catullus, I consider him a product of representation, who may or may not correlate with the historical author.

23 Skinner, M.B., ‘Vt decuit cinaediorem: power, gender, and urbanity in Catullus 10’, Helios 16 (1989), 7–23Google Scholar.

24 Nappa, C., Aspects of Catullus’ Social Fiction (Frankfurt, 2001), 85Google Scholar argues that poems 10, 28 and 47 represent the trading of moral integrity for advancement; cf. Fitzgerald, W., Catullan Provocations (Berkeley, 1995), 169–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Wray (n. 20), 113–17, especially 116, on Catullan aggression in poem 10.

25 For Armstrong, R., ‘Journeys and nostalgia in Catullus’, CJ 109 (2013), 43–71Google Scholar, at 53 n. 26, poem 9 is about ‘bridging distance’. While the poem echoes the language of letters, it may properly fit into a genre of travel poems: Cairns, F., ‘Venusta Sirmio: Catullus 31’, in Woodman, T. and West, D. (edd.), Quality and Pleasure in Latin Poetry (Cambridge, 1974), 1–17Google Scholar, at 7 judged poem 9 a prosphōnetikon; cf. Giangrande, G., ‘Theocritus’ twelfth and fourth Idylls: a study in Hellenistic irony’, QUCC 12 (1971), 95–113Google Scholar, who deemed it an epibatērion.

26 Consider e.g. Cicero's anxiety about the lack of letters between himself and Trebatius (Cic. Fam. 7.9).

27 Cf. Cicero writing to Curio about his arrival (Fam. 2.6.1) or the role of rumour about those abroad in Caelius Rufus’ letter to Cicero (Fam. 8.1.4).

28 Repeated miscommunication affects Cicero's relationship with Appius Pulcher from Fam. 3.5 through 3.9; Cicero's side of the correspondence reveals frequent attempts to reassure Appius Pulcher of his affection.

29 Fordyce, C.J., Catullus: A Commentary (Oxford, 1961), ad locGoogle Scholar.

30 Quintus Cicero writes to Tiro in a similarly effusive manner at Cic. Fam. 16.27.2.

31 On poem 10 as a ‘comic scenario’, see Nielsen, R.M., ‘Catullus and sal (poem 10)’, AC 56 (1987), 148–61Google Scholar, at 154.

32 Skinner (n. 23), 19.

33 See Fordyce (n. 29), ad loc. on the repeated attempts to check worship of Serapis in the Late Republic.

34 I follow Dániel Kiss's critical edition at Catullus Online (www.catullusonline.com) in reading beatiorum (MS 15, a manuscript from before 1479 now in Dresden's Sächsische Landesbibliothek [DC 133]) rather than beatiorem (MSS GR).

35 R. Ellis, A Commentary on Catullus (Oxford, 18892), ad loc. adduced several parallels for this phrase, including Heraclitus (B49), Anth. Pal. 7.128.3, and Cic. Att. 2.5.1. Cf. Cic. Brut. 191.

36 I. Du Quesnay, ‘Three problems in poem 66’, in I. Du Quesnay and T. Woodman (edd.), Catullus: Poems, Books, Readers (Cambridge, 2012), 153–83, at 167. Catullus uses the word unanimus again in poem 30, addressed to an Alfenus, whom commentators have frequently identified as Alfenus Varus, the character in poem 10: see Fordyce (n. 29), Quinn (n. 19) and Thomson (n. 1), ad loc.

37 On the importance of the domus in poem 31 (and in other poems), see Putnam, M.C.J., ‘Catullus’ journey (carm. 4)’, CPh 57 (1962), 10–19Google Scholar, at 11–12, and Baker, R.J., ‘Catullus and friend in carm. XXXI’, Mnemosyne 23 (1970), 33–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 39–41.

38 e.g. Cic. Cat. 3.10 and Mil. 93. By contrast, the comic playwrights usually employ saluum uenire or saluum aduenire gaudeo to convey a safe return from abroad: e.g. Plaut. Bacch. 456, Curc. 306–7, Mostell. 448; Ter. Haut. 407, Eun. 976. Cf. saluum uenire gaudeo in Cic. Fam. 1.10.1, Att. 5.21.1, 6.5.1.

