The Poetics of Manhood?: Nonverbal Behavior in Catullus 51

Classical Philology 103 (2008): 257–81[ç 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved] 0009-837X/08/10303-0003$10.00

257

THE POETICS OF MANHOOD?NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR IN CATULLUS 51

christina a. clark

n her important article “Ego mulier: The Construction of MaleSexuality in Catullus,” Marilyn Skinner argues that Catullus’ poeticspeakers often adopt female personae as psychic safety valves to relieve

the almost unbearable pressure of the zero-sum game of Roman elite mas-culinity. In particular, while closely examining Catullus 63 (in which theGreek youth Attis emasculates himself ) and looking generally at Catullus’Lesbia poems, she argues that “programmatically for the Lesbia cycle, thespeaker of poem 51 adopts a female literary persona, inscribing his privatedeclaration of passion into three renowned stanzas by Sappho.”1 WhileI agree that Catullus’ poetic speakers “play the other” emotionally, I willargue that they do not do so with their bodies.2 In a discussion informed byCatullus’ use of gendered nonverbal behaviors in a variety of poems, I willconcentrate on Poem 51, showing how Catullus as a character in this poemmaintains rigid control of his external appearance even as he is violentlyaffected internally. In particular, I will look at Catullus’ suppression of theexternal affect displays that Sappho’s speaker manifests and compare and con-trast this with poems by Valerius Aedituus and Horace that are thematicallyrelated to Sappho 31. Table 1 below summarizes the internal reactions toemotion and the affect displays manifested by the speakers in these poems.As the table reveals, Catullus as a character in Poem 51 exhibits no affectdisplay that would signal to others a loss of the controlled bodily behaviorexpected of elite men.

Nonverbal Behaviors in Ancient Literature

Nonverbal behaviors communicate meaning without words. Categories ofnonverbal behavior include gestures, facial expressions, paralinguistics (vocalqualities such as pitch, pace, tone, and volume), proxemics (“the human use,perception, and manipulation of space”3), and affect displays (autonomic

1. Skinner 1997, 131.2. For Catullus’ poetic speakers in general adopting female personae, see especially Skinner 1997,

145–46. For the phrase “playing the other,” see Zeitlin 1996.3. Lateiner 1995, xix.

I

I would like to thank Geoff Bakewell, Greg Bucher, Jennifer Larson, Marilyn Skinner, and the anony-mous referees for their kindness in reading the manuscript at various stages and for suggesting improve-ments. All remaining flaws are my own. Translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.

Christina A. Clark258

responses of the nervous system such as sweating, pallor or trembling, and“types of impulsive but not entirely uncontrollable emotional responses,such as weeping”4), among others. Ancient authors include all categories ofnonverbal behavior in their works, and modern readers cannot fully under-stand these texts without an awareness of both verbal and nonverbal codesand conventions.

From birth, we all learn to use our bodies within our own cultural and socio-economic contexts and to interpret the bodily behavior of others. This is anidea upon which much modern research has been focused, but was alsopresent in ancient cultures. For example, Roman boys learned Romanitasand the mos maiorum from watching and emulating their fathers’ bodies andbehavior as well as listening to their words (Plin. Ep. 8.14.4–6). Bodies,both real and fictional, participate in and reveal cultural ideologies such asgender, status, and ethnicity. In 1935, Marcel Mauss, arguing that societystrongly inscribes itself on the bodies of its members, first put forth the ideaof habitus. Pierre Bourdieu defined and developed this notion of habitus,which he described as habitual states of being, especially of the body. Thesestates are cultivated through interaction with the symbolically structuredenvironment. Habitus, in Bourdieu’s conception, entails a theory of embodi-ment in which the body is the locus for the coordination of all levels of ex-perience (bodily, social, and cosmological). The symbolic structures of the

4. Lateiner 1992, 257.

Table 1: Comparison of Internal Reactions and External Signs ofEmotion in Poems Discussed Below.

Sappho Lucretius Catullus Aedituus Horace

Internal reactions

Heart pounds

Tongue breaks

Internal heat (flame)

Eyes black out

Ears roar

Feels as if dying

External signs ofemotion

Sweat

Trembling

Pallor

Internal reactions

Mind disturbed, soul feels fear

Tongue breaks; voice disappears

Eyes black out

Ears ring


Sweat

Limbs give way

Pallor

Internal reactions

Senses snatched away

Tongue torpid

Internal heat (flame)

Eyes black out

Ears ring

Feels as if dying


Internal reactions

Feels desire

Cannot speak

Internal heat (im-plied by sweat)

Feels as if dying


Sweat

Internal reactions

Mind unfixed; liver swells

Internal fire steeps deeply


Moisture trickles down cheeks

Skin color changes

Catullus 51 259

outside environment are reflected in the way in which the body is conceived,used, and experienced.5

Thus, nonverbal behaviors participate in and reveal cultural codes.Because ancient Rome was a contest society, every Roman was both amember and an object of a “forest of eyes.”6 Romans were highly attunedto bodily messages—their own and those of others. “The Roman sense ofembodiment was not only keen but brittle.”7 We can see this lying behind themime writer Publilius Syrus’ moral maxim ruborem amico excutere amicumest perdere (“to wrest a blush from a friend is to lose a friend,” 634). CarlinBarton’s work on blushing compares the insignificance of the blush in modernAmerican culture with the importance of the blush to Roman honor. In thehighwire act of Roman embodiment, “the blush was the totter, the tremor,the disequilibrium at the center.”8 Blushing, like all affect displays, is dis-cerned by sight; Barton observes that “in the risky oscillation of exhibitionand inhibition, one created and was created through the gaze. . . . The Romanswere aware of themselves as fragile, naked creatures, clothed only in themajesty of mutual and self-regard. Both they and their social world could beanimated or shattered with a look.”9 In other words, a Roman’s manage-ment of his nonverbal behavior could make or break him. In analyzing bothSappho 31 and Catullus 51, it is especially important to understand the cul-tural meaning(s) of affect displays.10

Sappho 31 and the Female Body of Desire

Composed around the late seventh century b.c.e., Sappho 31 is a poem famousfor its depiction of erotic desire, in which a female speaker recounts, in theform of a direct address to a beloved woman, a succession of alarmingphysical reactions triggered by the sight and sound of this woman and a maninteracting:

FaÇnetaÇ moi khÅnoÍ ≥soÍ qevoisineßmmen∆ wßnhr, oßttiÍ ejnavntiovÍ toi√sdavnei kaµ plavsion a® du fwneÇ-

saÍ ujpakouvei

kaµ gelaÇsaÍ √mevroen, tov m∆ h® ma;nkardÇan ejn sthvqesin ejptovaisen:wj Í ga;r <eßÍ> s∆ ≥dw brovce∆ wß Í me f∫nh-

s∆ oujde;n eßt∆ e≥kei,

a˚lla; †kam† me;n glΩssa †eßage†, levptond∆ außtika crΩi puÅr ujpadedrovmaken,

5. Bourdieu 1977, 72–95; 1990, 52–79.6. For a discussion of Rome as a contest society, see Barton 2001 passim. Gleason (1990, 389) uses

the phrase “forest of eyes.”7. Barton 2001, 75.8. Barton 1999, 212.9. Barton 2002, 227.

10. Lateiner (1992 and 1998) discusses the use and effect of affect displays in epic and other genres,while Wees (1998) traces gender difference in expressing grief by crying in Archaic Greek literature andart. For the use of affect displays in the Greek lyric poets in general and particularly in Sappho 31, seeClark 2001.


ojppavtessi d∆ oujde;n oßrhmm∆, ejpibrov-meisi d∆ aßkouai,

†eßkade† m∆ ≥drwÍ kakcevetai, trovmoÍ de;pa∂san aßgrei, clwrotevra de; poÇaÍeßmmi, teqnavkhn d∆ ojlÇgw ∆pideuvhÍ

faÇnom∆ eßm∆ außt[ai.

a˚lla; pa;n tovlmaton, ejpeµ †kaµ pevnhta† (Voigt)

He seems to me to be equal to the gods, that man, whoever sits opposite you and listensto you speaking so sweetly and close to him, and hears too your tempting laughter.Truly that makes the heart in my breast pound, for when for a moment I look at you,I cannot speak at all; my tongue breaks, and a subtle flame runs immediately beneathmy skin. My eyes see nothing at all and a roaring fills my ears. Sweat pours down me,and shaking seizes me all, paler than grass I am, and little short of dead I seem to me.But all must be endured since . . .

Sappho carefully constructs these lines around affect displays.11 First,Sappho’s speaker focuses on her internal reactions to emotion (her flutter-ing heart, speechlessness,12 heat, loss of vision, and roaring in the ears) thatwould be evident only to herself. Immediately thereafter, however, the ex-ternal signs of great emotion manifest themselves: sweat, trembling, andpallor. It is this unusual number and combination of affect displays, ratherthan any one occurrence, that makes Sappho’s poem so unique. Longinus(Subl. 10.1), although not speaking only of the affect displays here, notes thatSappho’s arete is shown “in her skill in selecting the outstanding detailsand making a unity of them.”13 Donald Lateiner observes that involuntarybehaviors such as these characterize the powerless.14 Reworking the con-ventional affect displays of epic, which describe how men’s bodies reactedto fear in battle or in the face of the gods,15 Sappho makes them express

