CATULLUS 68 - Scuola Normale Superiore

In lines 51-56 he describes his incessant tears before he was helped out by Allius: he fell in love with Lesbia
but was driven to despair, evidently because it appeared to be impossible to pursue an affair with her. If a
pair of lovers want to have a sexual relationship in a big city, they must find a space in which they can meet
in private. Catullus and Lesbia evidently did not have such a space. Lesbia was married (cfr. line 146n.), and
they could not meet in her home. Evidently they could not meet in Catullus’ lodgings either. Like most
Roman young men, he may not have been living on his own, but with friends or relatives. 147 Nor were there
any convenient alternatives: ancient Rome had no hotels or pensions into which a pair of lovers could
withdraw for a brief tryst. Catullus was unable to pursue his love-affair; he was desperate. It was at this point
that Allius saved the day by finding him a house and an indulgent chatelaine.
The Lesbia episode raises two problems. First of all, Catullus does not name his mistress in poem 68b. Can
we be sure that she is Lesbia? I think we can. We learn that she is beautiful, she is married, she has many
lovers, and Catullus is very much in love with him. Elsewhere he describes Lesbia as beautiful, married, and
somewhat of a nymphomaniac. 148 She is also the only woman he is known to have been in love with; in fact,
he regularly stresses the uniqueness of his feelings for her. 149 It is extremely unlikely, then, that the puella in
poem 68b should not be Lesbia. 150
Though Lesbia is another man’s wife and she has a number of other lovers, Catullus expects to be happy ‘so
long as she is alive’ (line 160). This has perplexed Sarkissian, who considered it out of the question that any
human being should hold such a position, and concluded that the poem must have been written well after its
dramatic date, at a time when Catullus had fallen out of love with Lesbia, in “an attempt … to put the Lesbia
affair into perspective.” 151 He attributed the unconvincing quality of the poem to how “the poet succeeds
brilliantly in depicting Catullus’ miserable failure at self-deception.” 152 But this is another paradox: if
Catullus is depicting self-deception realistically in these lines, how can we be sure that he is not actually
deceiving himself? The problem may lie not with the poem, but rather with the nature of romantic love,
which can distort our perception of our beloved, of ourself, and of reality in general. I have witnessed loveaffairs
of all sorts, including some that were destined to fail even more manifestly than that between Catullus
147
Marcus Caelius left his father and went to live on his own in Rome (Cic. Cael. 17f.): this may have been quite
unusual. We find Catullus’ friend Veranius living with his brothers and his mother (Cat. 9.3f.).
148
Beautiful: 43.7 and 86. Married: 83 (but note 70!). Promiscuous: 11.17-20 and 58, cfr. 37.14-16 (where the puella is
not named) and 79 (on Lesbia’s kind feelings for Lesbius).
149
Note 8.5 amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla and 87.1f. Nulla potest mulier tantum se dicere amatam / uere,
quantum a me Lesbia amata mea est.
150
My countryman István Károly Horváth argues for the contrary, that Lesbia and the candida diua of poem 68b are
two different persons (Horváth 1960: 336f.). He draws his arguments from the chronology of Catullus’ life, but in fact
we have very little solid knowledge about this slippery and difficult subject.
151
Sarkissian 1983: 7.
152 Ibid. 4.
70