39 M. Wheeler, ‘Meter in Catullan invective: expectations and innovation’ (Diss., Boston University, 2015), 122 argues that Catullus conveys ‘implicit criticism of Bithynia’ by using the choliambic metre.

40 With Alexandrian learnedness, Catullus showcases the knowledge with which he returns by etymologizing Bithynia through its two tribes (Thyniam atque Bithynos, 31.5): see Cairns (n. 25), 8–11 and Quinn (n. 19), ad loc.

41 On L. Veranius Flaccus, see Wiseman, T.P., Catullus and his World: A Reappraisal (Cambridge, 1985), 266–9Google Scholar. Cf. Neudling, C.L., A Prosopography to Catullus (Oxford, 1955), 182–3Google Scholar. On the line's dryness, see Armstrong (n. 25), 54.

42 On Cinna as Catullus’ comrade in Bithynia, see Quinn (n. 19), ad loc.

43 Cinna dedicates the Phaenomena to a friend in fr. 13 [11 Bl., C.]: see A.S. Hollis, Fragments of Roman Poetry c.60 b.c.–a.d. 20 (Oxford, 2007), 17 with discussion at 42–5. Critics debate whether it was a copy or a translation by Cinna: T. Woodman, ‘A covering letter: poem 65’, in I. Du Quesnay and T. Woodman (edd.), Catullus: Poems, Books, Readers (Cambridge, 2012), 130–52, at 145 argues that it was a translation; in the same volume, Du Quesnay (n. 36), 154 n. 4 rejects the idea.

44 See Testimonia, 1 in Lightfoot, J.L., Parthenius of Nicaea (Oxford, 1999), 3–4Google Scholar. Some suggest that the encyclopaedia refers to the father of the poet known to Catullus. Wiseman, T.P., Cinna the Poet, and Other Roman Essays (Leicester, 1974), 44–58Google Scholar and Hollis (n. 43), 19–20 assert that the poet is meant.

45 P. Bourdieu, ‘The forms of capital’, in J.G. Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (Westport, Conn., 1986), 241–58 distinguishes between cultural capital in its embodied state (e.g. knowledge of provincial tribes), objectified state (e.g. material objects such as books and litter-bearers) and institutionalized state (e.g. ‘job’ titles like praetor or comes).

46 Cf. accipe quis merser fortunae fluctibus ipse, | ne amplius a misero dona beata petas (68a.13–14). Emotionally miser Catullus cannot give ‘happy gifts’ of poetry, but poetry is also conceived of as a physical item (68a.33–6), and it is related to the poet's status in a relationship of hospitium offered by the addressee: see McKie, D.S., Essays in the Interpretation of Roman Poetry (Cambridge, 2009), 191–248Google Scholar.

47 Including Plaut. Capt. 835–6, Pseud. 351; Ter. Phorm. 852 and Eun. 1031, but one could add Ter. Hec. 848 and Haut. 295–6, or Plaut. Rud. 1191 and Capt. 828.

48 The repetitive question-and-answer structure (uenistine … uenisti, 9.3 and 5) reflects the exuberant welcome extended to his young male beloved by the lover in Theocritus’ Idyll 12: ἤλυθες, ὦ φίλε κοῦρε; … ἤλυθες (Theoc. Id. 12.1–2). Cf. Sappho, fr. 48 V and Alc. fr. 350 V; Giangrande (n. 25), 95–101 discusses the genre of Idyll 12.

49 Smith, A., ‘Cocktail wit and self-deprecation in Catullus 9 and 10’, Paideia 73 (2018), 1877–94Google Scholar, at 1879–80 remarks that the ‘neutering’ (quantum and quid) of Veranius and Catullus at 9.9–10 shifts the focus from the particular situation to the abstract concept of ‘blessedness’.

50 Fitzgerald (n. 24), 35. For B.A. Krostenko, ‘Catullus and elite Republican social discourse’, in M.B. Skinner (ed.), A Companion to Catullus (Malden, MA, 2007), 212–32, at 222–3, Catull. 3.2 orients readers to the ‘conventions of light amatory verse’.

51 Nielsen (n. 31), 156 emphasizes the ‘latent aggression’ in the scene.

52 Skinner (n. 23), 16–17 discusses how Catullus projects ‘his own acquisitive impulses onto the girl who had made a fool of him’ and comments that ‘cinaedus is absolutely gender-specific’.