11. Clark 2001.12. O’Higgins (1996) explores the imagery of speechlessness in both Sappho 31 and Catullus 51.13. Trans. Russell.14. Lateiner 1995, 183.15. See Rissman 1983, 72–90, for a discussion of Sappho’s adaptation here of epic affect displays con-

noting fear. See also Svenbro 1984, 66–72. Lucretius’ portrait of the fearful man (3.152–59), contemporarywith Catullus’ poems, works with Sappho 31, especially in lines 154–56: verum ubi vementi magis estcommota metu mens, / consentire animam totam per membra videmus / sudoresque ita pallorem exsisteretoto / corpore et infringi linguam vocemque aboriri, / caligare oculos, sonere auris, succidere artus, / deniqueconcidere ex animi terrore videmus / saepe homines; facile ut quivis hinc noscere possit / esse animam cumanimo coniunctam . . . (“But when the mind is disturbed by a more violent fear, we see that the whole soulfeels it throughout the limbs: sweating and pallor break out all over the body and the tongue breaks andvoice disappears, eyes black out, ears ring, limbs give way; in fact we often see people fall down from fearin the mind; so that anyone easily may learn that the soul is joined with the mind . . .”). Fowler (2000, 148)examines the echoes of Sappho 31 in this passage, remarking, “the poem shows itself perfectly aware ofthe way in which its own meaning is constituted. Nothing is created out of nothing, or destroyed into nothing,but all earlier material can be reused and recontextualized.” Lucretius translates Sappho 31 more faithfullythan Catullus, even as he strips it of its erotic context and brings it back to its original Greek epic contextof the body’s reactions to fear. Such reactions were common in epic and Near Eastern prayers by peopleconfronting divinities; for descriptions of nonverbal behavior in ancient Near Eastern literature, see Gruber1980 and Pham 1999. Lucretius’ appropriation of them to prove the unity of mind, body, and soul reinforceshis overall purpose in writing the De rerum natura—to explain the nature of reality and thus to free peoplefrom fear (of death and of the gods, in particular). Once his readers embrace Epicureanism, they need not fear,

One Line Short

Catullus 51 261

eros rather than fear. She incorporates Greek stereotypes about women’sphysical susceptibility to eros only to subvert them playfully, when sheportrays the speaker’s mind as unaffected by desire and when the speakerdeclares that while she feels as if she is dying, in fact, all must be endured.Sappho’s use of kardia as the internal organ affected by eros is extraordinary,for this is her only use of the word in her extant poetry. When she wants toportray her speaker as affected by eros, the internal organ normally involvedis the phren.16 Sappho’s diction and concentration on “womanly” affect dis-plays contribute to the power of this poem playing with Greek ideologies offemininity.

Centuries later, in the different contexts of late republican and early imperialRome, we can see poets from Valerius Aedituus (working c. 100 b.c.e.) toLucretius (c. 65–55), Catullus (c. 64–54), and Horace (c. 40–48) respondingto Sappho 31. All these poets except Lucretius use elements of Sappho 31 intheir own amatory poems, whereas Lucretius, who translates her most faith-fully, changes the context of the affect displays back to epic fear. Lucretiusgives his fearful man all of the affect displays seen in Sappho 31, whileAedituus and Horace allow their male speakers at least one affect display.In contrast, Catullus suppresses them all. In the following sections, I willanalyze Catullus 51 before contrasting Catullus’ poem with those of Aedituusand Horace that also “intertext” with Sappho 31. Lastly, I will discuss thecultural context of Catullus’ poem and further address the reasons for hissuppression of all affect displays.

Catullus’ Desiring Male Lover

Catullus plays with Sappho 31, as many have observed, changing it in anumber of vital ways that reflect his own time, class, and poetic purposes.17

The first four and a half lines of Poem 51 reflect a narrative situation similarto that in Sappho’s poem:

16. See Clark 2001, 17–20, for a more detailed discussion of this. Characteristic examples of the use ofphren in Archaic Greek poetry are Sappho 47, 48, and 96 LP, and Anacreon PMG 346.11–12, where abeautiful-faced boy causes the phrenes of citizens to flutter; in Sappho 31, it is the kardia that flutters.

17. Scholars often present these changes as minor, if they address them at all (e.g., Fordyce [1961]1978, 219; and Quinn 1970, 241). See Wray 2001, 91–99, for a convincing analysis of Catullus 50 and 51as a pair of poems that are structurally similar to Theocritus Idyll 11. The pair also, as Wray demonstrates,shares a similar description of erotic distress “elaborated in physical and almost clinical terms. Both poems’speakers portray the pleasure of merely conversing with the beloved (Calvus in Poem 50, Lesbia in Poem 51)as a blissful attainment, and their deprivation of that pleasure as the root cause of their symptoms. Morespecific, and still more striking, is the fact that Poem 50’s speaker begins the enumeration of symptoms,the revelation of his illness, by calling himself miserum (‘wretched,’ 50.9). Poem 51’s speaker describeshimself with the same word (misero, 51.5), and the epithet there is a purely Catullan addition to the poem,reflecting nothing in Sappho’s original. The announcement that he is ‘miserable’ thus stands in each poemas the first indication of its speaker’s erotic suffering” (p. 98). Wray also notes (p. 97) the appearance ofthe word otiosi (at leisure) in the first line of 50 and the play on otium in the last lines of 51.

and so need not manifest such affect displays as we see in this description. It is interesting that Lucretiusleaves out Sappho’s pounding heart, since that is a vital part of our “fight or flight” response to fear trig-gered by the release of adrenaline. All the other symptoms logically follow. Lucretius describes them inorder as the mind’s fear affects the soul, and so the body. It is possible that Lucretius leaves the heart out ofhis description because he wants to concentrate on the connection between the mind (mens, animus) andthe soul (anima).


Ille mi par esse deo videtur,ille, si fas est, superare divos,qui sedens adversus identidem te

spectat et audit

dulce ridentem, misero quod omniseripit sensus mihi: nam simul te,Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi

<vocis in ore>

lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus18

flamma demanat, sonitu suoptetintinant aures, gemina teguntur

lumina nocte.19

otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est:otio exsultas nimiumque gestis:otium et reges prius et beatas

perdidit urbes.20

That man seems to me equal to a god,that man, if it is proper to say it, seems to surpassthe gods, who, sitting facing you, again and again

gazes upon you and hears you

laughing sweetly, which snatches all my sensesaway from wretched me: for at the same time asI have looked at you, Lesbia, there is nothing left

of voice in my mouth,

But my tongue is numb, a subtle flameflows down under my limbs,my ears ring with their own sound,

my eyes are covered with double night.

Lack of action, Catullus, is troublesome to you;in inactivity you exult and you desire it excessively;21

lack of action has before killed both kingsand blessed cities.

A scene of a man and a woman provokes an immediate physical reactionin the speaker. The man, sitting opposite the woman, looking at her andhearing her erotically enticing laughter is in an enviable situation—indeed

18. Vine (1992, 254) argues that sub artus is “suggested by Sappho’s trovmoÍ de; / pa∂san aßgrei . . . avariant of the Homeric cliché uÒpo; trovmoÍ eßllabe gu∂a” (Il. 14.506; see Vine for more references).

19. Ferrari (1938) and Bickel (1940) both analyze this stanza, the former arguing that the poet reflectsHellenistic “precious” usages in everything, including word choice, sound play, and arrangement, whilethe latter insists that the same features may spring from Roman literary traditions as well as Greek. Vine(1992) asserts that the entire poem exhibits a mix of both elements as characteristic of neoteric poetry ingeneral.

20. The text is Mynors’ OCT (1958).21. For a similar expression describing the slave to passion, see Cic. Tusc. 5.6.16: exsultans et temere

gestiens. Here Cicero discusses the disturbed states of mind (perturbationes: metus, aegritudo, libido, andlaetitia gestiens) that prevent peace of mind and thus a happy life, according to Stoic philosophy.

One Line Short

Catullus 51 263

a godlike one.22 The status of “that man” has shifted from the Sapphic“equal to the gods” to a surprising elevation beyond them. Ellen Greene hasargued recently that the speaker competes (unsuccessfully) with that rivalman “who can gaze at Lesbia without any disruptive effects.”23 However, Ido not think that we can make such assumptions about that man’s reactions,disruptive or not. The poet does not give us any information about that man’sinner emotional experience, or any outward manifestation of emotion. Thatman is beyond godlike because of his physical proximity to and ability togaze upon and listen to the alluring Lesbia, and thus serves as a foil for thespeaker.24

We learn in the second stanza that the speaker is male—the most importantchange from Sappho’s song. Catullus departs from his Greek model in twoother ways as well: by calling his speaker miser, the usual Latin epithet foran unhappy lover,25 and by naming both the woman in the poem (Lesbia)and the speaker (Catullus).26 More importantly to my argument, the poet alsoomits Sappho’s descriptions of her speaker’s disempowering affect displays.He gives us no sweat, no trembling, no pallor, no pounding heart.27 “Catullus”tells us only that Lesbia’s erotic laughter “snatches all his senses away”(lines 5–6).28 Given the poet’s fairly close rendering of Sappho’s poem thusfar, one expects to learn next of the affect displays that betray the strongemotion creating this unusual state. However, instead of following Sappho’slead, Catullus shares with us only his speaker’s internal symptoms: his torpid

22. Furley (2000) discusses Sappho’s use of “that man” as a foil to her speaker in respect to his abilityto sit close to and interact with the alluring girl while the speaker is overwhelmed even by the sight andsound of the girl from afar.

23. Greene 1999, 4.24. Unlike the situation in Sappho 31, “that man” in Catullus does not converse with the erotically

enticing woman.25. Catullus, for example, uses it thirty-one times.26. Some scholars, such as Wilkinson (1956), have argued that this is Catullus’ first poem to Lesbia,

sent to her to find out if she returned his feelings, although others such as Skinner (1992) and Wiseman(1985) argue that it is meant to be where it is, when the relationship with Lesbia has become troubled.Wray (2001, 88–109) argues that Poem 51 is meant to be read in conjunction with 50, and is in fact thepoem alluded to in 50. The two poems form an epistolary offering in a competition between male poets.

27. Vine asserts that Catullus’ third stanza is “a partial compression of Sappho’s third stanza togetherwith certain elements of her fourth stanza” (1992, 254; italics original). Wormell speculates as to whyCatullus omits Sappho’s rapidly beating heart: “cor micat or salit would have suggested alarm rather thanpassion to a Roman” (1966, 192), and notes Lucretius’ use of Sappho 31 in his description of a frightenedman. Still, because Catullus’ readers would have known Sappho’s poem and that Catullus was workingwith it, they would have correctly interpreted the heart’s action as indicating desire in this context; Catullus’omission must arise from something other than cultural difference regarding the description of the heart’sresponse to emotion.

