by Daisy Dunn
On his heels Penios the river god came from green Tempe,
Tempe, which hanging woods fringe from above,
[corruption in text] … leaving to celebrate their dancing.
And not without gifts: for he brought tall beeches with
Their roots and straight-trunked laurel sky-reaching
And nodding plane and the pliant sister
Of fire-consumed Phaethon and airy cypress.
He positioned them all around the palace
Intermingled so the hall would grow green
Decked with soft foliage.
Ingenious Prometheus followed behind him,
Wearing faded scars of his former punishment,
Which once he paid, his limbs tied
To a rock by chains
As he hung from a sheer cliff face.
Then the father of the gods arrived with his blessed wife
And children, leaving in the heavens only you
Phoebus Apollo, with your twin
Who tends the mountains of Idrus:
For you and your sister were united in despising Peleus,
And recoiled from lighting wedding flames for Thetis.
After the gods moulded their limbs to white seats
At tables laden generously with all sorts of dishes
With bodies trembling in unsteady gait
The Fates began to sing their prophetic song.
A white shawl swamped their trembling body
And covered their ankles with its purple border;
Pink headbands rested upon their white head
And their hands plucked dutifully
At a task that lasts forever.
The left hand was holding a distaff
Wrapped in soft wool. Drawing the threads gently
The right shaped them with upturned fingers,
Twisting them under the thumb and turning
The weighted spindle with smooth handle,
And a tooth was ever plucking to make the weaving
Even, and pieces of wool which obtruded before
From the light threads dangled from their dry withered lips,
And in front of their feet they were guarding
Soft fleeces of shining wool in little twig-lined baskets.
And plucking the fleeces with a voice of precision
They poured forth what was fated in divine song,
Song no age thereafter could allege was false:
‘Defence of Thessaly, enriching your magnificence with
Virtues great, dearest to Jupiter son of Ops,
Hear what the Sisters reveal to you in happy light,
An accurate oracle: but you, the fates follow,
Run on, drawing out the weft, run on, spindles.
The Evening Star will come to you
Bringing what grooms long for,
Come will the wife beneath a well-omened star
To pour out her heart to you with love to distraction,
Ready to languish with you in sleep you share,
Spreading her gentle arms beneath your strong neck.
Run on, drawing out the weft, run on, spindles.
No house has ever sheltered love like this,
No love has joined lovers in such a pact as
Lives in the harmony of Thetis and Peleus.
Run on, drawing out the weft, run on, spindles.
Achilles will be born to you, a fearless man,
Known to the enemy not by back but by brave chest,
Ever the victor in the cross-country race,
He will outstrip the fire-quick footsteps of swift deer.
Run on, drawing out the weft, run on, spindles.
There’s not a hero who will compare with him in battle
When the Trojan plains grow wet with Greek blood
And Agamemnon, third heir of treacherous Pelops,
Besieges and lays waste to the walls of Troy
In protracted war.
Run on, drawing out the weft, run on, spindles.
Time and again mothers will speak of his unequalled virtues
And distinguished deeds at the funerals of their sons
As they release unwashed hair from their white crowns
And bruise aged breasts with weak hands.
Run on, drawing out the weft, run on, spindles.
For as a reaper picks thick bundles of corn
Beneath the blazing sun and harvests the blond fields,
So he will lay low the bodies of the Troy-born
With unforgiving iron.
Run on, drawing out the weft, run on, spindles.
The River Scamander will witness his great virtues
As it flows in profusion from the rapid Hellespont
And its passage grows narrow through the
Slaughtered bodies that mount up and
Warms its deep waters with indiscriminate blood.
Run on, drawing out the weft, run on, spindles.
The final witness will be the booty paid for with death
When a rounded tomb heaped upon
A high rampart receives the white limbs
Of a virgin slain.
Run on, drawing out the weft, run on, spindles.
