Chapter 6 - Otium and Voluptas: Catullus and Roman Epicureanism

Summary

Catullus’ collection contains several clear echoes of the work of two contemporary Epicurean poets, Lucretius and Philodemus. Indeed, several of the neoteric poet’s central themes (the attractions of otium and disengagement from public life; patronage by members of the high elite and its pitfalls; dissatisfaction with the mos maiorum) bring him potentially into close alignment with Epicurean ideals. In this chapter, however, I argue that, on closer consideration, Catullus’ intertextual engagement with his two contemporaries points rather to a self-consciously antagonistic stance towards Epicurean ethics. Catullus’ attack on ‘Socration’ in Poem 47, combined with parodic echoes of Philodemus’ epigrams in Poems 13 and 43, bears comparison with Cicero’s deployment of anti-Epicurean clichés in the In Pisonem; similarly, Philodemean and Lucretian echoes underline a striking divergence both from Epicurean ideals of friendship and from the rejection of romantic love explicit in Lucretius and arguably implicit in Philodemus’ Xanthippe cycle.

Catullan amicitia vs. Epicurean φιλία

Porci et Socration, duae sinistrae

Pisonis, scabies famesque mundi,

vos Veraniolo meo et Fabullo

verpus praeposuit Priapus ille?

vos convivia lauta sumptuose

de die facitis, mei sodales

quaerunt in trivio vocationes?

(Catullus 47)¹

Piggy and cut-price Socrates,² Piso’s left-hand men, plagues on the world with your insatiable appetites, does that rampant Priapus prefer you to my dear Veranius and Fabullus? Do you indulge in smart dinners all day long, at vast expense, while my friends beg for invitations at the crossroads?

This short invective attack on Piso’s morally dubious dining companions has been the subject of much discussion amongst scholars, since Gustav Friedrich first suggested in 1908 that “Socration” should be understood as a pseudonym for Philodemus, the Epicurean philosopher and protégé of Caesar’s father-in-law, L. Calpurnius Piso.³ The identification has been challenged, but is widely accepted amongst scholars both of the Catullan corpus and of Philodemus,⁴ and points to a degree of antagonism on Catullus’ part towards Piso and his retinue and indeed towards Epicurean philosophy in general. Such a hostile attitude might appear rather surprising in a writer whose outlook on life appears in some respects so consonant with Epicurean values: Catullus’ privileging of otium and personal friendship, his bitter tirades against the corruption of public life and general dissatisfaction with the mos maiorum, his rejection of traditional poetic forms with their celebration of civic values in favor of an aesthetics of lepos and venustas, all have their analogues in contemporary Epicurean thought. Nevertheless, closer consideration of the Catullan corpus, and particularly of the marked echoes of Philodemus and his fellow-Epicurean poet Lucretius, suggests that ultimately the poet abnegates any kind of philosophical commitment; the poems’ substitution of an idealized amor/amicitia for the traditional aristocratic valorization of status and achievement in the public sphere parallels but does not, in the end, converge with the philosophical comradeship enjoyed by Philodemus and his “faithful companions” (ἑτάρους … παναληθέας, Ep. 27.5 = AP 11.44.5) or the untroubled seclusion in the “citadel of the wise” advocated by Lucretius (2.7–8).⁵

Whether Catullus himself “was” an Epicurean, as argued at length by Pasquale Giuffrida, is something that we can never know, though it is my contention in what follows that nothing in the poems prompts such a supposition.⁶ A question that we can legitimately pose, however, and one which may prove more fruitful, is how the poet responds to the sociopolitical crises of his era, and how much overlap we can find between his responses and those of his Epicurean contemporaries. Conversely, it seems worth asking whether the clear parallels between Catullus’ invective against (Porcius and) Socration and Cicero’s attacks on Piso and other Epicureans bespeak a rather conventional hostility towards (Epicurean) philosophy on our poet’s part.

We shall return later in this essay to Catullus 47; but before doing so, I would like to explore the implications of what is certainly the most widely recognized Philodemean echo in Catullus. Poem 13, the famous “anti-invitation” to Fabullus, may be read as a parodic response to Philodemus, Epigram 27 (AP 11.44), incidentally the most overtly Epicurean of all Philodemus’ surviving poems:⁷

Cenabis bene, mi Fabulle, apud me

paucis, si tibi di favent, diebus,

si tecum attuleris bonam atque magnam

cenam, non sine candida puella

5et vino et sale et omnibus cachinnis.

haec si, inquam, attuleris, venuste noster,

cenabis bene; nam tui Catulli

plenus sacculus est aranearum.

sed contra accipies meros amores

10seu quid suavius elegantiusve est …

You’ll dine well, my dear Fabullus, at my place in a few days time, by the gods’ grace—if you bring with you a good, big dinner, not forgetting a pretty girl, and wine and salt/wit and everything that’s amusing. If, I say, you bring all this, my charming friend, you’ll dine well: For your Catullus’ purse is full—of cobwebs. But in return I’ll give you pure love(-poetry), or whetever is sweeter and more stylish …

Αὔριον εἰς λιτήν σε καλιάδα, φίλτατε Πείσων,

ἐξ ἐνάτης ἕλκει μουσοφιλὴς ἕταρος

εἰκάδα δειπνίζων ἐνιαύσιον· εἰ δ’ ἀπολείψεις

οὔθατα καὶ Βρομίου Χιογενῆ πρόποσιν,

5ἀλλ’ ἑτάρους ὄψει παναληθέας, ἀλλ’ ἐπακούσῃ

Φαιήκων γαίης πουλὺ μελιχρότερα.

