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QUO USQUE TANDEM CANTHERIUM PATIEMUR ISTUM? (APUL. MET. 3.27): LUCIUS, CATILINE AND THE ‘IMMORALITY’ OF THE HUMAN ASS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2013

Giuseppe La Bua
Giuseppe La Bua*
Affiliation:
Department of Ancient Studies, Sapienza University Rome
*
[email protected]
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Extract

Shortly after his accidental transformation into an ass, Lucius attempts to return to his human form by grabbing some roses decorating a statue of the patron goddess of the quadrupeds, Epona. But his servulus feels outraged at the sacrilegious act. Jumping to his feet in a temper and acting as a faithful defender of the sacred place, he addresses his former human owner as a new ‘Catiline’ (Apul. Met. 3.27):

Quod me pessima scilicet sorte conantem servulus meus, cui semper equi cura mandata fuerat, repente conspiciens indignatus exurgit et: ‘quo usque tandem’ inquit ‘cantherium patiemur istum paulo ante cibariis iumentorum, nunc etiam simulacris deorum infestum? Quin iam ego istum sacrilegum debilem claudumque reddam.’

My attempt was frustrated by what seemed to be the worst of luck: my own dear servant, who always had the task of looking after my horse, suddenly saw what was going on, and jumped up in a rage. ‘For how long’, he cried, ‘are we to endure this clapped-out beast? A minute ago his target was the animals' rations, and now he is attacking even the statues of deities! See if I don't maim and lame this sacrilegious brute!’

A self-evident instance of parody, the servant's words ironically reformulate one of the most familiar texts of Republican oratory, the famous opening of Cicero's first invective against Catiline, delivered before the assembled senate in the Temple of Jupiter Stator on 8 November 63 b.c.: the substitution of a low and familiar word such as cantherium for Catilinam underpins the comic undertone of the entire passage, imbued with further reminiscences of Cicero. Scholars debate whether the servant's verbal attack against Lucius is a parodic adaptation of Cicero's opening invective or rather a spoof on Catiline's paradoxical reading of Cicero's phrase in Sallust (Sall. Cat. 20.9). It is safer to assume a case of double imitation, not unusual in Apuleius' work.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , December 2013 , pp. 854 - 859
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2013 

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References

1 Latin text: Helm, R., Apulei Platonici Madaurensis Metamorphoseon Libri XI (Leipzig, 1955)Google Scholar; English translation: Walsh, P.G., Apuleius. The Golden Ass (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar.

2 Westerbrink, A.G., ‘Some parodies in Apuleius' Metamorphoses’, in Hijmans, B.L. and van der Paardt, R.Th. (edd.), Aspects of Apuleius' Golden Ass (Groningen, 1978), 63–74Google Scholar, at 66.

3 On the opening words of the First Catilinarian see Dyck, A.R., Cicero. Catilinarians (Cambridge, 2008)Google Scholar, 63.

4 The word cantherium, generally indicating a nag or a gelding, is well attested in comic contexts; cf. Plaut. Aul. 495; Capt. 814; Cist. 308. See Callebat, L., Sermo Cotidianus dans les Métamorphoses d'Apulée (Caen, 1968)Google Scholar, 26.

5 von Albrecht, M., Masters of Roman Prose from Cato to Apuleius (Leeds, 1989), 169–76Google Scholar, at 174 points to the Ciceronian use of the adjective infestus (cf. Cic. Cat. 1.5.11) and draws attention to ‘a certain similarity to Cicero's Verrines in the way Apuleius follows the indictment de re frumentaria with the charge de signis’.

6 Quae quo usque tandem patiemini o fortissimi viri?

7 Finkelpearl, E.D., Metamorphosis of Language in Apuleius: A Study of Allusion in the Novel (Ann Arbor, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 52.

8 Tatum, J., ‘Marcus Tullius Cicero author of the Metamorphoses’, in Keulen, W.H., Nauta, R.R. and Panayotakis, S. (edd.), Lectiones Scrupolosae: Essays on the Text and Interpretation of Apuleius' Metamorphoses in honour of Maike Zimmermann. Ancient Narrative Supplementum VI (Groningen, 2006), 4–14Google Scholar, at 12.

