CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

garments, and the colours croceus and luteus are used together by Fronto at Epist. p. 22.4-6 Naber = 19.3-5
van den Hout 2 uestem quoque lanarum mollitia delicatam esse quam colore muliebri, filo tenui aut serico;
purpuream ipsam, non luteam nec crocatam (on what an orator should wear; Naber conjectured crocotam);
hence Mantero (1979 passim, esp. 182f.) infers that the colour croceus had nuptial associations, and Clarke
(2003: 72f.) infers from Cupid’s orange tunica that Catullus wants to marry Lesbia.
In the following lines (135-148) Catullus states explicitly that he is satisfied with being one of Lesbia’s
paramours, so he is not planning consciously to marry her – but he could long for it unconsciously. More
importantly, however, the use of yellow garments (including the crocota, i.e. the crocota uestis) does not
appear to have been restricted to weddings: it could be associated with a mythical princess (Scylla in tenui
fuerat succincta crocota at Ciris 252), actors (Apul. Apol. 13 histrionis crocota), effeminate men and/or
Orientals and/or homosexuals and/or eunuchs (a taunt to the Trojans at Verg. Aen. 9.614 uobis picta croco et
fulgenti murice uestis, Apul. Met. 11.8 simiam pilleo textili crocotisque Phrygiis catamiti pastoris specie,
and note the crocota of the homosexual eunuch worshippers of the Syrian Goddess at Apul. Met. 8.27 as well
as the galbina worn by effeminate homosexuals at Juv. 2.97) and also with adulterers (Juv. 6.362 O22
discinctus croceis et reticulatus adulter). A jibe of Cicero’s involving the crocota is of particular interest
here because of its date (the speech from which it comes was delivered in 56 B.C., while Catullus’ datable
poems come from the years 56-54 B.C.): P. Clodius a crocota, a mitra, a muliebribus soleis purpureisque
fasceolis, a strophio, a psalterio, a flagitio, a stupro est factus repente popularis (Cic. Har. 44). The jibe is
directed at P. Clodius Pulcher, who was reputed to have profaned the mysteries of the Bona Dea disguised as
a woman. Here Cicero claims that Clodius became popular when he started to dress like a woman and to act
like one, adopting a disreputable lifestyle in line with the tastes of the rabble. Cicero puts the crocota into the
same category as the mitra, which was an oriental head-dress, and the psalterium, which was a sort of harp
associated once again with homosexuals and actors, witness Scipio Minor orat. 20: cum cinaedulis et
sambuca psalterioque eunt in ludum histrionum … uirgines puerique ingenui. It should not cause surprise
that the same taste in dress is attributed to women (not to Roman matrons, of course, but to women of a more
dubious sort), to actors, to passive homosexuals and to adulterers. A Scipio or a Cicero could locate all these
groups within the same depraved, corrupt sub-culture, and Cicero’s jibe that Clodius found popular favour by
posing as an effeminate catamite implies that in some parts of Roman society such behaviour was much
appreciated. Saffron-coloured dress was worn by ordinary Roman women only during weddings, if at all
(tradition surely required the less extravagant flammeum luteum, a veil dyed with weld, as Pliny says), but in
circles of a more hedonistic sort which conservative Romans found thoroughly disreputable it may have
constituted a cherished luxury, the exotic accessory of a life of pleasure.
Scipio, Cicero and Juvenal found this life-style immoral; Catullus, who frequented prostitutes (witness
poems 32, 41 and 110), was erotically interested in Juventius Talna, the scion of a noble family (thus poems
48, 81 and 99), had a passionate, adulterous love-affair with a married woman, whose promiscuity he
accepted into the bargain (lines 135-148 below) and wrote about all of this without the least touch of
embarrassment, evidently had different standards.
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