Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T07:35:54.432Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Friendship, politics, and literature in Catullus: poems 1, 65 and 66, 116

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

W. Jeffrey Tatum
W. Jeffrey Tatum
Affiliation:
The Florida State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

To the extent that one subscribes to the proposition, by now a virtual principle of criticism (at least in some circles), that literary texts constitute sites for the negotiation, often vigorous, of power relations within a society, the reader of Catullus can hardly avoid some consideration of the poet's attitude toward contemporary political matters. It is a subject on which two principal lines of thought can be traced. Mommsen argued that Catullus responded to the enormities that followed the reinvigoration of the First Triumvirate at the conference of Luca in 56 by occupying a thoroughly optimate position. Wilamowitz, on the other hand, insisted that Catullus' lyrics reflect only moments of the author's individual experience, amongst which expressions of personal distaste for certain public figures naturally appear but nothing which can appropriately be taken as indications of a political stance. The approach of Wilamowitz has proved more influential, followed in spirit if not in specifics by numerous commentators. To the degree that Catullus has been assimilated to the Augustan elegists, whose poems have been deemed by a scholar of the stature of Veyne to be anti-political in nature, it has been all the easier to reject the idea that Catullus adopts a political position, an assessment strongly maintained in a recent study by Paul Allen Miller, for whom the rejection of all political engagement is the sine qua non of true lyric poetry. Mommsen's optimate Catullus has lately found his champion, however, in a careful article by H. P. Syndikus. Although Miller and Syndikus, like Wilamowitz and Mommsen, draw diametrically opposed conclusions concerning politics in Catullus' poetry, they are agreed nevertheless that politics can be regarded as a relatively straightforward term: it refers to statecraft, matters of government, and party strife. Other readers, however, have been more self-conscious in their theoretical concerns, a salutary consequence of which has been a shift by some to a less narrow conception of the field of reference appropriate to discussions of ‘the political’ in Latin literature.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , December 1997 , pp. 482 - 500
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The idea is, of course, a tenet of New Historicism (though it can hardly be said to be completely foreign to all ‘old’ historicism);cf.Veeser, H. A. (ed.), The New Historicism (London, 1989), where extensive bibliography can conveniently be found.Google Scholar

2 Mommsen, T., Römische Geschichte, vol. 3 (Berlin,9 1904), pp. 332–334.Google Scholar

3 von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, U., Hellenistische Dichtung, vol. 2 (Berlin, 1924), pp. 305–310.Google Scholar

4 Kroll, W., C. Valerius Catullus, (Stuttgart,3 1959), e.g. p. 53;Google ScholarFordyce, C. J., Catullus: A Commentary (Oxford, 1961), e.g. p. 160;Google ScholarKnoche, U., Gymnasium 65 (1958), 146–158;Google ScholarWilliams, G., Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (Oxford, 1968), p. 557;Google ScholarDeroux, C., Latomus 29 (1970), 608–631;Google ScholarMiller, P. A., Lyric Texts and Lyric Consciousness: The Birth of a Genre from Archaic Greece to Augustan Rome (London and New York, 1994), esp. pp. 120–140. Augustan elegists anti-political:Google ScholarVeyne, P., Roman Erotic Elegy: Love, Poetry, and the West, trans. D. Pellauer (Chicago, 1988), pp. 101–115.Google Scholar

5 ‘Catull und die Politik’, Gymnasium 93 (1986), 34–47.Google Scholar

6 Skinner, M., Helios 20 (1993), 117;Google Scholarcf. alsoSkinner, SyllClass 3 (1991), Iff.; Helios 16 (1989), 7ff. A more comprehensive consideration of ‘the political’ in Latin poetry can be found inGoogle ScholarKennedy, D. F., The Arts of Love: Five Studies in the Discourse of Roman Love Elegy (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 34–39. Mere theoretical awareness will not suffice to broaden one's concept of politics, however, as a reading either of Miller, Lyric Texts, or C. L. Platter, CPh 90 (1995), 211–224 reveals.Google Scholar

7 Earl, D. C., The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome (Ithaca, 1967), p. 21Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 16.