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12 Tatum (n. 8), at 12.

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16 As Winkler, J.J., Auctor & Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius' Golden Ass (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1985)Google Scholar notes at 17, ‘the tone (indignatus), pose (exurgit), and run of words (including the play on Catilina/cantherium) are an unmistakable caricature of that republican crisis more than two centuries earlier’; for the phonetic joke and the pun Catilina/cantherium, see 198.

17 Tatum (n. 8), 12.

18 For Cicero's references to the vexatio of the Vestals see North, H.F., ‘Lacrimae Virginis Vestalis’, in Dickison, S.K. and Hallett, J.P. (edd.), Rome and Her Monuments: Essays on the City and Literature of Rome in honor of Katherine A. Geffcken (Wauconda, IL, 2000), 357–67Google Scholar.

19 As a rapid glimpse at the occurrences of the formula in political and historical writings (especially Cicero's orations) seems to confirm, fortis vir function as a ‘bipartisan’ label, without carrying a strictly ideological implication or defining the members of a precise political party; in general on the political language in the Late Republic in connection with the debate on populares/optimates see Robb, M.A., Beyond Populares and Optimates: Political Language in the Late Republic (Stuttgart, 2010)Google Scholar.

20 Dyck (n. 3), 67.

21 Cic. Cat. 1.2, 3, 21; 2.10, 20; 3.5, 8, 14, 24; 4.3, 13, 15.

22 On the Apuleian robbers as pseudo-heroes see Smith, W.S., ‘Style and character in the Golden Ass: “Suddenly an opposite appearance”’, in Haase, W. (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, 34.2 (Berlin and New York, 1994), 1575–99Google Scholar, at 1594–8. For the parodic use of terms evoking the linguistic sphere of social relations in the description of the heroic deeds of the robbers see Riess, W., Apuleius und die Räuber: Ein Beitrag zur historischen Kriminalitätforschung (Stuttgart, 2001)Google Scholar, 43.

23 For the alleged first conspiracy of Catiline cf. Cic. Cat. 1.15.

24 The hapax igninum is preserved, as a marginal variant, in the manuscript F, which attests inigninum (a common case of dittography). For a good discussion of the question see Nicolini, L., ‘Ad (l)usum lectoris: giochi di parole nelle Metamorfosi di Apuleio'’, MD 58 (2007), 115–79Google Scholar, at 164–5.

25 Kenney, E.J., Apuleius. The Golden Ass. A New Translation (London, 1998)Google Scholar, 244.

26 Dyck (n. 3), at 70.

27 Cic. Cat. 1.3.3, 6.8–9; 2.10.5; 3.15.4, 19.8, 21.4; Sull. 3; 52; 57; Mur. 85; Har. resp. 18.

28 Winkler (n. 16), 174.

29 Cic. Cat. 2.4.7–11, 8.1–4.

30 Sall. Cat. 5.8.

31 Wiedemann, T., ‘The figure of Catiline in the Historia Augusta’, CQ 29.2 (1979), 479–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 479.

32 See above p. 856 n. 15.

33 Cic. Cat. 2.10; Sall. Cat. 14.

34 Talibus mendaciis admiscendo sermones alios qui meum verecundum silentium vehementius premerent, animos pastorum in meam perniciem atrociter suscitavit (Apul. Met. 7.22).

35 Dyck (n. 3), 83.

36 Batstone, W.W., ‘Cicero's construction of consular ethos in the First Catilinarian’, TAPhA 124 (1994), 211–66Google Scholar, at 242–3.

37 ‘Atque utinam ipse asinus’ inquit ‘quem numquam profecto vidissem, vocem quiret humanam dare meaeque testimonium innocentiae perhibere posset: profecto vos huius iniuriae pigeret’ (Apul. Met. 7.25).

38 For Lucius' inability to articulate words cf. Apul. Met. 3.29. See Snell, B., ‘Das I-Ah des Goldenen Ass’, Hermes 70 (1935), 355–6Google Scholar.