ἢν δέ ποτε στρέψῃς καὶ ἐς ἡμέας ὄμματα, Πείσων,

ἄξομεν ἐκ λιτῆς εἰκάδα πιοτέρην.

Tomorrow from the ninth hour, my dear Piso, your friend, beloved of the Muses, calls you out to his humble abode for your annual visit, for dinner in celebration of the Twentieth.⁸ If you leave behind your sow’s udders and draughts of Chian wine, yet you will see the truest of friends and hear things much sweeter than the land of the Phaeacians. But if ever you turn your eyes our way, Piso, we shall celebrate a richer Twentieth, instead of a modest one.

As indicated above, the structure of Catullus’ poem precisely mirrors that of Philodemus’ epigram (opening address with the date/time of the dinner;⁹ contrasting lines on what the addressee will not find on offer and the “much sweeter” figurative “fare” to be provided by the host). But Catullus sends up the alleged modesty of Philodemus’ dwelling and the banquet to take place there: His speaker is not so much an advocate of litotes as, simply, broke, to such an extent that Fabullus must bring the dinner, the drink and even the obligatory candida puella. Reading the two poems together, we might understand this as a dig at what could be seen as hypocrisy¹⁰ on Philodemus’ part: What begins as an invitation ends as a begging letter from Piso’s client (or parasite?).¹¹ Particularly important for our purposes is that what Catullus offers his friend in return for bringing his own dinner is distinctly different from the (presumably) philosophical conversation and companionship on offer at Philodemus’ party.¹² Meros amores is a disputed phrase, the interpretation of which is only made more difficult when Catullus goes on to connect it with a perfume given to his girl by the gods of love: Without entering into the long-running debate on the question, let me merely suggest that the mysterious unguentum may be understood as an emblem of the venustas and urbanitas that the poet prizes so highly in the literary, social and erotic spheres alike.¹³ As a gift of the gods of charm (Venus/venus) and desire (Cupido/cupido), the perfume may be understood as embodying the smartness and elegance of the dinner party, as well as the affection (amores: Compare the end of the previous poem, 12.16–17, where the speaker celebrates his love – amem – for Fabullus and Veranius) in which both Fabullus and the puella are held, and the elegant love-poetry (amores)¹⁴ in which this affection is enshrined. Philodemus asserts that the Epicurean φιλία he hopes to share with Piso is friendship in the truest sense (παναληθέας, 5); Catullus in response redefines “unmixed love/friendship” (meros amores, 9) in terms of a shared possession of chic, stylishness, elegance – qualities that have very little to do with voluptas in the Epicurean sense.

We should of course acknowledge in this connection that Philodemus, too, is a poet: Indeed, he draws attention to the fact in the second line of his invitation to Piso, characterizing himself as μουσοφιλής, “beloved of the Muses.” Possibly, then, the entertainment that he offers his patron should be taken to include poetry, as David Sider suggests in his commentary on Ep. 27.¹⁵ The epigram can be understood on a metapoetic as well as a philosophical level: The elegant simplicity of Philodemus’ poems is “sweeter” than the more sumptuous style of Homeric epic.¹⁶ Similarly Cicero – though distinctly backhanded in his compliments – praises Philodemus’ verse as ita festivum, ita concinnum, ita elegans, nihil ut fieri possit argutius (“so charming, so clever, so elegant that nothing could be neater,” Pis. 70). Here, then, we might at first glance perceive a certain convergence between Catullus’ and Philodemus’ poetics: Both express a preference for “light” verse, characterized by its charm or “sweetness” (μελιχρότερα, Philod. Ep. 27.6; suavius, Cat. 13.10); both perhaps look to Callimachus as a model.¹⁷ Intertextual reminiscences of Philodemus in Catullus’ poetry tend to suggest antagonism or perhaps rivalry rather than approval, however, and I suggest that the needling quality of the echoes I am exploring here can be attributed to a hostility on Catullus’ part to the Greek poet’s Epicureanism, for all the superficial similarities between their literary ideals.

Above all, it is the centrality of both poetry and urbanitas to Catullus’ writing and the social relations it depicts and facilitates that drives a wedge between him and Philodemus. There is nowadays a broad scholarly consensus that orthodox Epicureanism does not permit its adherents too serious a commitment to the study or composition of poetry: Epicurus himself urged his disciple Pythocles to shun all παιδεία (fr. 163 U), and appears to have decreed that the wise man will not “devote himself to the writing of poetry” or “make a practice of writing poetry” (ποιήματα … ἐνεργείᾳ οὐκ ἂν ποιῆσαι, DL 10.121 = fr. 568 U);¹⁸ Cicero’s Epicurean speaker Torquatus accordingly dismisses literary study as a puerilis delectatio (Fin. 1.72). Philodemus appears, in the fragments of his philosophical writing, to concur with this position, particularly in On Music, where the study of music is dismissed as too laborious and as getting in the way of more serious pursuits (Mus. 4 cols. 151–152 Delattre); in On Poems he denies that poetry can be “useful” or “beneficial,” at least qua poetry (Poem. 5 cols. 25.30–34, 32.17–19 Mangoni). As an inherently pleasurable activity, writing or listening to poetry is not to be dismissed out of hand, certainly; but it must take second place to genuinely beneficial activities – in particular, philosophical discussion and study. Sider has argued, with some plausibility, that epigram is thus the perfect literary form for the Epicurean poet, owing to the “appearance of not having required any effort” – the improvisatory quality – cultivated by the Hellenistic epigrammatists.¹⁹