9 Meier, C., Res Publica Amissa (Wiesbaden, 1966), pp. 162–200;Google ScholarEarl, The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome, pp. 11–43;Google ScholarBrunt, , Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays (Oxford, 1988), pp. 351–502.Google Scholar

10 Taylor, L. R., Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1948), pp. 1–24; Meier, Res Publica Amissa, pp. xxxii–xliii, 163–190.Google Scholar

11 Balsdon, Historia 15 (1966), 65ff.;Google ScholarTatum, CPh 85 (1990), 204ff.Google Scholar

12 Cic. Att. 1.14.1–5; cf. Att. 1.18.2Google Scholar

13 Catullus and Caesar: Suet. Iul. 73; Bibulus' edicts: Cic. Att. 2.19.2, 2.20.4, 2.21.3–5; Suet. Iul. 9.2,49.2; Plut. Pomp. 48.4.Google Scholar

14 Cat. 29 and 57; cf. Suet. Iul. 73; Plin. N.H. 36.48.Google Scholar

15 Mamurra: Plin. N.H. 36.48; Hor. Sat. 1.7.37; Cic. Att. 7.1.6.Google Scholar

16 See R. K. Gibson, PCPhSAX (1995), 62ff.Google Scholar

17 It is necessary for me to make clear at this point that I now incline to the view (rejected at TAPhA 118 [1988], 179) that the present arrangement of poems in the Catullan collection reflects the poet's own design;cf. Most, G. W., Philologus 125 (1981), 109ff. and literature cited there. The matter can hardly be regarded as settled, however, nor is this premise vital for every aspect of what follows. It is, however, important to my argument that Poem 1 be regarded as programmatic to the collection as a whole (or at least to poems outside the polymetra). On the likely structural significance of Poems 65 and 116, see J. King, CW81 (1987/88), 383ff. andCrossRefGoogle ScholarMacleod, C., Collected Essays (Oxford, 1983), pp. 181ff.Google Scholar

18 Wiseman, T. P., Clio's Cosmetics (Leicester, 1979), pp. 167ff., esp. p. 171, with further bibliography.Google ScholarZetzel, J. E. G., ‘The Poetics of Patronage in the Late First Century B.C.’, in Gold, B. K. (ed.), Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome (Austin, 1982), pp. 100f., by contrast, detects in Poem 1 a rejection of Nepos' literary values (wrongly, in my view).Google ScholarJanan, M., When the Lamp is Shattered- Desire and Narrative in Catullus (Carbondale, 1994), pp. 39f. posits without justification a gap between Nepos' literary values and their execution in his Chronica as an issue in the proper understanding of Poem 1. A stronger (but still, to my mind, unconvincing) case for an ironic reading of Poem 1 is made by B. J. Gibson, CQ 45 (1995), 569ff. The best discussion of Nepos' situation in the intellectual and literary world of the first century remains Wiseman, Clio's Cosmetics, pp. 154–66;Google Scholarsee alsoMillar, F., G&R 35 (1988), 40–55 andGoogle ScholarDionisotti, A. C., JRS 78 (1988), 35–49.Google ScholarA different estimation of Nepos can be found in Horsfall, N., Cornelius Nepos: A Selection, including the Lives of Cato and Atticus (Oxford, 1989), pp. xv–xxi.Google Scholar

19 Wiseman, T. P., Roman Studies: Literary and Historical (Liverpool, 1987), pp. 248ffGoogle Scholar

20 On the significance of the connection, see Wiseman, Clio's Cosmetics, p. 331.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., pp. 335ff

22 Ibid., pp. 343ff.

23 Gentili, B., Poetry and its Public in Ancient Greece from Homer to the Fifth Century, trans. A. T. Cole (Baltimore, 1988), p. 107.Google Scholar

24 Williams, G., Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (Oxford, 1968), p. 41;Google ScholarWiseman, Clio's Cosmetics, pp. 172–174;Google ScholarMayer, R., LCM 7 (1982), 73–74.Google Scholar

25 Goold, G. P., ‘O Patrona Virgo’, in Evans, J. A. S. (ed.), Polis and Imperium: Studies in Honour of Edward Togo Salmon (Toronto, 1974), pp. 253–264;Google ScholarSkutsch, O., LCM 1 (1982), 90;Google ScholarRadke, A. E., Hermes 123 (1995), 253Google Scholar

26 Cic. Fam. 6.7.4 (hardly ‘the most groveling and desperate among Cicero's correspondents’, as maintained byWhite, P., Promised Verse: Poets in the Society of Augustan Rome [Cambridge, MA, 1993], p. 282); cf. Fam. 6.5.4,6.6.2, 6.9.1CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Cic. Fam. 7.29.2; cf. Fam. 18.17.1; his urbanitas: Cic. Att. 7.2.3.Google Scholar

