CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

loc.) – but here too it is not clear whether romantic myths were put side by side with the author’s personal
experiences. In any case, Catullus will certainly have read many books in which erotic myths were
recounted, from where it will only have been a small step to put his personal experience in love side by side
with the myths about the subject. What is striking about Catullus’ use of myth here is not so much where it
might come from, but rather how closely it prefigures Propertius’, and to a lesser degree Ovid’s, practice of
comparing their mistress to an assortment of heroines and goddesses.
Inserted into the myth is a related myth, that of the Trojan War. Catullus deals with it relatively briefly in
twice four lines, emphasizing the commotion that it caused, the tragic loss of lives, and (true to form) the
erotic cause of the war, Helen’s abduction by Paris. He refers to Helen as a moecha (line 103), which is an
abusive term for an adulteress – a term that could be applied to Lesbia here. Rather nonchalantly, Catullus
judges the two women by entirely different standards. 145
The myth of the Trojan War serves as a transition to the subject of the death of the poet’s brother. Catullus
has simply lifted a big part of his lament (lines 92 and 94-96) from poem 68a; he has slightly remodelled part
of the passage, but it still sits uneasily in such a happy poem. Why has he chosen to put the lament at the core
of this text? The narrative does not call for it in any way – perhaps he just decided to pay his brother a
tribute. One should compare his lament for his brother in the middle of poem 65, and especially the words
numquam ego te, uita frater amabilior, / aspiciam posthac? at certe semper amabo, / semper maesta tua
carmina morte canam (65.10-12). This may have been one of the occasions on which he did so.
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We have skipped the first two themes, Allius and Lesbia, as their relevance to the poem is obvious. But there
are a number of other reasons for which they call for comment. Here I will assume that Catullus is talking
about his own life rather than telling fiction in the first person singular; but the following paragraphs also
apply, mutatis mutandis, if one prefers to give his poetry a non-autobiographical reading.
Allius helped Catullus to meet Lesbia by providing them with a house in which they could meet. The house
was not his own, but it belonged to or was run by a lady or domina who remains anonymous in the poem; 146
and Allius has simply convinced her to host the lovers during their rendez-vous. Why does Catullus make so
much out of this?
145
Later, after splitting up with Lesbia, he calls her paramours moechi (11.17, 37.16), but he never applies the term
moecha to her.
146
The domina is mentioned in lines 68 and 156. It is not possible to identify her, as is sometimes done, with Lesbia:
see ad loc. Nor is she Allius’ beloved, who is mentioned separately in line 155.
69