The contrast with Catullus, who praises the minute and painstaking nine-years’ labor of Cinna on his epyllion Smyrna, and pours scorn on the Suffenuses and Volusiuses who toss off thousands of lines with casual abandon, could hardly be more marked.²⁰ The exchange of poems and discussion of works in progress are crucial facets of the social life of Catullus and his amici as depicted in the poems; and the reading and writing of poetry has a quasi-erotic charge, strong enough to keep the poet awake all night and longing for more, or to make the listener – like Fabullus in poem 13 – long to become “all nose.”²¹ The superficial similarity between Philodemus’ and Catullus’ poetics noted above must, then, be heavily qualified when the two poems are read in their broader contexts. Indeed, as I have already suggested, even within Catullus’ response to Philodemus’ epigram we can observe a crucial change of emphasis: The layering in Philodemus’ poem of the philosophical and the metapoetic, both of which are implicit in the reference to the Phaeacians, is replaced in Catullus’ case by a single, if multi-faceted, ideal: There is no separation between the different senses of meros amores, and the venustas and cupido symbolized (on my reading) by the unguentum belong equally to the spheres of poetry, amicitia and amor.

Friendship, Patronage and Politics

If Catullus’ conception of amicitia is to be contrasted, as I have suggested, with the Epicurean φιλία promised by Philodemus, it is also worth bearing in mind the quite different social dynamics of the two poems. Catullus invites a friend of (presumably) similar social status, whereas Philodemus’ poem is, in part, a request for material assistance from a social superior, his patron Calpurnius Piso.²² I have already suggested that Catullus 13 can be read as a kind of parody of this element in Philodemus’ poem; and the relationship between friendship and patronage – both of which are subsumed under the Latin word amicitia – seems worth exploring further in each of the two poets. This brings us back to poem 47, with its depiction of Philodemus/Socration and Porcius as disreputable parasites, inexplicably favored by the equally disreputable Piso. We can hear echoes here of the anti-Epicurean polemic of Cicero’s Against Piso: The convivium de die, the dinner-party beginning before the end of the working day, is emblematic of a decadent indolence, of the kind pilloried by Cicero in his attack on Piso’s (alleged) self-indulgent hedonism (Pis. 22):

Quid ego illorum dierum epulas, quid laetitiam et gratulationem tuam, quid cum tuis sordidissimis gregibus intemperantissimas perpotationes praedicem? Quis te illis diebus sobrium, quis agentem aliquid quod esset libero dignum, quis denique in publico vidit?²³

Why need I mention the banquets of those days, your delight and rejoicing, the utterly unrestrained drinking-bouts you engaged in with your filthy flock? Who ever saw you sober during those days, who ever saw you doing anything befitting a free citizen, who ever saw you in public at all?

Like Cicero, Catullus has a specific axe to grind here: Poem 47 forms, along with 10 and 28, a kind of miniature invective cycle, in which Piso and Gaius Memmius are attacked for their supposed ill-treatment of their younger protégés, Veranius and Fabullus, and of Catullus himself while on provincial service in Macedonia and Bithynia respectively. The poet and his friends will have formed part of the entourage of junior colleagues and aides-de-camp, the cohors amicorum, personally selected by the governor from amongst his friends and acquaintances. It is clear that young men undertaking such a posting expected to make a financial profit as well as gain experience of provincial administration, and Catullus’ major complaint is that Memmius and Piso have prevented him and his friends from doing so. This high-handed behavior (as Catullus characterizes it)²⁴ is represented by the poet as a breakdown in the system of patronage, which has been corrupted by the arbitrary favoritism of the nobiles and their lack of interest in assisting their juniors: In vividly sexual language (10.12–13; 28.9–13), the speaker complains that he and his friends have been “screwed” by their commanding officers, and poem 28 closes with a bitter outcry against the “noble friends” who have – he claims – abused their privileged position and so disgraced the name of Romulus and Remus.²⁵ Each of the three poems draws an implicit contrast between the personal friendship that exists between Catullus and his sodales – Veranius and Fabullus in 28 and 47, Varus and Cinna in 10 – and the perverted, so-called amicitia of a patronage system gone awry. Catullus attests to a sense of exclusion and disempowerment amongst young members of the provincial elite, striving to find a place on the political stage of the metropolis – a stage increasingly dominated, in the mid-50s BC, by the Triumvirs and their partisans.