28. Syndikus (1984, 1: 255) observes that this assertion functions as a title for the subsequent accountof symptoms. It is interesting to compare the Catullan narrative situation with Lucretius 4.1101–4, wherethe poet observes that sic in amore Venus simulacris ludit amantis / nec satiare queunt spectando corporacoram / nec manibus quicquam teneris abradere membris / possunt errantes incerti corpore toto (“thus inlove Venus mocks lovers with images, nor can they sate their bodies by looking face-to-face nor can theywith their hands scrape off anything from tender limbs, wandering aimlessly on the whole body”). Bailey(ad loc.) notes the poet’s clever wordplay here: “corpora: is the object both of spectando and of satiare,but has a different reference with each verb: [the lovers cannot] ‘satiate their (own) bodies by gazing onthe bodies (of the others).’ ”


tongue,29 internal heat, ear ringing, and visual blackout.30 Someone lookingat the speaker would have no idea that he was experiencing amor. D. E. W.Wormell argued that Catullus omitted Sappho’s fourth stanza because “it isessentially feminine,” and thus inappropriate for the male speaker.31 I wantto examine that idea more closely, looking at the vocabulary with whichCatullus describes both men and women in the throes of erotic passion.

The “fire” of sexual passion is a well-established trope in classical poetry.32

Catullus uses ardor/ardeo, flamma, and ignis to express it, although it is in-teresting that while both men and women feel flammae (51.10 [male], 61.171[male and female], 64.92 [female], 100.7 [male]), in Catullus, only womenfeel amatory ignes (45.16 and 35.15). The fire of amor affects the innermostpart of the body—the marrow (medullum). It can blaze in the marrow (ignismollibus ardet in medullis, 45.16), or consume the marrow (ex eo misellae /ignes interiorem edunt medullam, 35.14–15).33 Erotic fire affects both sexes,although in 45.15–16 Acme tells her lover Septimius that she suffers fromlove’s consuming fire more than he does: her fire is maior acriorque.

29. The heaviness, or numbness, of the speaker’s tongue (lingua torpet) apparently spreads throughouthis body by the end of the relationship. In 76.20–22, the speaker (miser still) asks the gods to “tear fromwithin me this devouring cancer, this heavy dullness wasting the joints of my body, completely driving everyjoy from my spirit!” (trans. Martin): eripite hanc pestem perniciemque mihi, / quae mihi subrepens imos uttorpor in artus / expulit ex omni pectore laetitias. O’Higgins compares Catullus’ expression with Sappho’sglΩssa eßage, which, she argues, “achieves roughly the same sense . . . but lacks the hiatus, the violenceand the military connotations of Sappho’s expression” (1996, 164). See also Vine 1993.

30. Pardini (2001, 112–13) argues convincingly that Catullus here inverts the order of Sappho’s physicaleffects of eros, making the ears ring before the eyes black out, because he is combining Sappho’s modelwith a Homeric formula that occurs at Il. 5.310 and 11.356: a˚mfµ de; oßsse kelainh; nu;x ejkavluye. He con-cludes that Catullus mixes his models here for a specific purpose: “Catullus seems to speak of blindness,like Sappho, and actually uses a euphemism for death, like Homer.” He does this so that he can allude to theend of Sappho’s fourth stanza, without translating it. I cannot agree with Pardini, however, that by “allud-ing to different lines of Sappho (31.11–12 and 15–16) with one intentionally ambiguous sentence, the poetimplicitly summarizes all they contain. In other words, he has entirely rendered, by translation or by allusion,Sappho’s list” (p. 114). He thus agrees with Vine 1992. When Pardini asserts (115 n. 28) that the affectdisplays Sappho includes “are not unlikely to be used of or by a man,” relying on Longus’ description ofDaphnis at 1.17.1 as “paler than grass,” he does not consider the different cultural context of late republicanRome as well as the different generic conventions. In terms of the belief that love enters the body throughthe eyes, and here makes the lover’s sight “black out,” Lucretius’ remark (4.1141–44) atque in amore malahaec proprio summeque secundo / inveniuntur; in adverso vero atque inopi sunt, / prendere quae possisoculorum lumine operto, / innumerabilia (“And these ills are found in love that is true and fully prosper-ous; but when love is crossed and hopeless there are ills which you might detect even with closed eyes, illswithout number”; trans. Bailey) resonates ironically.

31. Wormell 1966, 192; see also Bickel 1940, 196; Schnelle 1933, 21; and Friedrich 1908, 236.32. In addition to Sappho 31, see 47 and 130; Archil. 191, 193, 196; see Verg. Aen. 1.660 for the fire of

amor in Dido’s bones as well as 7.354–55 for Amata’s amatory fire. For further discussion of Vergil’s pre-sentation of sexual desire in Aeneid 7, see Clark 1993. Fantham (1972, 7–8) shows that in republican Latintexts, metaphors based on fire are common. For example, the verb ardere is especially used to denote passionin Plautus (pectus ardens, Epid. 555; pectus ardet, Merc. 600) and in Cicero (in amore fuerit ardentius,Fam. 9.14.4). She notes that in the surviving works of New Comedy, such fire imagery is not employed inamatory contexts, and concludes that this category of metaphor was not inherited from the Greek texts, butrather was already a natural idiom in Latin (11).

33. In Catullus, medulla appear eight times, five of which refer to amor’s effect (35.15, 45.16, 64.93,66.23, 100.7). In contrast, in Roman comedy amor affects the pectus and the cor, as in Plaut. Merc. 590–91. Here the Athenian youth Charinus talks to himself about his current plight: ita mi in pectore atque incorde facit amor incendium / ni ex oculis lacrimae defendant, iam ardeat credo caput (“Love makes sucha fire in my breast and in my heart that if the tears from my eyes weren’t protecting me, I think my headwould already be aflame”).

Catullus 51 265

Catullus presents the experience of erotic heat in a semantic nexus withother key terms. An example of this is his description of Ariadne’s “love atfirst sight” (hunc simul ac cupido conspexit lumine virgo, 86) and her violentphysical reactions upon seeing Theseus in the great ekphrasis in Poem 64(91–102; words referring to fiery and other physical reactions in the text arein bold):

non prius ex illo flagrantia declinavitlumina, quam cuncto concepit corpore flammamfunditus atque imis exarsit tota medullis.heu misere exagitans immiti corde furoressancte puer, curis hominum qui gaudia misces,quaeque regis Golgos quaeque Idalium frondosum,qualibus incensam iactastis mente puellamfluctibus, in flavo saepe hospite suspirantem!quantos illa tulit languenti corde timores!quanto saepe magis fulgore expalluit auri!cum saevum cupiens contra contendere monstrumaut mortem appeteret Theseus aut praemia laudis . . .34

no sooner did she turn her burning eyes away from him,than she took a flame deeply into her whole bodyand burst into flame in her deepest marrow.Ah, with hard heart, divine boy, wretchedly driving men mad,you who blend men’s cares and their joys,and you who rule Golgos and leafy Idalium,with what waves you have tossed the girl, inflamed in her mind,sighing often for the golden-haired stranger!What fears she bore in her swooning heart!How often then did she grow paler than gold’s gleam!When craving to contend against the savage monster,Theseus sought either death or the prize of praise.

Unlike the speaker in Sappho 31, whose mind is unaffected by eros, Ariadneis described as “inflamed in her mind, sighing for love of the yellow-hairedstranger” (incensam mente, in flavo hospite suspirantem, lines 97–98).Catullus uses suspiro only here. Ariadne’s violent erotic emotion is ex-pressed externally by means of one nonverbal sign: her lovesick sighs, whichshe makes often (saepe).35 These are immediately followed by a change incomplexion that reflects a change in emotion: when it is clear that Theseusintends to take on the Minotaur, out of fear Ariadne grows paler than gold’sgleam (lines 99–100).36 While characters commonly pale in response to fear

34. Quinn (1962, 52–60) provides a close reading of this poem; he sees in these lines “an image ofastonishing precision” (53).

35. For suspiro in this sense, cf. Tib. 1.6.35; Hor. Carm. 3.7.10; Ov. Fast. 1.417. Cf. also Lucr. 4.1192–94,where the poet cynically remarks nec mulier semper ficto suspirat amore / quae complexa viri corpus cumcorpore iungit / et tenet assuctis umectans oscula labris (“nor does a woman always sigh with feigned love,who, embracing the body of her man joins with body and holds him, wetting kisses with sucking lips”).

36. Other poetic women grow pale from fear, described in less pretty terms, such as Philomela inOv. Met. 6.602, who horruit infelix totoque expalluit ore.


in classical literature from Homer on, pallor expressing emotion appears inCatullus’ corpus only here and is an obvious echo of Sappho 31.37 Later, inelegy, the solitary speaker of Propertius 1.18 asks his beloved Cynthia quidtantum merui? quae te mihi carmina mutant? (“why have I deserved sucha great punishment? What songs turn you against me?” 9–10). He goes on tospeculate: an quia parva damus mutato signa colore, / et non ulla meo clamatin ore fides? (“or is it that I give too little signs [of amor] by changing color,and fidelity doesn’t shout in my mouth?” 17–18).38 Here we have a situationin which the beloved woman expects her lover to manifest his emotions onhis body, in a way that the speaker in Catullus 51 fails to do. Cynthia’s ex-pectation is in keeping with the elegiac pose of the enslaved lover who hasabandoned conventional codes of masculinity as a form of social protest.39

Although it is this internal fire that generates the sweat that betrays eroticemotion to an external observer, Catullus refers to sweat only three times,and nowhere in an amatory context.40 However, one of those times may havean amatory association worth noting. In Poem 68.61, the speaker likens Allius’help to a stream relieving a sweaty traveler (dulce viatori lasso in sudorelevamen). One might see an echo of the sweat caused by the onslaught ofamor here, since in poem 63.72 we learn that Allius had helped the speakerfind a meeting place for him and his lover. Earlier in 68, in lines 51–56, thespeaker describes his body’s reaction to amor in terms followed later byPropertius (me dolor et lacrimae merito fecere peritum, 1.9.7).

nam, mihi quam dederit duplex Amathusia curam,scitis, et in quo me torruerit genere,

cum tantum arderem quantum Trinacria rupeslymphaque in Oetaeis Malia Thermopylis,

maesta neque assiduo tabescere lumina fletucessarent tristique imbre madere genae.

For you know the pain that two-faced Venus gaveto me, and in what manner she scorched me

when I was as hot as the Sicilian crag41 or theMalian springs in Oetaean Thermopylae,

my melancholy eyes, with constant weeping, do not stopdimming, nor do my cheeks stop wetting with sad rain.