53 C.A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality (New York, 20102) defines cinaedus at 193, finds the figure ‘gender-deviant/liminal’ at 232–3, and notes the associations with the East at 195.

54 Williams (n. 53), 197. At 388 n. 106, he rightly refutes Skinner (n. 23), 17 n. 33, who follows the TLL to suggest that the term refers specifically to a male prostitute. Adams, J.N., The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London, 1982), 132Google Scholar comments that Catullus uses the term cinaediorem in a ‘non-sexual context’.

55 Nappa (n. 24), 90 discusses the association between litters, Eastern monarchs and effeminacy. Cicero (Verr. 2.11.27) castigates the greedy Verres for using the type of litter that eludes Catullus.

56 The exception is poem 16.2, where cinaedus describes Furius, but his name may nod to fur, ‘thief’: see Holzberg (n. 19), 26 and Skinner (n. 20), 100; Dettmer (n. 18), 29 combines the names Furius and Aurelius to mean ‘mad for gold’ or ‘money-mad’. On the relationship between Catullus’ erotic persona and greedy Roman imperialism, see D. Konstan, ‘Self, sex, and empire in Catullus: the construction of a decentered identity’, in V. Bécares et al. (edd.), Intertextualidad en las Literaturas Griega y Latina (Madrid, 2000), 213–31, at 222–4 (though he does not specifically connect the term cinaedus with greed); on the kinaidos in Classical Athenian texts, see Davidson, J., Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens (London, 1997), 167–82Google Scholar, especially 174, who calls this figure ‘the paradigm of insatiability, of desire-never-to-be-filled … appetite unbridled’.

57 As Skinner (n. 23), 17 argues. The emendation to beatiorum does not negate the rhyming association.

58 McMaster, A., ‘The rules of gift-exchange: Catullus 12, 13 and 14’, Mouseion 10 (2010), 355–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 376 argues that Catullus’ ‘attempt to participate in the conventional type of exchange is both unsuccessful and corrupting. As a result of it, he becomes inelegant, inarticulate, unwitty’.

59 For beatus as ‘materially wealthy’ in two similar contexts dealing with men off to make their fortune abroad, see Thyna merce beatum (Hor. Carm. 3.7.3), and Icci, beatis nunc Arabum inuides | gazis (Hor. Carm. 1.29.1–2). Cf. the wealth and power of the bride's new home at 61.149–50 (en tibi domus ut potens | et beata uiri tui) and the wealth of beatas urbes lost to otium at 51.15–16: although beatus refers to material wealth in these examples, the lines retain the notion of being ‘blessed’ by the gods with good fortune and happiness.

60 See Fitzgerald (n. 24), 169–84; Putnam, M.C.J., ‘Catullus 11: the ironies of integrity’, Ramus 3 (1974), 70–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Konstan (n. 56); and Greene, E., ‘Catullus, Caesar and Roman masculine identity’, Antichthon 40 (2006), 49–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Krostenko, B., Cicero, Catullus, and the Language of Social Performance (Chicago, 2001), 269–71Google Scholar. Wiseman (n. 17), 12 n. 4 connected poems 22 and 23 through the phrase homo bellus but also likened poem 22 to 17, because both of them feature men ‘unaware of their own faults’.

62 Skinner (n. 18), 47 judged poem 22 unrelated to surrounding poems. Richlin, A., ‘Systems of food imagery in Catullus’, CW 81 (1988), 355–63Google Scholar and Marsilio, M. and Podlesney, K., ‘Poverty and poetic rivalry in Catullus (c. 23, 13, 16, 24, 81)’, AClass 49 (2006), 167–81Google Scholar argued that literary rivalry prompted poem 23; cf. Marsilio, M., ‘Mendicancy and competition in Catullus 23 and Martial 12, 32’, Latomus 67 (2008), 918–30, at 926Google Scholar.

63 Krostenko (n. 61), 269. Fordyce (n. 29), ad loc. glossed beatus as ‘self-satisfied’.

64 Quotations from Quinn (n. 19), ad loc. Both Ellis (n. 35) and Merrill, E.T., Catullus (Boston, 1893)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ad loc. compared the final phrase to satis beatus unicis Sabinis, Hor. Carm. 2.18.14.