For the moment fate surrenders power
To wearied Greeks, releasing Neptune’s bonds
On the city of Dardanus,
The high tomb will grow wet with Polyxena’s blood,
As like a sacrificial victim falling beneath the ready knife,
She throws down her headless body as her knees give way.
Run on, drawing out the weft, run on, spindles.
So come, unite the lovers in the love they have longed for,
May the husband welcome his goddess in happy contract
And the bride be given to her eager husband at last.
Run on, drawing out the weft, run on, spindles.
Returning at the rise of dawn her nurse
Will not be able to encircle her neck with yesterday’s ribbon,
Nor her worrying mother, sad for a difficult daughter
Who sleeps alone, lose hope for dear grandchildren.
Run on, drawing out the weft, run on, spindles.
With predictions like these the Fates once sang
From the divinity of their heart a felicitous song for Peleus.
For the sky-lying gods used to visit the unblemished
Homes of heroes in the past in person
And show themselves in the assemblies of men
When piety was yet to be broken.
Calling upon the shining temples
When the annual rites of festival days arrived
The father of the gods would watch one hundred
Bulls fall prostrate in sacrifice.
Often wayfaring Bacchus led from the high summit
Of Parnassus his Euhoe-crying, wild-hair flowing
Bacchantes, when all of Delphi rushed from the city at once
To welcome the god, rejoicing, with smoking altars.
Often in the death-dealing struggle of war Mars
Or Minerva, mistress of rapid Triton
Or Nemesis Ramnusian virgin
Stood beside armed soldiers
And gave the bands their encouragement.
But after the earth was infected with unspeakable crime
And everyone put justice to flight from his grasping mind,
Brother drenched hands in the blood of brother,
Son ceased to grieve for the death of father and mother,
Father longed for the premature death of his son
So freely he could get purchase on the flower of a new wife,
Mother lay herself down beneath her naïve son,
Wrongful and unafraid of doing sacrilege to her household gods –
All things speakable and unspeakable, muddled together in evil fury,
Have turned the just minds of our gods away from us.
So they do not dignify our assemblies with their presence,
Or even bear to touch the clear light of day.
NOTE ON CURRENCY AND MEASURES
In Rome in the late Republic:
1 sesterce bought two loaves of bread. An adult labourer typically earned 3 sesterces a day
1 quadrans was a sixteenth of a sesterce. It bought entry to the less exclusive baths
1 talent was about 25kg weight, perhaps 24,000 sesterces
1 Roman foot was just under 30cm
A stadium (pl: stadia) was 625 Roman feet, or 187.5 metres
NOTES
Abbreviations used in Notes
AP – Anthologia Palatina
HE – Gow, A. S. F., and Page, D. L. (1965), The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams Vols I–II (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press)
Prologue
1 Jerome wrote that Catullus lived no longer than thirty years. He put his birth at 87 BC, but that would mean that Catullus died before many of the events he described in his poetry even came to pass. Writers in antiquity agreed that he did not live long (for example, see Ovid Amores 3.9.62). The latest datable reference in his poetry is at the very end of 54 BC or beginning of 53 BC, and it would appear that he died at a similar time to the philosopher Lucretius, whose death most scholars put at 55 BC (Cornelius Nepos, ‘after the death of Lucretius and Catullus …’; Life of Atticus 12.4; cf. Schwabe (1862) p. 46). I believe that Catullus died in 53 BC, putting his date of birth at circa 82 BC.
2 Ovid Amores 2.4.5.
3 Propertius 2.25.4.
4 There is a good discussion of the various meanings of nugae in Newman (1990) pp. 30–6. Both Newman (1990) pp. 356–66, and Wiseman (1985) pp. 191–97, consider the possibility that Catullus also wrote mimes. In the first century AD, Juvenal alluded (at Satire 8.186) to a play called Phasma (‘Ghost’) by a certain Catullus, probably a later rendition of a drama by the Athenian playwright Menander.