Love’s cura causes the body to be hot (the heat of sexual excitement is hereexpressed figuratively), but the speaker does not mention any sweat that

37. Other instances of pallor in Catullus: 65.6, his brother’s pale (pallidulum) foot sank into the riverLethe, 81.4, Juventius’ new male lover is paler (pallidior) than a gilded statue.

38. The text here is disputed. Camps (1969) and Richardson (1976) retain the reading mutato . . . colorewhile others, such as Baker (2000), prefer the variant reading mutato . . . calore.

39. For which see, e.g., Lyne 1980, 65–81; Propertius references his “slavery,” for example, in 2.20.19–20 and 3.11.1–2.

40. In Poem 23, the narrator comforts Furius for his “poverty” with the observation that his frugal life-style promotes physical health: “you’re free from sweat and free from spit; the nose’s snot and ugly slime”(a te sudor abest, abest saliva, / mucusque et mala pituita nasi; 23.16–17). Sudanti appears in 64.106modifying cortice as part of a nature simile: “sap-stemmed.”

41. For other comparisons of emotional flames to Aetna’s fires, see Hor. Epod. 17.30: ardeo quantum . . .nec Sicana fervida virens in Aetna flamma; Ov. Epist. Sapph. 12: me calor Aetnaeo non minor igne tenet.

Catullus 51 267

might visually manifest that volcanic heat;42 instead, the eyes dim fromweeping, and the cheeks display those tears. Of these symptoms, only oneis manifest to observers: the tears. These tears of the frustrated lover, andthose of the speaker in 99.5, whose kiss the beloved Juventius has wipedoff, are the only tears in Catullus connected with amor at all. Otherwise, allthose who weep in Catullus do so out of grief or fear for loved ones.43

There is no erotic trembling in Catullus. Rather, words such as tremulus andtremor refer to the weakness of old age, or are used figuratively to describeaspects of nature.44 There is one occurrence of trembling that may bear onmy argument. After the castration, Attis shakes a tambourine with delicatefingers and sings in a high-pitched, trembling voice (quatiensque terga tauriteneris cava digitis / canere haec suis adorta est tremebunda comitibus,63.10–11). One could argue that Attis’ voice is trembling from bodily shock,or from ecstatic excitement, but Attis’ voice could also reflect his emasculatedstate. If trembling does betray femininity, Catullus could have eliminated itfrom Poem 51 to prevent his male speaker’s body from being feminized byamor in a way that others could see.

Catullus may have been influenced not to attribute trembling and pallorto his male speaker not only by those affect displays coded as feminine inSappho 31 but also by Apollonius’ Hellenistic epic, the Argonautica. InBook 3, Medea, struck by eros, becomes speechless and grows pale (283–98).What is interesting about Apollonius’ description, however, is that he, likeOvid after him, combines both pallor and blushing to describe the physicallyand mentally enflamed Medea (298).45 Blushing girls do appear in Latin lit-erature, of course. Readers of the Aeneid will remember Lavinia’s famousblush as she hears her mother beg her former fiancé, Turnus, not to fight insingle combat with Aeneas. Here Vergil, like Apollonius, makes use of thecontrast between a maiden’s white and flushed skin as a nonverbal sign oferotic emotion.46 A maiden’s blush appears as well in Catullus 65.24. Herea girl blushes when her lover’s gift of an apple, which she had hidden underher gown, bounces and rolls into view when she rises to greet her mother:huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor (“while a self-conscious blush flowsover her somber face”). Rubor is the last word not just of this line but of the

42. Vine (1992, 255) argues that amor-induced sweat is latent in Catullus’ word choice demanat, whichcompresses the ideas of heat emanating and sweat manifesting. Still, Vine does not adequately explainwhy Catullus conflates flame and heat so subtly here, where his predecessors did not. In addition, whycompress the external affect displays, when he follows Sappho’s lead with the internal emotions?

43. Other instances of weeping (forms of fleo): 3.18 (puella weeps over her dead sparrow), 39.3 and 5(Egnatius laughs when someone weeps in response to an orator’s speech or a mother weeps at the funeralof her only son), 61.81–82 (a bride weeps at leaving her childhood behind), 64.242 (Aegeus weeps out offear for Theseus on his way home from Crete), 66.22 (Berenice’s lock weeps when set up in the sky), 96.4(male friends weep for lost friendships with the dead), 101.9 (presents left for the speaker’s dead brotherare wet with tears).

44. Trembling old age: 61.51 and 154–56, 64.307, 68.142; figurative trembling: 6.10, 64.128.45. Unlike Sappho’s narrator in 31, Medea’s qumovÍ (284), kradÇh (287), khÅr (446), novoÍ (447), prapÇdeÍ

(765), and yuchv (1016) are affected by eros. Her love-struck state is revealed externally by her facial ex-pression (a˚maruvgmata) as well as her labored breathing, pallor, and blush. Lateiner (1998, 169–83) discussesblushes from Homeric epic to the ancient novels.

46. See Lyne’s discussion (1983).


poem, its placement giving it emphasis. Further, although Ovid in his Arsamatoria exhorts “let every lover be pale,”47 in his epic poem, the Meta-morphoses, he often makes his characters reveal their amorous emotions notwith pallor, but with blushes. Lateiner lists at least twelve, including Nar-cissus’ admiration of “his face so fine, his ivory neck, his cheeks smooth,and the snowy pallor and the blush . . . and love he kindles while with lovehe burns.”48 Vergil and Ovid, of course, write in a different political andsocial context than Catullus.49

There has been much discussion of the final stanza of Catullus 51, which,while it seems different from the final stanza of Sappho in terms of content, issimilar in that it breaks the mood the poet has created in the previous stanzas.50

Whereas Sappho’s ending (fragmentary as it is) overturns a Greek stereo-type of femininity, Catullus’ ending throws cold water on the reader, abruptlydiffusing the erotic tension of the previous stanzas. Most scholars argue thatCatullus is playing with the polysemous nature of the word otium, and Iwould agree.51 It is true that otium and negotium are words that denote anelite man’s engagement, or lack thereof, in the public duties expected of hisclass. No doubt this is one meaning of otium here, as it is in other poems,such as 10 (otiosum, line 2). But it is possible that in this stanza Catullus isbringing another meaning of otium to the forefront, by following in Aedituus’footsteps. At the very end of fragment 1 (which I discuss in greater detailbelow), Aedituus’ speaker declares, dum pudeo, pereo. Catullus, perhaps, usesperdidit expressly to refer back to Aedituus fragment 1: Aedituus’ speakeris destroyed by chastity, and likewise, Catullus’ speaker is (by implication)destroyed by lack of (sexual) action (otium; imagining another man withLesbia rather than physically, sexually interacting with her himself ).52 Not

47. 1.729–30: palleat omnis amans; hic est color aptus amanti; / hoc decet. In a similar vein, the speakerin Propertius 1.5 acts as praeceptor amoris for the addressee, Gallus, detailing the experiences lovers havewhen in thrall to a cruel mistress, making him understand the speaker’s condition: et tremulus maestis orieturfletibus horror, / et timor informem ducet in ore notam, / et quaecumque voles fugient tibi verba querenti, /nec poteris, qui sis aut ubi, nosse miser! . . . nec iam pallorem totiens mirabere nostrum, / aut cur sim totocorpore nullus ego (15–18, 21–22). For more pallor as an indication of love in Propertius, see 1.1.22,1.9.17, 1.13.7.

48. impubes genas et eburnea colla decusque / oris et in niveo mixtum candore ruborem . . . / dumquepetit, petitur, pariterque accendit et ardet (3.422–23, 426; trans. Melville). Lateiner (1992, 261) notesblushes caused by amor: 1.484, 1.755, 2.450, 3.423, 4.268, 4.330, 5.584, 6.46, 7.78, 9.471, 10.594, 13.581(Daphne, Phaethon, Diana’s pregnant companion [Callisto], Narcissus, Clytie, Hermaphroditus, Arethusa,Arachne, Medea, Byblis, Atalanta, and Aurora). Pallor caused by fear: 2.180, 6.522, 7.136, 13.582, 14.734,14.755 (Phaethon, Philomela, Medea, Aurora [an adynaton], Iphis, and Anaxarete).

49. Habinek 1997 has an interesting discussion of Ovid’s poetry, in which the poet “disembeds” sexfrom contexts of honor and shame. Following this reading, it would then be no problem for a lover tomanifest his emotions on his skin.

50. This is not the place to tackle the longstanding debate about whether this stanza belongs with therest, or comprises a different poem. Given the similarity of effect between it and Sappho’s last fragmentarystanza, as well as the resonances with the first epigram of Aedituus, I think the poem works well as wehave it.

51. See Laidlaw 1968 for otium in Latin literature; for differing interpretations of otium here, seeFowler 2000, Woodman 1966, Itzkowitz 1983, O’Higgins 1996, and Lattimore 1944. For a discussion ofthe related adjective otiosus, consult Segal 1970.

52. Thanks to Greg Bucher for suggesting to me that Catullus’ otium here could also be interpreted assexual inactivity.

Catullus 51 269

being physically involved with Lesbia (as well as not being involved in thenegotium of Roman politics) gives the poet the time to produce this poem.Watching Lesbia sitting and laughing across from “that man” causes an emo-tional reaction in the speaker that makes him feel as if he is dying, althoughhe manages to control his outward affect displays and thus not “unman”himself in front of the “forest of eyes.” It is suggestive that pereo is the lastword of Aedituus 1, and perdidit the penultimate word in Catullus 51. In thefinal stanza of 51, the verbs exsultare and gestire—found only here in theextant Catullan corpus—are noteworthy as well. Robinson Ellis notes that“both exultas [sic] and gestis are physical words” and translates line 14 as“idleness makes the veins throb with wantonness beyond measure.”53 Fordycesays that “both verbs primarily refer to physical restlessness and both implyriotous emotion,” noting that Cicero combines them as well in Tusculanaedisputationes 4.13 and 5.16.54

Catullus uses perdo a second time in reference to the result of his relation-ship with Lesbia in Poem 75. Here Catullus again addresses Lesbia, tellingher that his mind has been destroyed (perdidit) by doing its duty to her:

huc est mens deducta tua mea, Lesbia, culpaatque ita se officio perdidit ipsa suo,

ut iam nec bene velle queat tibi, si optima fias,nec desistere amare, omnia si facias.