Whereas Philodemus, in his invitation to Piso, suggests a convergence between two senses of “friendship” (as patronage and as Epicurean φιλία), Catullus sets up an opposition between what we might call the “public” and the “private” aspects of amicitia, and tends to privilege the latter. The opening lines of poem 10, for example, seem to align personal friendship with otium, in contrast to the public sphere of the Forum (10.1–2):

Varus me meus ad suos amores

visum duxerat e foro otiosum

My friend Varus, finding me at leisure, took me from the Forum to meet his girl …

The juxtaposition e foro otiosum is pointed: Varus leads Catullus away from the negotium of the Forum, inviting him into a private world of love and friendship. It is, significantly, from this decentered perspective that Memmius’ lack of concern for his cohors is denounced.

At the same time, throughout the collection Catullus represents himself and his sodales as an exclusive social circle, access to which is reserved for the urbani and venusti. If Catullus – as he depicts himself – is on the fringes of the political elite, he is very much at the center of the smart set, a position from which he is empowered to pronounce on the (un)sophisticated behavior of his peers, and to police the boundaries of the in-group. Characters such as Asinius Marrucinus (poem 12), Suffenus (22) or Egnatius (39) are excluded on the grounds of social or literary faux pas; Fabullus, Veranius, Cinna and Calvus are “in.” Of course, there is considerable irony in the fact that betrayal seems as endemic to the personal friendships the poet celebrates as to the corrupt public world he condemns: Alfenus in poem 30, Rufus in 77 and the unnamed amicus of 73 are all denounced as false friends, who – like Lesbia – fail to keep up their side of the “contract” of mutual officium. Nevertheless, the contrast with Epicurean φιλία, the brotherhood of the enlightened that is potentially accessible to all, is again marked.

In this connection, Lucretius’ dedication of his On the Nature of Things to Memmius offers a particularly instructive comparison.²⁶ At 1.140–142, in commenting on the difficulty of expressing the Graiorum obscura reperta, the “obscure discoveries of the Greeks,” in Latin verse, Lucretius gracefully attributes his persistence in his task to his hope of gaining Memmius’ amicitia:

sed tua me virtus tamen et sperata voluptas

suavis amicitiae quemvis efferre laborem

suadet …

But your virtue and the longed-for pleasure of sweet friendship induce me to undergo any toil …

It is often assumed that the reference here to amicitia amounts – like the conclusion of Philodemus’ epigram – to an appeal for patronage; but whatever the nature of the historical relationship between Lucretius and Memmius, it is clearly framed within the poem in terms of Epicurean ideals. As in Catullus, friendship is represented as something “sweet” – attractive, desirable (suavis: cf. Cat. 13.9–10 amores | seu quid suavius … est); but more than that, it is the pleasure (voluptas) that Lucretius anticipates from it that motivates him to write his poem. The pun on suavis and suadet underlines the characteristically Epicurean identification of pleasure as “the starting point of every choice and every aversion” (Men. 129); moreover, the doctrine that friendship is a pleasure worth pursuing for its own sake is amply attested in Epicurus’ surviving writings.²⁷ If, then, it is specifically Epicurean friendship that Lucretius seeks, this is something that will follow, presumably, from Memmius’/the reader’s successful conversion to Epicureanism. Two corrollaries follow: First, that Lucretius’ conception of friendship, in contrast to Catullus’, is inclusive – if Memmius figures in part as a kind of stand-in for the reader-in-general, then the poet may be said to seek the “friendship” of all of us: Any reader can, and indeed should, become an Epicurean.²⁸ Secondly, Lucretius’ implicitly professed desire to convert Memmius – to win him as an Epicurean φίλος – has potentially important consequences for the latter’s political activities, alluded to earlier in the proem.

In his opening prayer to Venus, Lucretius warmly praises Memmius as a man whom the goddess Venus (apparently a kind of patron deity of the family)²⁹ “has always wished to succeed and win honor in all things” (tempore in omni | omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus, 1.26–27), and who cannot well absent himself from public life “at a time of danger for our country” (patriai tempore iniquo, 1.41–43). But this opening encomium is arguably undermined by – or at least in tension with – what the poet has to say about political life and in particular competition for status and office later in the poem.³⁰ In both the proem to Book 3 and the account of the origins of government at the end of Book 5, Lucretius attributes the desire for fame and success in the public sphere ultimately to the fear of death. Far from selflessly seeking their country’s good – as a Cicero would assert – politicians are motivated, he argues, by a desire for personal security, misguidedly associating power and influence with protection from their fellow-citizens (3.59–64; 5.1120–1122). On Lucretius’ analysis, however, political competition is in fact ruinous on both the individual and the collective level. In Book 5 he argues that success in the political rat-race not only involves painful effort and anxiety (sine incassum defessi sanguine sudent, | angustum per iter luctantes ambitionis, “leave them to weary themselves and sweat blood for nothing, as they struggle along the narrow path of ambition,” 1131–1132) but inevitably generates invidia, “envy” or “ill-will,” which, like lightning, is most prone to strike those who climb highest (1125–1128). So security is much more likely to be achieved by avoiding public life altogether: “Better peaceful obedience than the desire to exercise imperium” (ut satius multo iam sit parere quietum | quam regere imperio res velle), as Lucretius provocatively asserts at 1129–1130. The community, too, is adversely affected by competition for status and position: In memorable lines from the proem to Book 3 (68–77), Lucretius argues that the desire for primacy leads inexorably to the carnage of civil war – a line of argument that will have seemed highly topical and, again, provocative during the years of social and political upheaval that preceded the outbreak of hostilities between Caesar and Pompey. But this, too, is the very “time of danger for our country” which was seen to absorb Memmius’ attention in the proem to Book 1. In effect, then, Lucretius admonishes his dedicatee that he would do better, both from the personal and from the collective point of view, to withdraw altogether from public life.

