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Friendship, politics, and literature in Catullus: poems 1, 65 and 66, 116

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

W. Jeffrey Tatum
W. Jeffrey Tatum
Affiliation:
The Florida State University
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Extract

To the extent that one subscribes to the proposition, by now a virtual principle of criticism (at least in some circles), that literary texts constitute sites for the negotiation, often vigorous, of power relations within a society, the reader of Catullus can hardly avoid some consideration of the poet's attitude toward contemporary political matters. It is a subject on which two principal lines of thought can be traced. Mommsen argued that Catullus responded to the enormities that followed the reinvigoration of the First Triumvirate at the conference of Luca in 56 by occupying a thoroughly optimate position. Wilamowitz, on the other hand, insisted that Catullus' lyrics reflect only moments of the author's individual experience, amongst which expressions of personal distaste for certain public figures naturally appear but nothing which can appropriately be taken as indications of a political stance. The approach of Wilamowitz has proved more influential, followed in spirit if not in specifics by numerous commentators. To the degree that Catullus has been assimilated to the Augustan elegists, whose poems have been deemed by a scholar of the stature of Veyne to be anti-political in nature, it has been all the easier to reject the idea that Catullus adopts a political position, an assessment strongly maintained in a recent study by Paul Allen Miller, for whom the rejection of all political engagement is the sine qua non of true lyric poetry. Mommsen's optimate Catullus has lately found his champion, however, in a careful article by H. P. Syndikus. Although Miller and Syndikus, like Wilamowitz and Mommsen, draw diametrically opposed conclusions concerning politics in Catullus' poetry, they are agreed nevertheless that politics can be regarded as a relatively straightforward term: it refers to statecraft, matters of government, and party strife. Other readers, however, have been more self-conscious in their theoretical concerns, a salutary consequence of which has been a shift by some to a less narrow conception of the field of reference appropriate to discussions of ‘the political’ in Latin literature.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , December 1997 , pp. 482 - 500
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1997

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References

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45 The final simile has been felt to be ‘Hellenistic’ (and therefore preparatory for Poem 66), a further signal of the poem's ‘artificiality’; cf. (recently)Hutchinson, G. O., Hellenistic Poetry (Oxford, 1989), pp. 299ff.; Syndikus, Catull, pp. 197fGoogle Scholar

46 Hortensius Hortalus (cos. 69): F. Vonder Mühll, RE 8, 2.2470ff. Whether Hortensius was actually nobilis remains uncertain;cf. Badian, E., Chiron 20 (1990), 393. The other, though less likely, possibility is the orator's son: so Syme, Roman Revolution, p. 63 (without argument);Google ScholarShackleton Bailey, D. R., Onomasticon to Cicero's Speeches (Norman, 1988), pp. 55f; Broughton, MRR 3.103; on the son, see F. Münzer, RE 8, 2.2468f. Despite Shackleton Bailey's asseverations, it is hardly the ‘common sense’ conclusion. The catalogue of poets and poetasters in Ov. Trist. 2.441 f. is not all that relevant; nevertheless, the Hortensius there mentioned is probably the orator (‘nee minus Hortensi, nee sunt minus improba Servi/ carmina. quis dubitet nomina tanta sequfV). Hortensius and Sulpicius Servius are also linked as poets by Pliny (Ep. 5.3.5), where, paceGoogle ScholarWiseman, Cinna the Poet and other Roman Essays (Leicester, 1974), p. 190, there is no reason to think that Pliny is referring to the younger Hortensius but yet the older Sulpicius (Hortensius the poet also makes an appearance at Gell. 19.9). However, it is as a reader and not a fellow poet that Hortalus is configured here; consequently, these lists are not really germane to Catullus' selection of an addressee. More to the point is the orator's well-known fondness for Greek culture (charmingly illustrated by Gell. 1.5.2–3) and the fact that, apart from the poem sub iudice, the younger Hortensius is nowhere referred to as Hortalus (admittedly, the father is called Hortalus by Cicero only twice; cf. Shackleton Bailey, p. 55). Certainty eludes, but probability favours the consul of 69. In any case, the social dynamics which are the focus of our critical concern here obtain whichever Hortensius it is whom our poet addresses.Google Scholar

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83 For the controversies, ancient and modern, see Wiseman, Roman Studies, pp. 57ff.; Brunt, Fall of the Roman Republic, pp. 144ff

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