CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

These thematic blocks cover five subjects: Allius, Lesbia, Laodamia, the Trojan War, and the death of
Catullus’ brother. It is evident why Catullus writes about Allius, whom he wants to praise, and about Lesbia,
whom Allius helped him to meet. But what is the role of the other three subjects within the poem?
As Lesbia enters the house in which she is to meet Catullus, she is compared to Laodamia entering the house
of her bridegroom Protesilaus (lines 70-76). The poet simply states that the two women entered in the same
way, but he does not state where exactly there lay the point of resemblance. In describing Lesbia’s entrée he
emphasizes her seductive beauty (lines 70-72); in describing that of Laodamia he stresses her passionate love
for her husband (line 73). The hinge between the two subjects in the second part of the poem is equally
ambiguous: Lesbia is simply called ‘worthy of yielding to her (i.e. to Laodamia) either in nothing or in little’
(line 131). Are the two women competing in beauty or in passion? Laodamia has been characterized (from
line 73 onwards) in the first place as passionate; she is called beautiful only in passing (line 105). Lesbia is
described once again as very attractive (133f.). She also turns out to be an adulteress with many lovers (lines
136-148), which would seem to be incompatible with monogamous passion of the type displayed by
Laodamia. Catullus may not actually have drawn this inference, but in any case he does not call Lesbia
passionate anywhere in this poem. Could Laodamia be not only a parallel for Lesbia on account of her
beauty, but also an exemplar of passion whom Catullus wishes (consciously or not, and in any case rather
unrealistically) that Lesbia should imitate?
The very fact of a comparison between Laodamia and Lesbia may appear surprising: Lesbia is Catullus’
mistress, a flesh-and-blood woman, even if an exceptionally alluring one, while Laodamia is a lady from the
fabulous world of myth. But Catullus does not appear to have had a sophisticated historical consciousness,
and he may not have felt that there was a difference in sort between his contemporaries on one hand and the
mythical characters who are said to have consorted with gods on the other. In fact, his pessimistic coda to
poem 64 (lines 384-408) implies that he saw his contemporaries as direct descendants of the heroes, even
though the letter were morally superior – and more glamorous. It elevates Lesbia that she is compared to
Laodamia, but it does not make her less human.
It had not been unusual in Greek literature to tell a myth within a poem or to allude to one, especially in a
poem concerned with praising somebody: one should think of Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ epinicians, and of
Simonides’ Plataea elegy. It may be especially relevant here that Antimachus of Colophon’s Lyde, a long
poem in elegiac distichs written in memory of his dead mistress, contained a number of mythological
episodes – but Catullus may not have considered Antimachus an example to follow, since at 95.10 he
dismisses him as turgid. In the Hellenistic period an attention to the erotic aspect of mythology becomes
widespread – but I do not know of any poems from this age in which real-life love affairs are compared to
mythological ones. Erotic myths were also prominent in Laevius Melissus’ Erotopaegnia, a collection that
contained a poem or section entitled Protesilaodamia, which is echoed by Catullus in line 46 here (see ad
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