In taking Epicurus’ injunction against political activity (οὐδὲ πολιτεύσεται [sc. ὁ σοφός], DL 10.119 = fr. 8 U) absolutely at face value, Lucretius seems more radical than many of his contemporaries. Roman Epicureans generally found ways of reconciling their philosophical beliefs with the practice of politics: Piso, Manlius Torquatus, the tyrannicide Cassius, even (indirectly) Cicero’s friend Atticus continued to play a prominent role in public life in spite of their professed Epicureanism.³¹ Arguably, Epicurus himself leaves room for such a position: He concedes that the wise man will show concern for his reputation (though only so far as to avoid falling into contempt, DL 10.120), and, according to later writers, his injunction against political participation was qualified with an “in the normal course of things.”³² Philodemus, in this context, takes a distinctly different line of approach from Lucretius: Whereas the latter seeks – on my reading – to divert his dedicatee from the public career on which he has embarked, the former adopts the role of philosophical adviser, dedicating his On the Good King According to Homer to Piso. Constraints of space preclude a full discussion of Philodemus’ treatise here, but it is worth noting that the fragments suggest that overriding themes were justice and ἐπιείκεια – gentleness or reasonableness – as exemplified, for example, by Nestor, or by Odysseus’ rule of Ithaca (which, according to Telemachus, was as “gentle [ἤπιος] as a father’s,” Od. 2.47).³³ It is easy to see how Philodemus’ injunctions might be viewed as cohering with the Epicurean pursuit of serenity – conciliation is arguably much more likely to foster a quiet life than competitiveness and the desire for preeminence – and it is notable that Piso’s actual political policies seem very largely to have accorded with the precepts of his mentor (Nisbet, for example, characterizes him as “moderate and statesmanlike”).³⁴ But Philodemus’ prescription for political harmony (or, more precisely, Homer’s prescription, on Philodemus’ Epicurean reading) certainly diverges sharply from that of Lucretius.

The “Epicurean” stance on political participation at the period that concerns us is, then, by no means straightforward; but whether we think in terms of Lucretius’ uncompromising rejection of public life or the more “engaged” approach of Piso and Philodemus, Catullus again seems to have only so much in common with either. The disenchanted attitude of the Memmius and Piso poems is not untypical of the collection as a whole: While many of the invective poems are “political” in the sense that their targets are public figures (particularly Caesar and his partisans), their overriding sentiment is one of disgust with the state of civic business in general. A representative example is poem 52, in which outrage at the political advancement of Nonius and Vatinius provokes the rhetorical question quid est, Catulle? quid moraris emori? (“What’s up with you Catullus? Why prolong your life?,” 1,4). Though he has sometimes been regarded as an anti-Caesarian partisan, it is noteworthy (as Yasmina Benferhat sagely observes) that what he professes toward Caesar is not so much hostility as studied indifference.³⁵ As we have seen, he shows a tendency to follow Lucretius’ implicit advice to Memmius, turning his back on the public sphere in favor of personal relationships and literary composition. But these relationships are far from bringing him the ἀταραξία that Lucretius proclaims – something which he, arguably, does not even seek, as we shall see.

It is worth observing, too, that Catullus appears deeply pessimistic about the moral condition of the human race in general, to judge at least from the concluding lines of poem 64. The downbeat coda with which the epyllion ends contrasts the virtue of the Age of Heroes with the moral bankruptcy of the present day (397–406):

sed postquam tellus scelere est imbuta nefando

iustitiamque omnes cupida de mente fugarunt,

perfudere manus fraterno sanguine fratres,

destitit extinctos gnatus lugere parentes,

optavit genitor primaevi funera nati,

liber uti nuptae poteretur flore novellae,³⁶

ignaro mater substernens se impia nato

impia non verita est divos scelerare penates.

omnia fanda nefanda malo permixta furore

iustificam nobis mentem avertere deorum.

But once the world was plunged into unspeakable wickedness and all drove justice from their greedy hearts, brothers drenched their hands in brothers’ blood; the son ceased to mourn for dead parents; the father longed for the death of his young son, so that he might freely pluck the flower of his new-wed bride; the impious mother, lying with her unknowing son, did not shrink from sinning impiously against the household gods. Everything speakable and unspeakable, thrown into confusion by our evil madness, has turned the gods’ just mind away from us.