65 Horace adopts Catullus’ critique at Hor. Ep. 2.2.106–8. In my interpretation of poem 22, I have been greatly influenced by M. Citroni, ‘The value of self-deception: Horace, Aristippus, Heraclides Ponticus, and the pleasures of the fool (and of the poet)’, in P. Hardie (ed.), Augustan Poetry and the Irrational (Oxford, 2016), 221–39.

66 Catullus has a negative attitude to other prolific poets in poems 95 and 95b. P.E. Knox, ‘Catullus and Callimachus’, in M.B. Skinner (ed.), A Companion to Catullus (Malden, MA, 2007), 151–71 reviews Catullus’ Callimacheanism and preference for the small and polished.

67 Cicero seems to suggest a certain smugness when he uses a similar phrase (in sinu gaudere) to dismiss the Epicureans for their centring of bodily pleasure as the good in human life, ut in sinu gaudeant, gloriose loqui desinant (Cic. Tusc. 3.51).

68 The name is unattested. Catullus often uses ‘speaking names’, so Suffenus might connote sufficere (‘to suffice’)—thus Mr Good Enough—or perhaps even sufferre (‘to endure’) in reference to the patience required of the terrible poet's unsuspecting reader. See J. Ingleheart, ‘Play on the proper names of individuals in the Catullan corpus: wordplay, the iambic tradition, and the Late Republican culture of public abuse’, JRS 104 (2014), 51–72.

69 Catullus calls Egnatius and the other barflies boni beatique (Catull. 37.14) to communicate their status and wealth but also to undermine their pretensions to lifestyles of Epicurean pleasure; in fact, he says, they are just pleasure-seeking low lives. Uden (n. 2) argues that Catullus uses the stock tropes of anti-Epicurean invective. On Epicurean self-perception, cf. Cic. De or. 3.64: sine ulla contumelia dimittamus; sunt enim et boni uiri et, quoniam sibi ita uidentur, beati.

70 Horace refers to the same fable in his satire on human folly and the pompous responses of the Stoics at Hor. Sat. 2.3.298–9, as does Persius in his satire (mostly delivered through the persona of Socrates) on the need to know one's own faults (Pers. 4.23–4).

71 Wheeler (n. 39), 67, 87–93.

72 Wheeler (n. 39), 96–7 cites Archil. frr. 172–81 W, 185–7 W, Hipponax, frr. 63 W, 123 W and Callim. Ia. 1.32–77 as other examples of iambic attacks through fable. Pace Krostenko (n. 61), 270, who suggests that Catullus uses the fable to avoid condemning Suffenus outright.

73 Watson, L.C., ‘Rustic Suffenus (Catullus 22) and literary rusticity’, PLLS 6 (1990), 13–33, at 27Google Scholar n. 19 argues that the unusually gentle choliambic tone indicates Callimachean influence.

74 Cicero mentions his friendship with an Aquinus in the context of remarks about every poet thinking his own work the best: Cic. Tusc. 5.63.

75 Watson (n. 73), 15–17 and 27 n. 25 also argued this point, positing that Suffenus and Varus’ girlfriend ‘belong to the same mixed category’ of people who stumbled in their efforts to adopt urbanitas—i.e. ‘mixed’ compared to others like Aemilius in poem 97, whom Catullus excludes outright from any claim to urbanitas. Cf. Dettmer (n. 18), 46. Thomson (n. 1), ad loc. judged Varus unscathed and the address to him a ‘purely ornamental’ Hellenistic device.

76 M. Gale, ‘Aliquid putare nugas: literary filiation, critical communities and reader-response in Catullus’, in R. Hunter and S.P. Oakley (edd.), Latin Literature and its Transmission (Cambridge, 2015), 88–107 posited that Catullus was more sensitive to the role that readers play in shaping meaning and more anxious about his text's fate than the controlling figure described by Fitzgerald (n. 24): see also J. Farrell, ‘The impermanent text in Catullus and other Roman poets’, in W.A. Johnson and H.N. Parker (edd.), Ancient Literacies (Oxford, 2009), 164–85; D. Feeney, ‘Representation and the materiality of the book in the polymetrics’, in I. Du Quesnay and T. Woodman (edd.), Catullus: Poems, Books, Readers (Cambridge, 2012), 29–47, at 38–43; Roman, L., Poetic Autonomy in Ancient Rome (Oxford, 2014), 52–4, 86–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stevens, B., Silence in Catullus (Madison, 2013), 85–94Google Scholar.