To this my mind has been led/dragged down by your fault, Lesbiaand thus destroyed itself by its devotion,

so that now it couldn’t be fond of you, if you did the best,nor could it stop loving, if you should do everything [bad].

If 51 marks the start of the speaker’s interest in or involvement with Lesbiaand bemoans his otium or lack of sexual activity with her, Poem 78 makesthe ironic point that it is through the speaker’s officium—his dutifulness in hissexual relationship with Lesbia—that his mens has been destroyed, just like51’s cities and kings. The Catullan speaker failed to heed his own warning,and suffers the foretold consequences. However, although the speaker revealshis internal emotions to the scrutiny of others, thus making a spectacle ofthem, he avoids making a spectacle of his body.55 Here, as in 51, there is nomention of any external, bodily manifestation of strong or excessive emo-tions. The speaker thus “dies” like a traditional Roman man, as physicallyunrevealing as the legendary Mucius Scaevola, whom I discuss below.

Affect Displays and Roman Manhood

To appreciate the control Catullus as speaker in Poem 51 maintains overany outward display of his emotions, I will bring to bear poems by ValeriusAedituus and Horace that involve similar situations. As I will demonstrate,

53. Ellis 1876, 141.54. Fordyce [1961] 1978, ad loc. See Fraenkel 1957, 213, for another discussion of otium in this stanza.55. See Braund 2002, chap. 6, for more on the degradation of the body as spectacle in Roman elite

ideology.

Christina A. Clark

270

while all three Roman poets restrict their male speakers’ affect displayscompared to Sappho’s female speaker, neither of the male speakers inAedituus or Horace’s poems controls his nonverbal behavior to the extentthat Catullus does. In fact, Catullus’ character asserts exceptional controlover his body’s outward displays of emotion, in keeping with the extraor-dinarily harsh physical codes required of men in late republican Rome.

56

An elite Roman male was expected to exert

potestas

over himself and others;

57

being unable to control one’s emotions, or their bodily display, was a signof effeminacy.

58

We might seek the reason for Catullus’ severe repression inthe poet’s particular context: his literary microcommunity of neoteric poets.As David Wray has recently argued, Poem 51, like many of the Lesbiapoems, is directed at or against men and constitutes an aggressive perfor-mance of manhood.

59

Indeed, Catullus’ poetry circulated within both themicrocommunity of poets and the macrocommunity of the Roman eliteduring the last years of the Republic, at a time when the performance ofmasculinity both remained extremely important and became increasingly atrisk, a situation I will return to at the end of this paper. Both Aedituus andHorace lived and worked in different times and social contexts: Aedituuswas among the first wave of Roman poets producing Latin epigrams usingHellenistic Greek models, and Horace worked for patrons in the new worldof Augustan Rome. With the death of the Republic, some have argued, theperformance of Roman masculinity, as it had been conceived previously,was problematic, for only the emperor had true

potestas

.

60

56. Such nonverbal behavioral codes have been well explored by scholars such as Gleason (1990,1995); Corbeill (1991, 2004); Barton (1994, 1999, 2002); and Gunderson (2000).

57. See, for example, Sen.

Ben

. 5.7.5 (

se habere in potestate

).58. Recent excellent explorations of Roman constructions of masculinity include Keith 2000 (chap. 2),

Braund 2002, especially chaps. 5 and 6, and Walters, who discusses Roman manhood within “the contextof a wider conceptual pattern that characterized those of higher social status as being able to defend the bound-aries of their bodies from invasive assaults of all kinds” (1997, 30)—this idea of corporeal inviolability isthe likely cause of the unwillingness of the speaker in Catullus 51 to let his body display his “womanish”emotional state. Williams methodically sets out Roman ideologies of masculinity, which were “predicatedon the assumption that a real man must not only achieve but also constantly display and perform his statusas a dominant male, in control of himself and others” (1999, 124). Chap. 4 looks especially at how chargesof effeminacy were leveled.

59. See Wray 2001, 88–99.60. Fredrick, in discussing Alan Cameron’s claim that the Hellenistic poet’s “problem was how to de-

epicize elegy,” notes that this was “connected to the ‘de-epicization’ of the citizen through his increaseddistance from warfare, a citizen for whom the epic battlefield has faded into text that no longer intersectswith lived experience. The self-definition of the Roman male elite was similarly dependent on politicalcompetition and military accomplishment, and similarly disturbed when Republican institutions crumbled”(1997, 179). Skinner argues that in Catullus 63, the gender inversion of Cybele and the emasculated Attis“reflects elite despair over real decreases in personal autonomy and diminished capacity for meaningfulpublic action during the agonized final years of the Roman Republic.” In fact, Skinner postulates that Attis“becomes a surrogate for Catullus’ own intended readers—enterprising young men born, like the poet himself,to influential Italian and Transpadane families, highly educated, talented, groomed for success at Rome, yetabruptly marginalized by social disruption. . . . Thus in Catullus 63 a contemporary narrative of politicalimpotence is retold mythically as a tale of self-destructive estrangement from the male body” (1997, 117–18). Alston examines conceptions of masculinity and the relationship between the military and masculinityduring the transition between Republic and Empire. He too discusses the problem posed by the new autocracyto elite male

potestas

(1997, 214–16). Likewise, Joshel studies the intersection between gender and empire,when emperors exercised absolute power and the male elites complied even as they maintained the fiction ofpolitical autonomy. In her examination of Tacitus’ account of Messalina, Joshel concludes that Messalina

Catullus 51 271

Catullus directly addresses the problem of the performance of masculinityand the hostile “forest of eyes” constantly judging it, when he asks, vos, quodmilia multa basiorum / legistis, me male marem putatis? (“Do you, becauseyou read ‘many thousands of kisses,’ think me insufficiently masculine?,”16.12–13). He then emasculates the two who impugn him, basically saying,“screw you, effeminate Aurelius and Furius” (1–4). Around the same time,Cicero commented on the men of his day, who, far from emulating the leg-endary physical self-control of Mucius Scaevola when he expressionlesslyheld his hand in the flame, having declared Romanus sum . . . civis . . . etfacere et pati fortia Romanum est (“I am a Roman citizen, it is the Romanway to do and to suffer bravely”),61 are dominated by an effeminate mentalattitude (opinio . . . effeminata) rendering them unable to endure the pain ofa bee sting without a cry (Tusc. 2.52). Cicero’s stoicism, in keeping with theideologies of republican Roman masculinity, made reason, not emotion, theruler of a man’s soul (Tusc. 2.47–48). Although the examples above dem-onstrate control over the physical expression of pain, I think that they work aswell for the expectation that elite Roman men control the physical expressionof strong emotions (or emotional pain) or restrict their display to sociallyacceptable times and places. As I have shown, Catullus’ speaker in 51 sharessuch an “effeminate mental attitude” with us even as he allows no sign ofit to manifest on his body, combining an emotional “playing the other” withtraditional Roman physical stoicism.

Comparanda in Roman Poetry

Valerius Aedituus’s Bashful Lover

As part of a circle of poets adapting Hellenistic Greek poetry to Latin, ValeriusAedituus wrote two extant epigrams, one of which reflects Sappho’s poemin both vocabulary and imagery.62 Preserved in Aulus Gellius’ Noctes Atticae(19.9),63 Aedituus’ poems are used by the rhetorician Antonius Julianus ata banquet to answer the question of certain Greeks, who, after singers andlyre players had performed songs of Sappho and Anacreon, asked him ifany Latin poets other than Catullus and Calvus had produced such smooth-flowing and delightful poems (tam fluentes carminum delicias fecisset;19.9.7). Julianus (indignabundus) replies that there were several earlierpoets who had done so, such as Aedituus, whose poem he recites:64

61. Livy 2.12–13.62. Citroni (OCD3 1577) takes it for granted that Aedituus intertexts with Sappho 31; Courtney states

that the poem “is strongly reminiscent” of Sappho 31 (1993, 72). See Ross 1969, 144–50, for a detaileddiscussion of Aedituus’ use of Sappho 31 in this epigram.

63. For a discussion of the dates of Valerius Aedituus, Porcius Licinus, Catulus, et al., see Holford-Strevens 1977.

64. Examining this scene, Wray remarks: “I can point to no moment of self-performance more Catullanthan this in Latin literature after Catullus” (2001, 213). Like Catullus, Julianus was of provincial origin andsteeped in both Hellenistic and Roman culture. He thus expresses the same “standard anxieties and defensiveaggressions of Roman manhood” (215).

functions as a sign; she signals “the growth of the emperor’s power and the development of an imperialstate . . . Messalina figures in a story of an accumulation of power determining Tacitus’ present, in whichthe emperor orders the senators to be free” (1997, 245). See also Barton 1994 and Fowler 2002, 148–51.


dicere cum conor curam tibi, Pamphila, cordis,quid mi abs te quaeram, verba labris abeunt,

per pectus manat subito <subido> mihi sudor;sic tacitus, subidus, dum pudeo,65 pereo. (frag. 1)66

When I try to speak the love of my heart to you, Pamphila,What shall I ask for myself from you? The words go away from my lips.

Suddenly all over my breast sweat pours forth from <horny> me;Thus silent, turned on, while I’m chaste, I perish.