We can again detect considerable irony here – given that the alleged glories of the heroic age evoked earlier in the poem include the heartless abandonment of the innocent Ariadne by Theseus (52–264), the bloody slaughter of countless Trojans by Achilles (343–360) and the gorily described sacrifice of Polyxena on the latter’s tomb (362–364).³⁷ Nevertheless, it is striking that these closing lines bear a strong resemblance to Lucretius’ analysis of civil strife in the proem to Book 3: In particular, the phrase perfudere manus fraterno sanguine fratres (“brothers drenched their hands in brothers’ blood,” 64.399) is similar in both cadence and sense to Lucretius’ crudeles gaudent in tristi funere fratris (“cruelly, they rejoice in a brother’s tragic death,” 3.72). Catullus, though, seems to reject, or at least ignore, the Epicurean poet’s prescription even while pointedly evoking it. Like many ancient writers and thinkers from Hesiod on, he treats human degeneracy as a tragic inevitability, leaving no room for Lucretius’ more optimistic suggestion that – at least on the individual level – escape from this bleak prospect to a life of serenity is a genuine possibility.³⁸

vesanus Catullus

Catullus’ vehement, even passionate, expressions of affection for male amici in such poems as 9, 12, 14 and 50 are complemented by the ideal of amor-as-amicitia in his relations with Lesbia. Most pithily expressed in the phrase aeternum hoc sanctae foedus amicitiae (109.6), this ideal is explored from a variety of angles through the sequence of Lesbia-epigrams culminating in the longer, introspective poem 76. Catullus exploits the hallowed ideals of reciprocity, officium (75.2), benevolentia (72.8, 75.3; cf. 73.1) and – most startlingly – pietas (76.2, 26), to recast his admittedly adulterous affair (68.143–146) as a relationship of mutual commitment and more-than-physical affection, analogous to male–male friendship or intrafamilial relations (72.4). Lesbia, moreover, is herself idealized, both in the polymetrics and in the elegiacs. Figured as a goddess (68.70, 133–134), she is beyond compare with other women (43.7–8, 86.5–6), and has, accordingly, inspired a love greater than any woman has ever attracted in the past (87), or (even more hyperbolically) will attract in the future (8.5, 37.12). The speaker’s passion for her is assimilated to madness (7.10) or – when things go awry – to an incurable disease (76.19–26).

In various respects, this group of poems also invites comparison with both Philodemus and Lucretius. Intertextual echoes of both poets can be detected in Catullus’ Lesbia cycle, though in Lucretius’ case interpretation is problematic owing to the impossibility of determining the relative chronology of the two writers. I assume here, for the sake of argument, that Catullus echoes Lucretius rather than vice versa; but an equally good case can be made for Lucretius’ poem as the “receiving” text.³⁹ In any case, the essence of my argument will stand whichever way the intertextual dialogue is understood to proceed: Whether Lucretius takes Catullus as an exemplum of the evils of love or Catullus (as I argue here) ostentatiously rejects the Epicurean remedy for his ills, the essential antagonism between the two poets’ views on amor remains.

In Philodemus’ case, the matter seems more clear cut, even if we leave on one side the widely held axiom that Roman writers read the work of their Greek counterparts but not vice versa. I have already noted that Catullus 13 reads as a parody of Philodemus’ invitation poem to Piso; and much the same can be said of Catullus 43, which can be interpreted as a similarly antagonistic reworking of another of Philodemus’ epigrams, 12 Sider (= Anth. Pal. 5.132):

Ὢ ποδός, ὢ κνήμης, ὢ τῶν (ἀπόλωλα δικαίως)

μηρῶν, ὢ γλουτῶν, ὢ κτενός, ὢ λαγόνων,

ὢ ὤμοιν, ὢ μαστῶν, ὢ τοῦ ῥαδινοῖο τραχήλου,

ὢ χειρῶν, ὢ τῶν (μαίνομαι) ὀμματίων,

5ὢ κατατεχνοτάτου κινήματος, ὢ περιάλλων

γλωττισμῶν, ὢ τῶν (θῦέ με) φωναρίων·

εἰ δ’ Ὀπικὴ καὶ Φλῶρα καὶ οὐκ ᾄδουσα τὰ Σαπφοῦς,

καὶ Περσεὺς Ἰνδῆς ἠράσατ’ Ἀνδρομέδης.

O foot, O leg, O (I’m done for) those thighs, O buttocks, O bush, O flanks, O shoulders, O breasts, O delicate neck, O hands, O (madness!) those eyes, O wickedly skillful walk, O fabulous kisses, O (slay me!) her speech. And if she is an Oscan—a mere Flora who does not sing Sappho’s verses— Perseus too fell in love with Indian Andromeda.

(tr. Sider)

Salve, nec minimo puella naso

nec bello pede nec nigris ocellis

nec longis digitis nec ore sicco

nec sane nimis elegante lingua,

5decoctoris amica Formiani.

ten provincia narrat esse bellam?

tecum Lesbia nostra comparatur?

o saeclum insapiens et infacetum!

Greetings, girl with no small nose, no pretty foot, no dark eyes, nor long fingers, nor dry mouth, and certainly none too stylish a tongue, girlfriend of the bankrupt of Formiae! Does the province call you beautiful, and compare my Lesbia with you? O what a dull and graceless age we live in!