28 Pubiilius Syrus 61 (Loeb edition): ‘beneficium accipere libertatem est vendere’Google Scholar

29 For other examples from the late republic of what might be called the polite use of patronus,see Sailer, R., ‘Patronage and Friendship in Early Imperial Rome: Drawing the Distinction’, in Wallace-Hadrill, A. (ed.), Patronage in Ancient Society (London, 1989), pp. 49–62 at p. 53; the courteous use of patronus amongst equals can be found in imperial inscriptions, cf. pp. 54f.Google Scholar

30 Sailer, R., Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge, 1982), 11ff. and ‘Patronage and Friendship’, 57ff.; White, Promised Verse, p. 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Konstan, D., CPh 90 (1995), 328–322.Google Scholar

32 ILS 7413; 8219. Cf. Bradley, K. R., Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control (Oxford, 1987), p. 78Google Scholar

33 Brunt, Fall of the Roman Republic, p. 394. The language of friendship used in poetry to ‘cover over’ discrepancies in status: recent discussions include Konstan, CPh 90 (1995), 340f.; White, Promised Verse, p. 14Google Scholar

34 Syme, R., The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939), p. 12. Cf. e.g. Taylor, Party Politics, pp. 7flf.Google ScholarSpielvogel, J., Amicitia und res publica (Stuttgart, 1993) perpetuates this line of thought.Google Scholar

35 Brunt, P., PCPhS 191 (1965), 1–20, revised in The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays (Oxford, 1988), pp. 351–381. See also White, Promised Verse, pp. 13fF.;Google ScholarPowell, J., ‘Friendship and its Problems in Greek and Roman Thought’, in D. Innes, Hine, H. and Pelling, C. (edd.), Ethics and Rhetoric: Classical Essays for Donald Russell on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday (Oxford, 1995), pp. 31–45;Google ScholarKonstan, CPh 90 (1995).Google Scholar

36 See Mitchell, T. N., Cicero: The Senior Statesman (New Haven, 1991), pp. 220–222 for the circumstances.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Cf. the explicit appeal to the demands of dignitas by Catiline (Sail. Cat. 35.3) or Caesar (B. C. 1.7.7) or Cicero's frank explanation to Atticus of his defence in the senate of equestrian interests (/4M. 2.1.8).Google Scholar

38 Powell, ‘Friendship and its Problems’, 43–44.Google Scholar

39 This is obviously not to deny the personal nature of Roman political associations; see the discussion above.Google Scholar

40 Reitzenstein, R., Sitzunber der Heidelb Ak der Wiss. 12 (1912), 9–36;Google ScholarRoss, D. O., Style and Tradition in Catullus (Cambridge, MA, 1969), pp. 80–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Lyne, R. O. A. M., The Latin Love Poets(Oxford, 1980), pp. 24ff;Google ScholarTatum, PLLS 7 (1993), 36f. See alsoGoogle ScholarNewman, J. K., Roman Catullus and the Modification of the Alexandrian Sensibility (Hildesheim, 1990), pp. 318ff.;Google ScholarGibson, PCPhS 41 (1995), 61ffGoogle Scholar

42 See, for example, Skinner, M. B., Helios 20 (1993), 118f.; Miller, Lyric Texts, pp. 128ff.; Janan, When the Lamp is Shattered, pp. 80, 92ff. (though it must be observed that, in Janan's view, even Catullus' so-called political vocabulary ‘never intrinsically meant anything at all’ [p. 80]); Platter, CPA90(1995),216f.Google Scholar

43 White, Promised Verse, pp. 72ff.Google Scholar

44 Cf. 68A. 9–10, 31–32, 39–40. Neither the philological problems attending the name of this poem's recipient nor the question of 68A's relationship with 68B need detain us here: cf. (with further references)Syndikus, H. P., Catull: Eine Interpretation, vol. 2 (Darmstadt, 1990), pp. 239ffGoogle Scholar

45 The final simile has been felt to be ‘Hellenistic’ (and therefore preparatory for Poem 66), a further signal of the poem's ‘artificiality’; cf. (recently)Hutchinson, G. O., Hellenistic Poetry (Oxford, 1989), pp. 299ff.; Syndikus, Catull, pp. 197fGoogle Scholar