77 Gaisser, J.H., Catullus (Chichester and Malden, MA, 2009), 68CrossRefGoogle Scholar linked the Catullan speaker's lack of self-awareness in poem 10 to the final fable of poem 22; Stevens (n. 76), 90 comments that Catullus’ unspoken anxiety about his own urbanity in poem 22 ought to remind us of his ‘ironic knowledge of failure’ in poem 10.

78 Németh (n. 2 [1971]), 33–41. See Godwin, J., Catullus: The Shorter Poems (Warminster, 1999)Google Scholar and Thomson (n. 1), ad loc. Godwin (n. 2) revises his earlier reading of poem 23 to argue that the poem responds to Epicurean topoi.

79 MacLeod, C.W., ‘Parody and personalities in Catullus’, CQ 23 (1973), 294–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 299 found philosophical overtones but did not link the poem specifically to Stoicism.

80 See Németh (n. 2 [1971]), 39 n. 19. For the view that erotic jealousy precipitates poem 23, see Skinner (n. 18), 45–6; Carratello, U., ‘Catullo e Giovenzio’, GIF 47 (1995), 27–52Google Scholar, at 35–6; Holzberg (n. 19), 103–5; O'Bryhim, S., ‘Catullus 23 as Roman comedy’, TAPhA 137 (2007), 133–45Google Scholar; and A. Morelli, ‘Catullus 23 and Martial. An epigrammatic model and its “refraction” throughout Martial's libri’, in F. Bessone and M. Fucecchi (edd.), The Literary Genres in the Flavian Age (Berlin, 2017), 117–35, especially 119.

81 Németh (n. 2 [1971]), 37 comments that est pulcre tibi translates καλῶς. See also MacLeod (n. 79), 299. Catullus judges himself bene ac beate at 14.10–11, because Calvus has not wasted his labours in the courtroom. bene ac beate affirms their shared taste and friendship, but lines 10–11 also have the flavour of parody. Sulla litterator may have been associated with philosophy.

82 Németh (n. 2 [1971]), 37 argues that nihil timetis (23.8) is a direct reference to Stoic thought and cites among his evidence Cic. Tusc. 5.12, 5.16 and Hor. Carm. 3.3.7–8. Cf. Godwin (n. 2), 844 on the stock nature of these consolations, common to both Epicureanism and Stoicism, and on freedom from fear as a characteristically Epicurean concern.

83 Nussbaum (n. 11), 80–1 summarizes the close relationship between emotions and beliefs in most Greek philosophies. Epicurus also mentions the relationship between perception and wealth and is approvingly quoted by Seneca the Younger: si uis … Pythoclea diuitem facere, non pecuniae adiciendum sed cupiditati detrahendum est (Ep. 31.7; also quoted at Stob. Flor. 3.17.23). Cf. Epicurus, Sent. Vat. 25.

84 W. Kroll, Catull (Leipzig and Berlin, 1929), ad loc. Some scholars argue that Catull. 23.1 quotes Furius’ own words: see Fordyce (n. 29), Quinn (n. 19) and Thomson (n. 1), ad loc., as well as L. Richardson Jr., ‘Furi et Aureli, comites Catulli’, CPh 58 (1963), 93–106, at 97–8. Recently, Hubbard, T.K., ‘The Catullan libelli revisited’, Philologus 149 (2005), 253–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 263 argues that Catullus was parodying a poem by Furius, which praised the simple life and featured the terms mundus and beatus. No evidence for such a poem remains.

85 Németh (n. 2 [1971]), 36. On the fears besetting rich men, see Hor. Sat. 1.1.77; Hor. Epist. 2.1.119–21; Juv. 10.18–22 and 14.298–331, especially 14.303–10 and 14.316–18.

86 Ellis (n. 35), ad loc. compared Furius’ happy possession of poverty and family to Plaut. Truc. 808: puer quidem beatust: matres duas habet et auias duas.