Both poems employ the form known as blason anatomique, whereby the woman’s body parts are itemized and each in turn praised or criticized. Striking in Catullus’ poem, though, is the technique of negative enumeration: The girl’s nose is not small, her foot not pretty, her fingers not long, and so on. Catullus’ poem, in effect, inverts Philodemus’: Where the Greek poet exclaims rapturously over Flora’s feet, eyes, hands and (notably) speech, Catullus condemns these same features – in the case of his target, the girlfriend of Mamurra (the “bankrupt of Formiae,” 5) – for their inelegance. True beauty belongs, in contrast, to Lesbia, as any generation not devoid of judgment and wit would immediately see. In contrast, Philodemus pronounces himself content with Flora, for all her lack of sophistication and culture. The reference to Lesbia seems particularly pointed in this context: The soubriquet of Catullus’ puella is of course evocative of Sappho – the most famous “woman of Lesbos” – the very poet of whom Philodemus’ Flora is said to be ignorant.⁴⁰

What is it, then, that Lesbia has and Mamurra’s girlfriend lacks? An answer is suggested by another poem that employs the blason anatomique structure, poem 86:

Quintia formosa est multis. mihi candida, longa,

recta est: haec ego sic singula confiteor.

totum illud formosa nego: nam nulla venustas,

nulla in tam magno est corpore mica salis.

5Lesbia formosa est, quae cum pulcerrima tota est,

tum omnibus una omnis surripuit Veneres.

Many think Quintia beautiful. To me, she’s fair-skinned, tall, stands well: I grant her these qualities, listed off like that. But I totally deny her that word “beautiful”: For she’s no style, no grain of salt/wit in all that tall body. Now Lesbia is beautiful: Not only is she utterly lovely, through and through, but she’s robbed all other women of all their charm.

Catullus checks off Quintia’s qualities, in a way that recalls the lists of body parts in poem 43 and Philodemus’ epigram on Flora, but he denies that they add up to “beauty”: Quintia lacks the “grain of salt,” the indefinable sparkle, and the charm (venus) that Lesbia uniquely possesses. Again, the poem virtually reverses the sentiment of Philodemus’ epigram: Whereas Flora’s physical qualities outweigh her lack of culture, Lesbia’s desirability is founded on something very like the urbanitas that Catullus values in his male amici.⁴¹

Catullus’ intertextual engagement with Philodemus’ poem may be seen as symptomatic of a broader contrast in outlook between the two poets. In general, it seems fair to say that Philodemus’ fairly numerous erotic epigrams largely complement the pragmatic attitude adopted in Epigram 12, and fall into line with Epicurean doctrine on love and sex, as expounded most fully by Lucretius in the finale to On the Nature of Things Book 4, where romantic love (or, in Epicurean terms, obsessive desire for an individual sex-object) is unambiguously condemned as a disturbing delusion. Prostitutes are recommended as suitable partners for casual, no-strings sex (4.1071), though Lucretius does perhaps admit a kind of de-romanticized partnership based on habit and a realistic assessment of the woman’s qualities as an acceptable alternative (4.1190–1191, 1278–1287).⁴² Philodemus, admittedly, does not stick consistently to these principles, and at times portrays himself as unable to resist his desire even when he knows it will lead only to grief (Ep. 13),⁴³ or as rejecting the easily available ἑταίρα in favour of the cloistered virgin (Ep. 11). So, too, in the first epigram (in Sider’s numeration), Philodemus disclaims any understanding of his own passion for Xanthippe, in terms closely echoed by Catullus in the famous odi et amo (poem 85): Catullus’ nescio is particularly reminiscent of the enjambed οὐκ οἶδα at the beginning of line 4 of Philodemus’ poem. But elsewhere Philodemus’ stance seems more closely in line with Epicurean doctrine: Like Horace (who, indeed, quotes him in this context, Sat. 1.2.120–122), Philodemus ridicules those who spend a fortune on adulterous affairs with married women when cheap, casual sex is freely available (Ep. 22), and several other epigrams depict dealings with prostitutes or ἑταίραι. If Sider⁴⁴ is right to see philosophical coloring in the Xanthippe poems, we might even understand this as an instantiation of the de-romanticized marital or quasi-marital relationship apparently approved by Lucretius at the very end of Book 4: Xanthippe is perhaps depicted as Philodemus’ wife, depending on how the textual problem at 7.5 is resolved,⁴⁵ and seems to be connected with the theme of misspent youth and its end in Epigrams 4–6. Here, Philodemus hails the onset of middle age with its greying hair as the “age of understanding” (συνετῆς … ἡλικίης, Ep. 4.4, 5.4) and bids farewell to the “madness” of his youth (μανίη, Ep. 4.8; cf. 5.2 ἐμάνην), when he indulged himself in wine and women. In Epigram 4, the Muses are asked to mark a coronis – or, perhaps, to mark Xanthippe as the coronis – signalling the end of his μανία. We can perhaps detect the traces of a narrative trajectory in Philodemus’ poetry, according to which the hot passions of youth depicted in such epigrams as 11 and 13 are abandoned as a result of maturity and philosophical enlightenment (if that is the implication of the “loftier thoughts” envisaged at the end of Ep. 5). Xanthippe, on Sider’s reading, figures as a fellow-Epicurean, a worthy partner for the philosophically enlightened poet (and we should remember that Epicurus admitted female as well as male disciples to his school). At the same time, the poet declares a preference for the casual liaison (Ep. 22; cf. Ep. 17.5–6): Whether or not we choose to see a tension here with his apparent devotion to Xanthippe, this stance appears to be in keeping with Epicurean orthodoxy.