46 Hortensius Hortalus (cos. 69): F. Vonder Mühll, RE 8, 2.2470ff. Whether Hortensius was actually nobilis remains uncertain;cf. Badian, E., Chiron 20 (1990), 393. The other, though less likely, possibility is the orator's son: so Syme, Roman Revolution, p. 63 (without argument);Google ScholarShackleton Bailey, D. R., Onomasticon to Cicero's Speeches (Norman, 1988), pp. 55f; Broughton, MRR 3.103; on the son, see F. Münzer, RE 8, 2.2468f. Despite Shackleton Bailey's asseverations, it is hardly the ‘common sense’ conclusion. The catalogue of poets and poetasters in Ov. Trist. 2.441 f. is not all that relevant; nevertheless, the Hortensius there mentioned is probably the orator (‘nee minus Hortensi, nee sunt minus improba Servi/ carmina. quis dubitet nomina tanta sequfV). Hortensius and Sulpicius Servius are also linked as poets by Pliny (Ep. 5.3.5), where, paceGoogle ScholarWiseman, Cinna the Poet and other Roman Essays (Leicester, 1974), p. 190, there is no reason to think that Pliny is referring to the younger Hortensius but yet the older Sulpicius (Hortensius the poet also makes an appearance at Gell. 19.9). However, it is as a reader and not a fellow poet that Hortalus is configured here; consequently, these lists are not really germane to Catullus' selection of an addressee. More to the point is the orator's well-known fondness for Greek culture (charmingly illustrated by Gell. 1.5.2–3) and the fact that, apart from the poem sub iudice, the younger Hortensius is nowhere referred to as Hortalus (admittedly, the father is called Hortalus by Cicero only twice; cf. Shackleton Bailey, p. 55). Certainty eludes, but probability favours the consul of 69. In any case, the social dynamics which are the focus of our critical concern here obtain whichever Hortensius it is whom our poet addresses.Google Scholar

47 White, Promised Verse, p. 20.Google Scholar

48 Plin. Ep. 6.15. Priscus was an eminent jurist; cf. Sherwin-White, A. N., The Letters of Pliny (Oxford, 1966), p. 370.Google Scholar

49 White, Promised Verse, p. 14. A cynical reading of Horace's self-representation is offered in Lyne, R. O. A. M., Horace: Behind the Public Poetry (New Haven, 1995), pp. 14ff. On the conflict between disinterested and self-interested gift-giving in Rome,Google Scholarsee Dixon, S., EMC 37 (1993), 451–464.Google Scholar

50 Solodow, J. P, CPh 82 (1987), 141ff.Google Scholar

51 Sullivan, J. P., Martial: The Unexpected Classic (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 12ff., 82f. provides a recent treatment of the apophoreton. On the epigrammatic qualities of Poem 65,CrossRefGoogle Scholarsee King, J., CW 81 (1987/1988), 384f.Google Scholar

52 Newman, Roman Catullus, p. 226.Google Scholar

53 The nature and effect of the particular changes in Callimachus' poem introduced by Catullus are not my particular concern here, though they remain important. Cf. Syndikus, Catull, pp. 202f.; Hutchinson, Hellenistic Poetry, pp. 232f.; A. S. Hollis, ZPE9X (1992), 21–8.Google Scholar

54 For what follows,see Koenen, L., ‘The Ptolemaic King as a Religious Figure’, in A. W. Bulloch et al. (edd.), Images and Ideology: Self-definition in the Hellenistic World (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993), pp. 25–115, but esp. pp. 89ff. (with abundant references).Google Scholar

55 Ibid., pp. 112f.

56 On this see Ibid., p. 89.Cameron, A., Callimachus and his Critics (Princeton, 1995), pp. 3–23, convincingly refutes the belief, persistent in some quarters, that Callimachus was a jumped-up school teacher (and therefore Ptolemy's toady). However, Cameron's insistence that Callimachus' status was that of ‘a friend rather than a client’ (p. 23) simply raises in another context the issue under investigation here. Nor need one accept without major qualification Cameron's argument that Hellenistic kings ‘were remarkably tolerant of frankness’ (p. 16), an assertion the best evidence for which (though still uneven) consists of anecdotes illustrating the occasional bonhomie of the Antigonids. That poets could and did sometimes engage in humanizing banter to the amusement of their divine monarchs hardly seems remarkable. Romans, in any case, were unlikely to imagine the Egyptian court as a centre for anything like open deliberation, poetical or otherwise;Google Scholarcf. Sonnabend, H., Fremdenbild und Politik: Vorstellungen der Römer von Ägypten und dem Panherreich in der späten Republik undfruhen Kaiserzeit (Frankfurt, 1986). On the complex matter of the establishment and development of the Antigonid (and Hellenistic regal) court,Google Scholarsee Weber, G., Historia 44 (1995), 283–316 (with further bibliography).Google Scholar