The words Aedituus employs in this poem are quite striking. The narrativesituation here differs from that of Sappho 31, in that the speaker sees notableau of beloved and another man, but the emotion portrayed is similar.The male speaker addresses his beloved, named Pamphila, confiding to herthat when he tries to tell her of his cura cordis, and by doing so perhaps ini-tiate some desired sexual activity, verba labris abeunt. This is, in outcomeif not in exact description, the same thing that happens to Sappho’s speaker;when she sees the man and woman conversing, her tongue “breaks.” Imme-diately after, Aedituus’ speaker reveals his emotion nonverbally by meansof his sudden and violent affect display: the sweat that pours forth all overhis breast. Unlike Sappho’s speaker, the speaker here does not reference atrembling heart, but the reason for the sweat is given in the identification ofthe speaker’s emotion (cura cordis) and the adjective he applies to himself(subidus), and is implied by the use of the word pectus. The adrenaline rushof desire causes his heart to pound and sweat to flow. The adjective subidus,a hapax legomenon, is related to the verb subare, which is used to describefemale animals in heat (as in Lucr. 4.1199) or sexually aroused women (Hor.Epod. 12.11 and Festus P. 310M; see OLD, s.v. subo). Given this, one wondersat the resonance it would have had for a Roman audience, applied to a malespeaker. Would it emasculate him? Render his desire bestial? In any event, thecombination of extreme arousal yet lack of sexual activity makes the speakerassert that he is dying. By observing and correctly interpreting the speaker’snonverbal behavior, Pamphila could ascertain his desire and potentially act toalleviate his suffering. But to an observer, the speaker’s silence is a multi-valent sign. He could be choosing not to speak, in which case he could befighting to control his desire in a manly fashion, or he could be unable tospeak, as the verb abeunt certainly implies. Being unable to speak couldmark one as unmanly, given the high value put on speech in Roman maleelite culture. The speaker in Aedituus 1, in sharing with us his devastatingphysical response to his beloved, could be seen as deconstructing his ownmasculinity—his body’s betrayal leaves him unable to act or speak to get whathe wants. This is a death, not of the body itself, but of the body’s manliness.Why does Aedituus feel able to present his male speaker in this way? Perhaps

65. Courtney (1993, 72) suggests that dum pudeo might allude to Sappho 137, in which one speaker,Alcaeus, addresses another, Sappho: qevlw tÇ t∆ e≥phn, a˚llav me kwluv ei / a≥dwÍ, after which Sappho repliesthat “shame would not be restraining him if his desire were honourable.”

66. The text of Aedituus is vexed; see Morel 1927 and Courtney 1993. I follow Courtney’s text.

Catullus 51 273

he does so because the speaker is not identified as “Aedituus.” Or perhapsit is because the poem is modeled to a high degree on Hellenistic poetry,making the speaker work with those conventions of masculinity, rather thanRoman ones.

Julianus goes on to recite a second epigram of Aedituus, which assertsthe power of amor using the type of amatory fire imagery seen in ArchaicGreek lyric poetry as well as the Hellenistic poetry Aedituus and his peerswere imitating:67

Quid faculam praefers, Phileros, qua nil opus nobis?ibimus sic, lucet pectore flamma satis.

istanc <aut> potis est vis saeva extinguere ventiaut imber caelo candidus praecipitans;

at contra hunc ignem Veneris, nisi si Venus ipsanulla est quae possit vis alia opprimere.

Why do you carry the torch, Phileros, which we don’t need?We will go thus, the flame in our heart/chest shines enough.

For the savage force of the wind is able to extinguish that (torch),or shining rain falling down from the sky;

but on the other hand, there is no other force but Venus herselfwhich can quench this fire of desire.

This poem, as Courtney observes, shares many features with the poem byPorcius Licinus (frag. 7) that Julianus performs next, in which the speaker,aflame with erotic desire (ignis homost), warns the shepherds that everythinghe touches and sees will burst into flame as well: si digito attigero, incendamsilvam simul omnem, omne pecus; flammast omnia qua video. It also sharesfeatures with two maxims of Publilius Syrus. In 38, the mime writer declares,amans ita ut fax agitando ardescit magis (“the lover is thus like a torch: heblazes the more he is moved”). The fire imagery used to express amatoryemotion shifts somewhat between the two poets, in that for Aedituus, thefire of love is stronger than that of a torch, whereas for Publilius Syrus, thelover is like a torch (or, as Licinus puts it more directly, the man is fire).In 39, he observes: amor ut lacrima ab oculo oritur in pectus cadit (“love,like a tear, is born from the eye and falls on the pectus”). As I discussedabove, Sappho takes care to signal that her speaker’s mind is unaffected bydesire, when she uses kardia instead of phren as the organ affected; inLatin, pectus is a word commonly favored to express both the breast as wellas the emotional and intellectual faculty residing in it.68 Therefore, when theflame of love affects the pectus, it is affecting one’s mind as well as one’semotions.69

67. For example, it is similar in expression to the “Fragmentum Grenfellianum” (Powell 1925, 177, froma second-century b.c.e. papyrus) 11–16; lines 15–16 are particularly close, as the speaker, led by Kypris tohis beloved, says: sunodhgo;n eßcw to; polu; puÅ r / toujn t¬Å yuc¬Å mou kaiovmenon.

68. See Pichon 1966, 228–29, for more on the use of pectus in amatory poetry; I thank Jim McKeownfor this reference.

69. See OLD, s.v. pectus; other poetic examples include Plaut. Epid. 135; Lucr. 1.19; Catull. 61.169–71, where the chorus assures the bride that illi non minus ac tibi / pectore uritur intimo / flamma, and64.138, where Ariadne laments Theseus’ immite pectus.


Horace’s Jealous Lover

In 23 b.c.e. Horace published his three books of Odes. In 1.13 we can seeHorace playing with Sappho 31 and the conventions of Hellenistic epigram,as well as the poems of Aedituus and Catullus:70

Cum tu, Lydia, Telephicervicem roseam, cerea Telephi

laudas bracchia, vae meumfervens difficili bile tumet iecur.

tum nec mens mihi nec colorcerta sede manent, umor et in genas

furtim labitur, arguensquam lentis penitus macerer ignibus.

When you, Lydia, praise Telephos’rosy neck, the waxy-white arms of Telephos,

burning, my liver swells with uncontrollable bile[of frustrated desire]. Then neither my mind

nor color remain in sure seat, and moistureslips furtively onto my cheeks, revealing

how I am distressed by fires deep [within me].

The speaker directly addresses his beloved girl, Lydia, telling her of hisjealous reactions to her praise of another man’s body. Thus, he reacts toher words rather than to a visual tableau. The narrative situation is differentfrom Sappho 31 and Catullus 51, but is similar to that in Aedituus 1.Whereas Aedituus’ speaker confesses that he has alarming physical reactionswhen he tries to communicate his desire for his girl, the speaker in Ode 1.13describes his alarming physical reactions in response to her appreciationof another man’s sexual attractiveness. The introduction of a third party,not present in the poem but part of the emotional situation as an object ofthe beloved’s desire, changes the speaker’s emotion from sexual desire tosexual jealousy. Nevertheless, the effect on the body is just as violent as inthe earlier poems. The speaker portrays his mind as affected, as well ashis liver (a seat of the passions); his inner turmoil is revealed externally bytwo affect displays—his change of color and his tears (or facial sweat).71

Lines 5–7 are especially interesting because they expressly note that theseaffect displays betray his internal state (to the eyes of others, obviously). Theumor here may recall the tears of the frustrated lover in Catullus 68.51–56.By including two affect displays that feminize his speaker’s body, Horacehews closer to Sappho 31 than either of his predecessors, Aedituus andCatullus.72 Perhaps he feels able to have his speaker do so not only becauseof the new imperial political reality (and hence the problematization of theperformance of masculinity) but also because Horace himself was the son

70. Nisbet and Hubbard (1970) list parallels in earlier Greek and Roman poetry.71. See Keyser 1989 for a medical (humoral) interpretation of the two symptoms in lines 5–6.72. Sutherland 2005 has an interesting discussion of this poem and how Horace feminizes both Telephos’

and his speaker’s bodies.

Catullus 51 275

of a freedman, less constrained by (or able to participate in) the elite con-struction of Roman masculinity.

“The Forest of Eyes”:The Poetae Novi and a Renaissance Parallel

Why Catullus avoids compromising his speaker’s bodily masculinity is aninteresting question, and one that may be answered by looking at the contextof his poetry (the microcommunity of poetae novi) and his social class (themacrocommunity of the Roman elite), following Wray’s argument. A frag-ment of Ennius’ Annales (131) gives us the words of one of the Horatiibrothers, who confesses that ingens cura mis cum concordibus aequiperare(“a great anxiety is mine to do equal deeds with my comrades”). Thus, froma very early moment in Roman literature, we hear about intense competitionamong Roman men, arising perhaps out of the militaristic nature of Romansociety and identity.73 The poetae novi were men committed to cultivatingin Latin Callimachean elegance in word choice, word order, metrics, andnarrative form. They did so in a highly competitive social climate in whichmen competed for honor in their chosen arena, be it literature, politics, orthe military. Hailing from Verona, Catullus was at a social disadvantage inRoman elite circles. Verona had a multicultural history, long influenced bythe Greeks and more recently by the Romans.74 Most likely bilingual froman early age, Catullus exhibits mastery of the Greek poetic tradition as wellas standard Roman Latin. In Poem 84, he attacks Arrius; the unfortunate manhas not been as successful as he in suppressing his native dialect. Arrius’misuse of aspirates gives away his rustic origins even as he tries to speaklike, and thus pass as, a native urbanus. This poem, taken together with thepoet’s protestations about how tedious it is to be away from Rome, stuck inVerona (68.27 and 68.30), enables us to perceive the anxiety of an Italiancompeting in Rome.75 The competition revolved around the social perfor-mance of manhood. As Wray puts it,

There is no reason to think that any elite Roman male was exempted from observationson his social performance, and conclusions about his manhood, of the type that Catullusclaims in Poem 16 to have received from Furius and Aurelius. . . . Attention to the ex-ternal performance of manliness operated at a level of intensity that, in a modern context,would likely be attributed to a given individual’s obsessional pathology. In Catullus’Rome it was rather the norm of social interaction among men. . . . Keen competition fordistinction necessitated constant and conspicuous public social performance. At the same

73. See Braund’s (2002) chapter “Making Roman Identity: Multiculturalism, Militarism, and Masculinity”for a discussion of this.

74. For a discussion of Greek influence in central Italy, see Coarelli 1983 and Zanker 1983; for Italy’sRomanization, see Torelli 1995.

