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Oral Imagery In Catullus 7

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Stephen Bertman
Stephen Bertman
Affiliation:
University of Windsor, Ontario
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Extract

How many kisses will be enough for Catullus? That is the question that opens Poem 7. The answer: as many as are the grains of sand in the Libyan desert, asmany as are the stars in the nightime sky. Yet in this poem sand and stars do notfunction simply as quantitative symbols. Each is in fact described in a mannerthat subtly alludes to the mouth – the organ from which Lesbia's kisses couldcome.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , December 1978 , pp. 477 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1978

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References

1 Pliny the Elder speaks of it as one of the greatest gifts of Nature (‘Inter eximia naturae dona numeratum’: H.N. 22.101). For its curative powers see Pliny, , 22.101–6Google Scholar; see also ‘Silphium’ in Daremberg-Saglio and ‘Silphion, ’ in RE 2 Reihe, iii. 1.Google Scholar

2 See Moorhouse, A. C., ‘Two Adjectives in Catullus, 7’, AJPh 4 (1963), 418.Google Scholar Moorhouse also sees in aestuosi (5) not only a reference to the heat of the desert but also to the fever of passion (cf. Elder, J. P., ‘Notes on Some Conscious and Subconscious Ele ments in Catullus’ Poetry’, HSCPb 60 (1951), 109).Google Scholar

3 Catullus is the first author to use these words. See Fordyce, C. J., Catullus; A Commentary (Oxford, 1961), on 5.7.Google Scholar

4 Quinn, K. F., ‘Docte Catulle’, in Criti cal Essays on Roman Literature: Elegy and Lyric, ed. Sullivan, J. P. (London, 1962), p. 46.Google Scholar