57 Parsons, P. J., ZPE 25 (1977), 1–50;Google Scholarsee most recently Cameron, Callimachus, pp. 105ff.Google Scholar

58 Wiseman, Clio's Cosmetics, p. 155.Google Scholar

59 Treggiari, S. M., EMC 21 (1977), 24ff.;Google ScholarLauresen, S., ‘Greek Intellectuals in Rome–Some Examples’, in Bilde, P. G., Nielsen, I., AND Nielsen, M. (edd.), Aspects of Hellenism in Italy: Towards a Cultural Unity? Acta Hyperborea 5 (1993), pp. 191–212.Google Scholar

60 Wiseman, T. P, ‘Pete nobiles amicos: Poets and Patrons in Late Republican Rome’, in Gold, B. K. (ed.), Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome (Austin, 1982), pp. 31 ff.Google Scholar

61 Ibid., p. 34.

62 As Lyne, Horace, p. 12, rightly points out, White's treatment of the social status of Latin poets (White, Promised Verse, pp. 5ff., 211ff.) is skewed by its restriction to poets whose work survives.Google Scholar

63 Festus, pp. 446–8 (Lindsay). The collegium poetarum:Google ScholarCrowther, N. B., Latomus 32 (1973), 575–580;Google ScholarHorsfall, N., BICS 23 (1976), 79–95;Google ScholarPanciera, S., BCAR 91 (1986), 35–44, esp. 39ffGoogle Scholar

64 Val. Max. 3.7.11. The proper sense of numquam in this passage: Badian, E., ‘Ennius and his Friends’, in Skutsch, O. (ed.), Ennius. Hardt Entretiens 17 (Geneva, 1972), pp. 149–199 at p. 190. Accius (who derived from a freedman father):Google ScholarConte, G. B., Latin Literature: A History (Baltimore, 1994), pp. 105ff. Strabo's tragedies: E. Diehl, RE 10, 1.431.Google Scholar

65 Purcell, N., PBSR 51 (1983), 129ff.;Google ScholarBadian, E., Klio 71 (1989), 582ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66 Cic. Frat. 2.5.3. Cf. C. Nicolet, L'Ordre équestre a I'époque republicaine (312–43 av. J.-C), vol. 2 (Paris, 1974), pp. 891f.Google Scholar

67 Horace's status: Suet. Vita Hor.; cf. D. Armstrong, TAPhA 116 (1986), 255ff. Opportunistic poets: Hor. Sat. 1.9; pesky patrons: Epist. 1.7.Google Scholar

68 SeeGoogle ScholarPanciera, BCAR 91(1986), 35–34.Google Scholar

69 Gow, A. S. F. and Page, D. L., The Greek Anthology: Garland of Philip, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1968), p. 212.Google Scholar

This does not justify the conclusion that from the Roman perspective ‘he must have been recognized more or less as par inter primos’ (Ibid.). Sullivan, Martial, p. 85, more accurately describes him as ‘a court poet who might well be taken as a model’ by the aspiring Martial

70 Thomas, R. F., AJPh 103 (1982), 144ff.Google Scholar

71 Vitr. 6. Praef. 4ff.;cf.Wallace-Hadrill, A., Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton, 1994), p. 10.Google Scholar

72 E.g. Hor. Carm. 1.1.2; Ovid Pont. 1.6.13f; Laus Pisonis 244E; Juv. 7.22f. Cf. discussion in White, Promised Verse, pp. 17f.Google Scholar

73 It is unnecessary to dilate on the theoretical prepossessions of the expression: cf. Iser, W., The Act of Reading (Baltimore, 1978), pp. 165ff.Google Scholar

74 One may contrast the more explicit style in which Horace delineates the good and the bad potens amicus in Epist. 1.7; cf. Lyne, Horace, pp. 150ff.Google Scholar

75 The significance of the domus to one's social identity: Wallace-Hadrill, A., PBSR 56 (1988), 43ff.Google Scholar

76 AJPh 112 (1991), 247–50.Google Scholar

77 MRR 2. 620.

78 D'Arms, J. H., Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, MA, 1981), pp. 55ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