75. Fitzgerald analyzes Catullus’ “conflicted cultural identity” as it is raised by his reaction to his brother’sdeath (1995, 185–211). Consult Wray 2001, 42–45, for a discussion of Catullus’ “paradoxical status withinhis culture and society” in that he possesses prestigious cultural capital yet exhibits a sense of inferioritystemming from his partial outsider status in Rome (45). For more on the Hellenization of Italian citiesas well as Catullus’ Transpadane background, see Wiseman 1985, 92–129. Tatum 1997 has an interestingdiscussion of Catullan amicitia, especially the poet’s position as the amicus inferior to Roman men of con-sular rank. Skinner (2005, 217–18) places Catullan sexual polemic in its wider public context.


time, every semiotic element of that performance, in dress, comportment and speech, wassubject at every moment to ideological evaluation along the binary spectrum of virility/effeminacy, an evaluation whose vigilance made no allowances or exceptions.76

In the circle of the poetae novi, part of the performance of manhood con-sisted of aggressively outrageous poetic claims that revolved around thebodies of the poems’ speakers or addressees.77 Catullus’ poems privilege“the performative over the ethical, so that “there is less focus on ‘being agood man’ than on ‘being good at being a man.’ A Catullan poem . . . isabove all a captatio (a ‘play’ for approbation), a lacessatio (‘challenge’), aperformance of excellence.”78 In this high-stakes game of manly excellence,Catullus strictly policed his speakers’ affect displays to preempt any attacksfrom his male competitors even as he circulated poetic attacks on the manhoodof others (e.g., Poem 33, the Vibennii; Poem 57, Julius Caesar, and so on).79

We can see the minute bodily scrutiny of other elite men in Catullus’ attackon Gellius in Poem 80, which focuses on the white color of Gellius’ lips.This color screams out, along with Victor’s rupta ilia, their secret, shamefuloral sex acts. As Thomas Habinek notes, Catullus describes sexual relation-ships or experiences as embedded in other elite male networks (political,social, and economic) in which the performance of masculinity was part.80

For example, in Poem 28, Catullus’ speaker tells us how his political serviceunder the praetor Memmius made him feel emasculated (o Memmi, bene meac diu supinum / tota ista trabe lentus irrumasti, 9–10).

The microcommunity of Early Renaissance humanists offers an intriguingparallel. In his book The Lost Italian Renaissance, Christopher Celenza arguesthat within their small, predominantly male, intellectual communities, thehumanists measured their prestige both by the professional positions theyachieved as well as the opinions of their fellow humanists. In the course ofseeking honor from their fellows, “humanists use gendered categories in anoppositional way, so that a thinker, in order to emphasize the right kind ofbehavior or action, will deploy its opposite in vilifying an opponent.”81 Inparticular, humanists working in the curial courts competed with one anotherfor status and honor: their lives at court were antagonistic, fraught with pos-sibilities for promotion and dangers of mistakes that could ruin reputationsand thus careers. Zero-sum battles were fought, for example, over Latinity:“We cannot properly understand these seemingly exaggerated, immenselyvitriolic Renaissance polemics between cultivated individuals as anythingother than frivolities of merely antiquarian interest unless we situate thedebates where they belong: in the social, public context of the acquisition,protection, and maintenance of masculine honor.”82 Such hostile engage-

76. Wray 2001, 60.77. Ibid., 64–65.78. Ibid., 67.79. Wray (2001, 113–60) examines a “Mediterranean poetics of aggression” in which one had to guard

oneself from the hostility and hostile attacks of friends in particular.80. See especially Habinek 1997, 27–28.81. Celenza 2004, 121.82. Ibid., 130.

Catullus 51 277

ments were inevitable because “the public marketplace was the only wayto win acclaim, however distasteful and dangerous it might be.”83 In par-ticular, Celenza discusses the life and career of Lapo da Castiglionchio theYounger, from an old Florentine family, who died of the plague when hewas thirty-three years old. Skilled at translating from Greek into Latin, Laponevertheless needed to compete for patronage to fulfill his literary ambitions.As an outsider seeking entry into the courts, his writings reflect his anxieties,desires, and thoughts on his environment and social milieu. In his presen-tations of honor and honorable behavior, Lapo deploys “a few key mascu-linizing ideas,” one of which is the idea of gendered opposites. Those ofwhom he disapproves or against whom he argues are characterized as actingeffeminately. Often, this effeminate behavior is linked to sexuality andsexual morality. On display in the merciless face-to-face microcommunityof the papal court, humanists vied with words and bodies for honor and rep-utation, which were “singularly important, public commodities that could beacquired only in small communities of like-minded individuals.”84 Aggres-sive, public performances of manhood were the name of the game, a gamein which Catullus had long before been a master player.

Conclusion

In the end, the picture of the love-inflamed male speaker in Catullus 51 isvery much in keeping with the picture Catullus presents of the expectantbridegroom in Poem 61 (lines 164–73). The speaker addresses the bride,calling her attention to the groom’s posture and position:

aspice unus ut accubansvir tuus Tyrio in torototus immineat tibi.io Hymen Hymenaee io,

io Hymen Hymenaee.

As the groom reclines on a purple couch, he is totally intent on his bride.The speaker then decodes the groom’s body language for her:

illi non minus ac tibipectore uritur intimoflamma, sed penite magis.

83. Ibid., 132.84. Ibid., 133. Earlier, Celenza provides an example of bodily struggle: “In a number of fierce outward

polemics in which humanists engaged, it was a standard strategy to heap reprobation on the sexual moralityof one’s adversary. . . . In May 1452, George of Trebizond, for example, has a physical altercation in theenvirons of the papal court with Poggio Bracciolini, spurred on by an old literary grudge. During theirfight, George would later write bitterly to Poggio, “Rightly I could have bitten off the fingers you stuck inmy mouth; I did not . . . I thought of squeezing your testicles with both hands . . . I did not do it.” Georgerequests a sword from a bystander to scare Poggio away, and it does the trick: Poggio, “like a Florentinewoman” (ut florentina femina) flees in fright” (125). We do not know if Catullus likewise physically scuffledwith rivals in his microcommunity, but he certainly wrote poems attacking the masculinity of a number ofthem (see, e.g., 16, 21, 25, 29, 33, 57). The Furius attacked in 16 and other poems may have been the poetFurius Bibaculus, one of the poetae novi and from northern Italy, as was Catullus. For general discussionsof the poetae novi and Catullus, see Wiseman 1974, 44–58; Traglia 1974; and Conte 1994, 140–54.


The flame burns in that man’sinmost breast no lessthan in you, but more secretly.

That is, the man feels the same violent erotic emotions as women do, but main-tains control over his body’s outward appearance, even his affect displays.85

The speaker’s lack of affect displays that elsewhere (in literature and life)reveal to external viewers “drastic, internal emotional shifts” does not meanthat he does not feel them—rather, he suppresses their revelation to othersin keeping with the Roman nonverbal codes of elite male bodily control.86

A man was to be durus, not mollis (muliebris). This was achieved, if it couldreally be achieved, by constant self-policing, by ceaseless willpower.

Myles McDonnell has recently shown that two divergent and competingmodels of masculinity were present and debated in late republican Rome.He uses Sallust’s account of Julius Caesar and M. Porcius Cato to dem-onstrate them: Caesar represents “old-time” Roman martial virtus/mascu-linity, whereas Cato represents the Greek-influenced, new, private, ethicalvirtus.87 In a way, Catullus’ poetry reflects this split as well. In embracingHellenistic Greek poetic aesthetics and rejecting the traditional political pathof the male Roman elite, Catullus lives, as much as he can, in the private,otiosus manner fashioned by the neoterics. In poems such as 50 Catullusshows us, with both narrative situation and idiom, the great importance ofverbal charm, wit, and grace in elite self-presentation.88 On the other hand,his poetry reflects also the body behavior expected of elite men that stemsfrom Rome’s traditional militaristic society.89 He seems unable to transcendthis code bodily, even as he “plays the other” emotionally; as I have shown,Catullus’s speaker in 51 is studiedly more bodily taciturn and stoic thanthose of poets working with Sappho 31 both before and after him. Perhapsbecause he was ambitious but disadvantaged as a man from Verona, Catulluswas especially careful to maintain his speaker’s “masculine” bodily stance inhis efforts to compete and win in late republican Rome. His inner “playingthe other” is not manifested on his speaker’s body, although he presents hisemotional vulnerability and penetrability publicly in his poetic competitionwith other men in this complex cultural system of gender, sexuality, and class.

Creighton University

85. Compare Tib. 4.5.17: optat idem iuvenis quod nos, sed tectius optat.86. See Lateiner (1996, 236 n. 19) for more on affect displays revealing emotional shifts.87. See esp. McDonnell 2003, 251–58.88. Consult Krostenko 2001, 258–59, for a discussion of this in Poem 50; see passim for the use of

words associated with style and charm to express both disdain and approval in various works of Cicero andCatullus.

89. Wray examines what he calls two different “code models” of Catullan manhood—character intertextsthat “form part of the speech and gestural lexicon of Catullan self-fashioning, as markers for individuallyrecognizable modes of Catullus’ poetic performance of manhood: an Archilochian mode . . . and a Calli-machean mode” that, while displaying “the manhood of a ‘feminine’ delicacy,” is “ultimately no lessagonistically performative of its own excellence” (2001, 167). He connects these with the “coexistence oftwo divergent models of masculine behavior: one connected ideologically with Roman mos maiorum . . .the other connected with the prestige of Hellenistic culture and more or less ‘cosmopolitan’ ” (207). Thus,he homes in on the same phenomenon as McDonnell.

Long

Catullus 51 279

LITERATURE CITED

Alston, R. 1997. Arms and the Man: Soldiers, Masculinity and Power in Republican and Im-perial Rome. In When Men Were Men: Masculinity, Power and Identity in Classical Antiq-uity, ed. L. Foxhall and J. Salmon, 205–23. London.

Bailey, C. 1947. Titi Lucreti Cari “De Rerum Natura” Libri Sex. Oxford.Baker, R. J. 2000. Propertius I. Warminster.Barton, C. A. 1994. All Things Beseem the Victor: Paradoxes of Masculinity in Early Imperial

Rome. In Gender Rhetorics: Postures of Dominance and Submission in History, ed. R. C.Trexler, 83–92. Binghamton, N.Y.

. 1999. The Roman Blush: The Delicate Matter of Self-Control. In Constructions ofthe Classical Body, ed. J. I. Porter, 212–34. Ann Arbor, Mich.

. 2001. Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones. Berkeley and Los Angeles.

. 2002. Being in the Eyes: Shame and Sight in Ancient Rome. In The Roman Gaze:Vision, Power, and the Body, ed. D. Fredrick, 216–35. Baltimore.

Bickel, E. 1940. Catulls Werbgedicht an Clodia und Sapphos Phaonklage im Hochzeitslied anAgallis. RhM 89: 194–216.

Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge.. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, Calif.

