CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

e nudging his friend gently towards such a position 57 – and in fact, in lines 5f. he treats it as an inevitable
fact, and as a misfortune to be set right, that the person addressed there has no partner, and apologizes
profusely that he is unable to provide a remedy (see esp. lines 11-14, 31f. and 37-40). In this situation it
would be highly tactless to write to his friend ‘I hope you and your beloved are well’ – highly tactless and
very much unlike Catullus, who always treats his friends with thoughtfulness and tact: compare carmen 96 to
the bereaved C. Licinius Calvus, as well as poems 13, 14, 28 and 47. It is not plausible that he could have
written to a friend in this way.
Coppel interprets lines 1-8 in an entirely different way, as reflecting the original letter sent to Catullus by his
friend, who had expressed in rather exuberant terms of a misplaced eroticism his deadly boredom in the
absence of Catullus and his desire for the company of the poet. Therefore, he concludes, those lines have no
bearing on the question whether the friend has a partner or not. 58 But the language of lines 1-8 would be
very, very exuberant for such an interpretation: the friend is referred to as being close to death (line 4) and as
having a pressing lack of sex (lines 5f.). Coppel compares the use of erotic language in carmen 50 to
describe the poet’s longing for the company of his friend Calvus, but that is a different case: poem 50 does
not contain any direct reference to sex (multum lusimus in meis tabellis in line 2 refers not to erotic games,
for which one could hardly find a less suitable bedding than writing-tablets, but to literary games), but
Catullus uses jestingly the language of erotic desire to describe his longing for his absent friend: he is
incensus and miser, food does him no good and sleep does not come to him, so that he tells Calvus of his
dolor and turns to him with preces, his entreaties – and Calvus better give in to them, or else he will incur the
vengeance of the goddess Nemesis. It is exactly the lack of sexual undertones in Catullus’ friendship with
Calvus that makes such a joke possible. Meanwhile, the description of the addressee in lines 5f. of the
present poem may be incomplete, but it does offer enough details to establish a general picture: he is lying
alone in his bed, without a partner, and cannot sleep, the reason of which is left unspecified but may well be
connected to his love-life. It is hard to assume with Coppel that in fact this man does have an active love-life,
and that the images of him lying abandoned in his bed reflect his desire for the marvellous company of his
absent friend Catullus.
So the addressee of lines 1-40 is deeply troubled by being single; the addressee of lines 41-160, meanwhile,
turns out to have a uita, a beloved – indeed, his love-life seems so unproblematic as to require no comment
apart from the farewell greeting addressed to him and his beloved at line 155. This is a major contradiction,
and none of the attempts by unitarians to settle it have been satisfactory.
57
His elaborate treatment of Laodamia’s marriage, and of his own happiness with Lesbia, is irrelevant from this point of
view: there is no indication in the text, not even a highly implicit one, that these could be models for his friend to
follow.
58
Coppel 1973: 15-33: the interpretation; ibid. 24 & 31: no bearing on whether the friend is single or not.
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