79 F. Münzer, REZA. 1885.Google Scholar

80 Cic. An. 7.17.2; Fam. 7.32.1.Google Scholar

81 Further illustrated in the case of Catullus by Poem 10 (especially) and also by Poem 47.

82 Overestimation of influence: Brunt, Fall of the Roman Republic, pp. 180ff. Ciceronian consideration: e.g. Att. 2.1.8.

83 For the controversies, ancient and modern, see Wiseman, Roman Studies, pp. 57ff.; Brunt, Fall of the Roman Republic, pp. 144ff

84 Astin, A. E., Historia 34 (1985), 175–190.Google Scholar

85 Lex Aurelia: MRR 2.126. Caesar:Google Scholarsee Henderson, M. I., JRS 53 (1963), 61–72.Google Scholar

86 And subject to rhetorical exploitation, cf. Syme, Roman Revolution, pp. 150f.Google Scholar

87 See D'Arms, Commerce and Social Standing, pp. 20–71.Google Scholar

88 Cic. Alt. 1.17.9; Plane. 34–5; Schol. Bob. 157–8.Google Scholar

89 Cf. Hinard, F., Les proscriptions de la Rome republicaine (Paris and Rome, 1985), pp. 116ff.Google Scholar

90 Brunt, Fall of the Roman Republic, p. 9.Google Scholar

91 Tatum, CPh 85 (1990), 40f.Google Scholar

92 During the first century, domi nobiles did not represent the principal constituency of popularis politicians: cf. Syme, Roman Revolution, p. 285; C. Meier, RE Suppl. 10.580ffGoogle Scholar

93 For example Cic. Alt. 1.16.10; Sull. 21, 25; Dom. 75, 94; Sest. 109; Plut. Cic. 23.3; [Sail.] In Cic. 5.Google Scholar

94 Latomus 54 (1995), 62–78.Google Scholar

95 Sources cited and discussion in Stewart, Ibid., 74f. andFrier, B. W., The Rise of the Roman Jurists (Princeton, 1985), pp. 52ff.Google Scholar

96 Asc. 59C; Dio 36.40.1–2; cf. Frier, Rise of the Roman Jurists, p. 75.Google Scholar

97 Frier, Rise of the Roman Jurists, p. 73.Google Scholar

98 Ibid., pp. 261f

99 Ibid., pp. 256–65.

100 There is no reason to take seriously the proposal of R. Rieks, Poetica 18 (1986), 249ff., that throughout these poems Gellius is a corruption of Caelius.Google Scholar

101 King, CW 81 (1987/88), 383ff.; Syndikus, Catull: eine Interpretation, vol. 3 (Darmstadt, 1987), pp.41f.Google Scholar

102 Macleod, Collected Essays, pp. 18Iff. (the expression ‘inverted dedication’ occurs on p. 185).Google Scholar

103 A different approach is taken by P. Y Forsyth, C/68 (1972/73), 175ff.Google Scholar

104 Cf. Prop. 2. 8. 15f. On the text of Poem 116, see Syndikus, Catull, vol. 3, pp. 142f.Google Scholar

105 It is of course possible to avoid the idea of a sequence altogether: one may simply regard the Gellius poems as a demonstration of a range of possible iambic attacks;Google Scholarcf. Syndikus, Catull, vol. 3, p. 147.Google Scholar

106 Macleod, Collected Essays, p. 185Google Scholar

107 Epstein, D. F., Personal Enmity in Roman Politics 218–243 B.C. (London and New York, 1987), pp. 37f.Google Scholar

108 Wiseman, Cinna the Poet, pp. 119ff;Google Scholarcf. Syndikus, Catull, vol. 3, p. 16Google Scholar

109 Wiseman, Cinna the Poet, pp. 125f.Google Scholar

110 Tatum, PLLS 7 (1993), pp. 31ffGoogle Scholar

111 Macleod, Collected Essays, p. 186Google Scholar

112 Enn. Ann. 1.95 (Skutsch). That the death of Remus constituted ‘an embarrassment for the patriotic’ susceptible of various responses and interpretations is a theme of Wiseman, T. P., Remus: A Roman Myth (Cambridge, 1995).Google Scholar

113 Syme, Roman Revolution, p. 8.Google Scholar

114 Tension existed between Romans and Italians even down to Actium: Ibid., pp. 286ff

115 An earlier version of this paper was read to the Leeds Latin Seminar; I am grateful to the audience on that occasion and especially to Roy Gibson for patience and advice. Thanks are also due to Hans-Friedrich Mueller and to S. J. HeyworthGoogle Scholar