Braund, S. M. 2002. Latin Literature. London.Camps, W. A. 1969. Propertius: Elegies I. Cambridge.Celenza, C. 2004. The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s Legacy.

Baltimore.Clark, C. 1993. Regina Bacchatur: Sexual Roles and Politics in Aeneid VII. NECJ 21.2: 62–67.

. 2001. The Body of Desire: Nonverbal Communication in Sappho 31V. SyllectaClassica 12: 1–32.

Coarelli, F. 1983. I santuari del Lazio e della Campania tra i Gracchi e le guerre civili. In Les“bourgeoisies” municipales italiennes aux IIe et Ier siècles av. J.-C., 217–40. Paris.

Conte, G. B. 1994. Latin Literature: A History. Trans. J. B. Solodow. Rev. D. Fowler andG. W. Most. Baltimore.

Corbeill, A. 1996. Controlling Laughter: Political Humor in the Late Roman Republic.Princeton, N.J.

. 2004. Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome. Princeton, N.J.Courtney, E. 1993. The Fragmentary Latin Poets. Oxford.Ellis, R. 1876. A Commentary on Catullus. Oxford.Fantham, E. 1972. Comparative Studies in Republican Latin Imagery. Toronto.Ferrari, W. 1938. Il carme 51 di Catullo. AnnPisa 11 (7): 59–72.Fitzgerald, W. 1995. Catullan Provocations: Lyric Poetry and the Drama of Position. Berkeley

and Los Angeles.Fordyce, C. J. [1961] 1978. Catullus: A Commentary. Reprint, with corrections, Oxford.Fowler, D. 2000. Roman Constructions: Readings in Postmodern Latin. Oxford.

. 2002. Masculinity under Threat? The Poetics and Politics of Inspiration in LatinPoetry. In Cultivating the Muse: Struggles for Power and Inspiration in Classical Litera-ture, ed. E. Spentzou and D. Fowler, 141–59. Oxford.

Fraenkel, E. 1957. Horace. Oxford.Fredrick, D. 1997. Reading Broken Skin: Violence in Roman Elegy. In Hallett and Skinner

1997, 172–93.Friedrich, G. 1908. Catulli Veronensis Liber. Leipzig.Furley, W. D. 2000. “Fearless, Bloodless . . . like the Gods”: Sappho 31 and the Rhetoric of

“Godlike.” CQ 50: 7–15.Gleason, M. 1990. The Semiotics of Gender: Physiognomy and Self-Fashioning in the Second

Century c.e. In Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the AncientGreek World, ed. D. Halperin, J. J. Winkler, and F. I. Zeitlin, 389–415. Princeton, N.J.


. 1995. Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome. Princeton, N.J.Greene, E. 1999. Re-Figuring the Feminine Voice: Catullus Translating Sappho. Arethusa 32(1):

1–18.Gruber, M. I. 1980. Aspects of Nonverbal Communication in the Ancient Near East. Rome.Gunderson, E. 2000. Staging Masculinity. Ann Arbor, Mich.Habinek. T. 1997. The Invention of Sexuality in the World-City of Rome. In The Roman Cul-

tural Revolution, ed. T. Habinek and A. Schiesaro, 23–43. Cambridge.Hallett, J., and M. Skinner, eds. 1997. Roman Sexualities. Princeton, N.J.Holford-Strevens, L. A. 1977. Towards a Chronology of Aulus Gellius. Latomus 36: 93–109.Itzkowitz, J. B. 1983. On the Last Stanza of Catullus 51. Latomus 42: 129–34.Joshel, S. 1997. Female Desire and the Discourse of Empire: Tacitus’ Messalina. In Hallett and

Skinner 1997, 221–54.Keith, A. 2000. Engendering Rome: Women in Latin Epic. Cambridge.Keyser, P. 1989. Horace Odes 1.13.3–8, 14–16: Humoural and Aetherial Love. Philologus 133:

75–81.Krostenko, B. 2001. Cicero, Catullus, and the Language of Social Performance. Chicago.Laidlaw, W. A. 1968. Otium. GaR, 2nd ser., 15: 42–52.Lateiner, D. 1992. Affect Displays in the Epic Poetry of Homer, Vergil, and Ovid. In Advances

in Nonverbal Communication: Sociocultural, Clinical, Esthetic, and Literary Perspectives,ed. F. Poyatos, 255–69. Amsterdam.

. 1995. Sardonic Smile: Nonverbal Behavior in Homeric Epic. Ann Arbor, Mich.

. 1996. Nonverbal Behaviors in Ovid’s Poetry, Primarily Metamorphoses 14. CJ 91:225–53.

. 1998. Blushes and Pallors in Ancient Fictions. Helios 25: 163–89.Lattimore, R. 1944. Sappho 2 and Catullus 51. CP 39: 184–87.Lyne, R. O. A. M. 1980. The Latin Love Poets: From Catullus to Horace. Oxford.

. 1983. Lavinia’s Blush: Vergil, Aeneid 12.64–70. GaR, 2nd ser., 30: 55–64.Martin, C., trans. 1990. The Poems of Catullus. Baltimore.Mauss, M. 1935. Les techniques du corps. Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique

32: 271–93.McDonnell, M. 2003. Roman Men and Greek Virtue. In Andreia: Studies in Manliness and

Courage in Classical Antiquity, ed. R. M. Rosen and I. Sluiter, 235–62. MnemosyneSuppl. 238. Leiden.

Melville, A. D., trans. 1986. Ovid: “Metamorphoses.” Oxford.Morel, W. 1927. Fragmenta poetarum latinorum epicorum et lyricorum praeter Ennium et

Lucilium. Leipzig.Mynors, R. A. B. 1958. C. Valerii Catulli Carmina. Oxford.Nisbet, R. G. M., and M. Hubbard. 1970. A Commentary on Horace: “Odes,” Book 1. Oxford.O’Higgins, D. 1996. Sappho’s Splintered Tongue: Silence in Sappho 31 and Catullus 51. In

Re-reading Sappho: Reception and Transmission, ed. E. Greene, 68–78. Berkeley and LosAngeles.

Pardini, A. 2001. A Homeric Formula in Catullus (c. 51.11–12 gemina teguntur lumina nocte).TAPA 131: 109–18.

Pham, X. H. T. 1999. Mourning in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible. Sheffield.Pichon. R. 1966. Index Verborum Amatoriorum. Hildesheim.Powell, J. U. 1925. Collectanea Alexandrina. Oxford.Quinn, K. F. 1962. Docte Catulle. In Critical Essays on Roman Literature: Elegy and Lyric, ed.

J. P. Sullivan, 31–63. Cambridge, Mass.. 1970. Catullus: The Poems. London.

Richardson, L. Jr. 1976. Propertius: Elegies I–IV. Norman, Okla.Rissman, L. 1983. Love as War: Homeric Allusion in the Poetry of Sappho. Königstein.

Catullus 51 281

Ross, D. O. 1969. Style and Tradition in Catullus. Cambridge, Mass.Russell, D. A., ed. and trans. 1964. “Longinus,” On the Sublime. Oxford.Schnelle, I. 1933. Untersuchungen zu Catulls dichterischer Form. Leipzig.Segal, C. 1970. Catullan Otiosi: The Lover and the Poet. GaR, 2nd ser., 17: 25–31.Skinner, M. 1981. Catullus’ Passer: The Arrangement of the Book of Polymetric Poems. New

York.. 1997. Ego Mulier: The Construction of Male Sexuality in Catullus. In Hallett and

Skinner 1997, 129–50.. 2005. Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture. Malden, Mass.

Sutherland, E. H. 2005. Writing (on) Bodies: Lyric Discourse and the Production of Gender inHorace Odes 1.13. CP 100: 52–82.

Svenbro, J. 1984. La tragédie de l’amour: Modèle de la guerre et théorie de l’amour dans lapoésie de Sappho. QS 19: 57–79.

Syndikus, H. P. 1984. Catull: Eine Interpretation. 3 vols. Darmstadt.Tatum, W. J. 1997. Friendship, Politics and Literature in Catullus: Poems 1, 65 and 66, 116.

CQ 47: 482–500.Torelli, M. 1995. Studies in the Romanization of Italy. Ed. and trans. H. Fracchia and M. Gualtieri.

Edmonton.Traglia, A. 1974. Poetae Novi. Rome.Vine, B. 1992. On the “Missing” Fourth Stanza of Catullus 51. HSCP 94: 251–58.

. 1993. Catullus 76.21: Ut torpor in artus. RhM 136.3/4: 292–97.Walters, J. 1997. Invading the Roman Body: Manliness and Impenetrability in Roman Thought.

In Hallett and Skinner 1997, 29–43.Wees, H. van. 1998. A Brief History of Tears: Gender Differentiation in Archaic Greece. In

When Men Were Men: Masculinity, Power and Identity in Classical Antiquity, ed. L. Foxhalland J. Salmon, 10–53. London.

Wilkinson, L. P. 1956. Greek Influence on the Poetry of Ovid. In L’influence grecque sur lapoésie latine de Catulle à Ovide, 223–43. EntrHardt 2. Berne.

Williams, C. 1999. Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity.Oxford.

Wiseman, T. P. 1974. Cinna the Poet and Other Roman Essays. Leicester.. 1985. Catullus and His World: A Reappraisal. Cambridge.

Woodman, A. J. 1966. Some Implications of Otium in Catullus 51.13–16. Latomus 25: 216–26.Wormell, D. E. W. 1966. Catullus as Translator. In The Classical Tradition: Literary and His-

torical Studies in Honor of Harry Caplan, ed. L. Wallach, 187–201. Ithaca, N.Y.Wray, D. 2001. Catullus and the Poetics of Roman Manhood. Cambridge.Zanker, P. 1983. Zur Bildnisrepräsentation führender Männer in Mittelitalischen und Cam-

panischen Stätten zur Zeit der Späten Republik und der Julisch-Claudischen Kaiser. In Les“bourgeoisies” municipales italiennes aux IIe et Ier siècles av. J.-C., 251–66. Paris.

Zeitlin, F. 1996. Playing the Other: Essays on Gender and Society in Classical Greek Litera-ture. Chicago.

The Poetics of Manhood?: Nonverbal Behavior in Catullus 51

Documents

Transcript of The Poetics of Manhood?: Nonverbal Behavior in Catullus 51