87 As noticed by MacLeod (n. 79), 299, who argued that 23.1–4 subverts the topos that φίλοι are compensation for poverty. Cf. ἐν πενίᾳ τε καὶ ταῖς λοιπαῖς δυστυχίαις μόνην οἴονται καταφυγὴν εἶναι τοὺς φίλους (Arist. Eth. Nic. 1155a11–12). On the stepmother in antiquity, see Watson, P.A., Ancient Stepmothers: Myth, Misogyny and Reality (Leiden, 1995)Google Scholar.

88 As Fitzgerald (n. 24), 84–5 argued, further comparing the ‘well-met’ (pulcre conuenit, 57.1 and 10) pair Caesar and Mamurra, which he considered another subversion of the ‘happy family’ theme to ridicule greedy characters.

89 For the saltcellar as a proud symbol of simple Roman family life, see Hor. Carm. 2.16.13–16 and Pers. 3.24–9 (cf. Pers. 5.137–9). See also Callim. Epigr. 28 G−P = Anth. Pal. 6.301 = 47 Pf. for the saltcellar as a symbol of frugality.

90 P.S. Peek, ‘Feeding Aurelius’ hunger: Catullus 21’, AClass 45 (2002), 89–99 reviews and dismisses arguments that Aurelius was a parasite.

91 Cf. Konstan, D., ‘An interpretation of Catullus 21’, in Deroux, C. (ed.), Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History 1 (Bruxelles, 1979), 214–16Google Scholar on Aurelius’ greedy desire for Juventius, as well as Peek (n. 90), 93 on Aurelius’ ‘excessive and indiscriminate sexual hunger’.

92 Gibson, R.K., Excess and Restraint (London, 2007), 26–9, 93–104Google Scholar identified mundus and cognates (fundamentally the ‘absence of sordid matter’) as part of a vocabulary of moderation in the works of Horace, Propertius and Ovid. Though most extensively defined by Aristotle, the concept of moderation was a central Graeco-Roman preoccupation from the days of Hesiod, as Gibson (this note) outlines at 10–16. Catullus’ poems 23 and 97 make these same associations between mundus, restraint and moderation. Consider too commoda (23.24) from commodus, literally ‘with due measure’.

93 Though, as Nisbet, R.G.M. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace: Odes Book 1 (Oxford, 1970), 75–6Google Scholar make clear, munditia in female grooming commended a simple toilette best summarized by the deceptive phrase ‘natural beauty’. Applied to male grooming, munditia could involve censure: the risible senex amator Lysidamus describes his newfound interest in perfumes since falling in love with Casina via a similar jingle, munditiis munditiam antideo (Plaut. Cas. 225–7); Sen. Dial. 4.33.3 recalls a young man executed by Caligula because of his too carefully groomed locks.

94 Martial insinuates that Labienus followed a similar depilatory regime (cui praestas, culum quod, Labiene, pilas? Mart. 2.62.4). See too Pers. 4.35–6 and 4.39–41 and cf. Mart. 9.27 and Juv. 8.16. Martial links an older woman's intimate depilation with the term munditia (quid uellis uetulum, Ligeia, cunnum? … tales munditiae decent puellas, Mart. 10.90.1 and 3). See Williams (n. 53), 141–5 on Mart. 2.62 and other texts, which imply that excessive grooming was a sign of effeminacy.

95 O'Bryhim, S., ‘Malodorous Aemilius (Catullus 97)’, CPh 107 (2012), 150–6, at 152Google Scholar and Richlin, A., The Garden of Priapus (Oxford, 1992), 151Google Scholar.

96 Cf. Cic. Tusc. 5.99–100, where Cicero argues that real pleasure (iucunditatem) as well as dryness (siccitatem) and soundness of health (integritatem ualetudinis) can be had in wanting (desiderio), rather than in indulging too much (satietate) at table.

97 Though not to the extent that he specifically parodies the bawd figure, pace MacLeod (n. 79), 297–8 and O'Bryhim (n. 80), 143.

98 Konstan, D., ‘The contemporary political context’, in Skinner, M.B. (ed.), A Companion to Catullus (Malden, MA, 2007), 72–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 81 comments on differences in Catullus’ attitude to gain between poems 10 and 28.

99 Godwin (n. 78), ad loc.

100 Holzberg (n. 19), 103–4.

101 Cf. Fitzgerald (n. 24), 175–6, on Catullus’ violations of group-inclusion in poem 10.