5 Catullus revealed in Poem 79 that Lesbia was a pseudonym for one of Clodius Pulcher’s sisters. In patrician families, women were called by the family name in the feminine form, and Clodius had three sisters. Scholars have therefore disputed the precise identity of Catullus’ ‘Lesbia’. Catullus wrote that his Lesbia was still married when he became involved with her, which I believe happened in Rome in or around 61 BC. The youngest Claudia divorced Lucullus, the general, in 66 BC, and the second sister was widowed in 61 BC. There is no record of them remarrying, although they might well have done so. The eldest Clodia was married to a politician called Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer until 59 BC, and contemporary descriptions of her involvement in the politics of Clodius, and her interests as a poet herself, seem to chime with Catullus’ portrait. Clodia Metelli may have only been a half-sister of Clodius Pulcher (Shackleton Bailey, see for example (2000) p. 181), but as the Roman authors did not distinguish her as such, I follow suit and refer to them simply as brother and sister. On the identification of Lesbia with Clodia, see also Apuleius Apologia 10.
6 Hesiod incorporates these myths into his Works and Days and Theogony.
7 Plutarch Sulla 2 on his eyes and complexion.
8 Strabo Geography 12.3.1.
9 After Sulla, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, a consul, demanded the restoration of the tribunate. The Senate appointed him governor of Cisalpine Gaul (Plutarch Pompey 16.1), and he dispatched one of his ambassadors, Marcus Junius Brutus (it was his son who would one day become the most famous of Julius Caesar’s assassins) to raise an army, while he marched on Rome seeking a second consulship. Pompey put down Brutus and his men, besieging him at Modena. Lepidus retired to the countryside and died soon after.
10 Plutarch Pompey 13.
11 Lucullus scored some victories across Armenia, for instance, with whose king Mithridates was allied. Cicero de imperio Gn. Pompei 5, Lucullum, magnis rebus gestis ab eo bello discedere.
12 Kidnap: Suetonius Caesar 4. In the wake of the Hannibalic War and Rome’s historic victory over Carthage, formerly the superpower of the seas, Rhodes and Delos lacked the naval capacity to keep the rogues at bay, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that it was in the hands of Italy to address the situation.
13 After Mithridates’ suicide, Pompey allowed him to be laid to rest in a grand mausoleum in the city in which he was born, Sinope in Pontus. On Pompey’s struggle against Mithridates the account of Dio Roman History 36.45–53 (which dates to c.200 AD) is particularly engaging.
14 Appian Mithridatic Wars 106.
15 A law was eventually passed granting Pompey control over Bithynia, Pontus and Cilicia and the surrounding territory. Power over the lands Mithridates had acquired around Armenia was bestowed upon chieftains. The remaining lands were divided into eleven city states and added to Bithynia. See Strabo Geography 12.3.1.
16 Wiseman (1987) p. 331 (and see Asconius in Pisonem 2–3) made this point to show that Catullus’ father was likely to have been a governor or magistrate. His argument has been accepted by most scholars of Catullus since. Shortly before Catullus was born, Verona became a Roman colony, but acquired merely ius Latii, Latin rights, a second-rate citizenship that did not enfranchise its citizens. Eight years before Catullus was born, his people had joined much of Italy in engaging Rome in a Social War (‘War of the Allies’) to acquire Roman citizenship, aching for inclusivity as well as the tangible benefits, including the vote. Julius Caesar became anxious to give Cisalpine towns citizenship in return for their loyalty, but would only be able to do so in 49 BC.
I: In search of Catullus
1 The friendship of Julius Caesar and Catullus’ father is discussed in Suetonius Caesar 73.
2 On Brescia’s rusticity and frugality see Pliny the Younger Epistles 1.14.
3 Verona sat on an old Roman road that passed from Genoa in the west to Aquileia in the east. The region was vulnerable to attack. Twenty years before Catullus was born, a Germanic tribe, the Cimbri, had marched in its thousands through the Brenner Pass and into the nearby Veneto, plundering everything, making it home. Even after the Romans defeated them they remained, rendering the region a desiccated sea of eager colonists.