Catullus’ poetry too has its narrative aspect, and again the contrast with Philodemus is striking. Where Philodemus disclaims the μανία of youth, Catullus appears to welcome the frenzy of his passion for Lesbia, referring to himself as vesanus Catullus, “crazed” or “frenzied Catullus” (7.10), urging Lesbia to “live and love” (5.1) and refusing to be content with even an infinite number of kisses. As we have seen, he celebrates his devotion to her in terms borrowed from the lexicon of male amicitia and aristocratic obligation, and pursues an adulterous relationship in preference to the casual liaisons recommended by Horace and Lucretius. Even when things go awry between the lovers, Catullus cannot rid himself of his painful feelings for her, which wrack him like a disease (76).

It is in this last respect that intertextual connections with Lucretius seem particularly marked: The cycle of obsession, disillusion and disgust is memorably portrayed at DRN 4.1058–1140, where Lucretius asserts that the initial drop of Venus’ sweetness leads inevitably to “chill anxiety” (1060), jealousy and regret (1133–1140), and the natural desire for sex becomes a feverish madness, a festering wound that grows worse from day to day. Lucretius ridicules male idealization of women who are in reality just as flawed as any other, and the use of absurd pet-names to conceal (or even celebrate) their faults (1153–1170). Notable here is the phrase tota merum sal, literally “pure salt” (1162), applied by the deluded lover to a woman of small stature: Both the phrase and the context resonate with Catullus’ idealization of Lesbia in poem 86. Catullus, then, seems a prime example of the obsessive, romantic love which Lucretius attacks. If, as suggested above, we assume that Catullus is responding to Lucretius rather than vice versa, we can again read the intertextual relationship as one of self-conscious antagonism on Catullus’ part. The idealization of amor as a more-than-physical passion for one, exceptional individual, and as a mutual commitment analogous to male–male amicitia, is the precise inverse of Lucretius’ denunciation of emotional commitment in favour of a casual, or at most non-passionate, liaison.

Catullus seems again to recall Lucretius, somewhat sardonically, in poem 76, where he admonishes himself of the need to free himself from his longus amor (13–14):

difficile est longum subito deponere amorem?

difficile est, verum hoc qua lubet efficias

Is it hard to lay aside a lasting love all at once? It’s hard—but you must do it somehow!

The emphatically repeated – and somewhat prosaic – phrase difficile est is used by Lucretius in a similar context (4.1146–1150):

nam vitare, plagas in amoris ne iaciamur,

non ita difficile est quam captum retibus ipsis

exire et validos Veneris perrumpere nodos.

et tamen implicitus quoque possis inque peditus

effugere infestum, nisi tute tibi obvius obstes …

To avoid becoming entangled in the snares of love is not so difficult as to escape those very nets, once trapped, and to break the strong knots of Venus. And yet, even after you have become ensnared and entangled you might escape the danger, if it were not that you stand in your own way …

In what follows, Lucretius makes it clear that the remedy for the lover’s difficulties is simply to stop deluding himself and see his beloved as she really is (4.1171–1191). Catullus, in effect, rejects the prescription: Clear-eyed understanding of Lesbia’s “true” character (cf. 72.5, nunc te cognovi) has failed to cure him of his passion, and indeed inflamed his desire all the more (72.5, impensius uror), so that all he can do now, in a very un-Epicurean move, is to call upon the gods to rescue him from his predicament (76.17–26). Catullus’ Lesbia-cycle, then, both confirms and challenges Lucretius’ analysis of romantic love: Idealization is followed by disillusion, just as the Epicurean warns; but it is not clear that for Catullus this invalidates the ideal of amor-amicitia proclaimed in poem 109; nor – he implies – is it as easy to extricate oneself from the “snares of love” as Lucretius (and, in a slightly different way, Philodemus) suggests.⁴⁶

Conclusion

I return, in closing, to poem 47 and its invective assault on Socration/Philodemus. Philip De Lacy shows, in an important article, that Cicero’s invective against Piso relies heavily on the conventional clichés of anti-Epicurean polemic, many of which can be traced back to Epicurus’ lifetime.⁴⁷ I suggest that the same goes for Catullus. Porcius and Socration are represented as greedy and unscrupulous parasites, and their patron as a shameless lecher. Similarly, Epicurus and his earliest followers are regularly accused by hostile witnesses of preaching indulgence in the grossest physical pleasures, and of servile flattery towards the politically powerful for their own selfish ends.⁴⁸ Catullus’ characterization of Piso and his protégés coheres, I have argued, with a tendency throughout the collection to adopt a resolutely unphilosophical – or even anti-philosophical – stance: Intertextual echoes of both Lucretius and Philodemus are suggestive of antagonism rather than sympathy or philosophical alignment. There are, to be sure, points of convergence between the three poets; but ultimately these serve only to point up the markedly different ways in which the Epicurean poets, on the one hand, and the urbane neoteric, on the other, react to the turbulent times in which all three lived and wrote.