4 Pliny Natural History 3.23.
5 Herodotus (Histories 1.93–4) and Catullus were probably right in thinking that the Etruscans originated in ancient Lydia. In 2007, a genetic variant discovered in the DNA extracted from men whose families had lived in a town in Tuscany for at least three generations was found to be common only to native Turks. The closest blood relatives of these modern-day Etruscans reside in Izmir, the very area the famine-afflicted Lydians were said to have rested before entering Italy over three thousand years ago. The results of this study were revealed in a paper by Professor Alberto Piazza (University of Turin) at a conference of the European Society of Human Genetics in June 2007. The Guardian picked up the story (article by John Hooper, 18 June 2007).
6 Catullus wrote of a friend’s mother in Poem 9. If neither Catullus nor his brother nor any other sibling lived to have children, then cousins of the same generation did. The family name lived on at Rome and in Cisalpine Gaul (inscription at Brixia CIL V 4484).
7 On the possible aims of the Catilinarians, there is an interesting account in Sallust Catiline 38.
8 Under a law passed in 122 BC by Gaius Gracchus, the most famous tribune of the age, Roman citizens were entitled to a trial before any decisions were made about death sentences. The fact that much of Gracchus’ legislation had been wholly disregarded for the last half century, and that there was a loophole which meant that such rulings could be overturned in extreme circumstances could conveniently be pushed aside. The tribune, Metellus Nepos, not only vetoed Cicero from making his parting address, but also rallied for Pompey to return from the East and use his army to settle the tensions that lingered across Italy in the aftermath of Catiline’s conspiracy. Julius Caesar supported this idea. Metellus Nepos also suggested that Pompey might register as a candidate for another consulship the following year. However, Cato the Younger, a staunch optimate, blocked his request for Pompey to stand fo
r a consulship without entering Rome first. Metellus Nepos fell into such a rage that the Senate had to pass an emergency measure to deprive him of his post. Seizing his chance, Cicero delivered a vituperative speech against him for so heartlessly depriving him of the chance to speak on the last day of his consulship. Nepos fled Rome for the East. For supporting his proposals, Caesar was briefly suspended from office. Metellus Celer wrote Cicero a letter expressing his grievance at the contretemps between him and his brother, Metellus Nepos. Cicero wrote back and told him that he had even approached his sister Mucia and wife Clodia in the hope that they would persuade Metellus Nepos to check his hostility towards him, but had not prevailed. See letters Cicero ad Fam 5.1; 5.2.
II: The house on the Palatine Hill
1 Buildings obstructing augurs’ views – Cicero de officiis 3.66.
2 Plutarch Crassus 2.
3 Several historians have suggested that Metellus Celer might have offered Catullus introductions at Rome. See, for example, Burl (2010) p. 31.
4 Cicero ad Atticum 1.18.
5 Poets would continue to flock to Rome in the next generation. Ovid would come here from Sulmona, to Rome’s east, and Virgil would travel from Mantua. Horace would arrive from Apulia, in the heel of Italy, and Martial from Spain.
6 See Pliny Natural History 31.41 on salt and its applications to the intellect.
7 Cicero de Domo 37 on his own house in the same area.
8 On the early history of the Palatine Hill see Boni (1913) pp. 242–52.
9 Plutarch Romulus 20.
10 Plutarch Lucullus 33.
11 Plutarch Lucullus 39.
12 Cicero bought the house in 62 BC. The property’s trees and extravagant columns, which pre-dated Cicero’s residency, became notorious, see Valerius Maximus Facta 9.1.4; Pliny Natural History 17.1–5.
13 This description is based on typical villas in this region: nothing remains of Metellus’ property.
14 Wiseman (1985) p. 21 also looks at this temple. The temple’s remains survive today near the Theatre of Marcellus on the Campus Martius.
