Latin | Poetry | Roman Republic
September, 2019The ecstatic cult of Cybele or Cybebe, the Great Mother, was originally based in Phrygia (northern Turkey) and particularly associated with two mountains, Ida and Dindymus. In 204 BC, during the Second Punic War, it was brought to Rome, where it flourished despite legal restrictions. The priests, known as Gallae--who in Catullus’ time were still foreigners--frequently castrated themselves out of devotion to the goddess.
There are various versions of the myth of Attis and Cybele. In this one, Attis is a young Athenian of good family, who falls victim to the cult of Cybele. With a band of like-minded companions, he takes a ship to Phrygia, and, upon landing, castrates himself. We may assume that his companions do likewise. They then set out for the goddess’s shrine on Mount Ida. Upon arrival, exhausted, they fall asleep. The next morning Attis wakes up alone--his companions seem mysteriously to have vanished but this reinforces the dream-like effect--and bitterly regrets his rash action. It is too late.
The original uses a meter called Galliambic, which was associated with the worship of Cybele. I have used terza rima (and at one point rhyming triplets) as I find its rapid movement from stanza to stanza particularly suitable for narrative verse. I break away from it in three places: lines 16-45, where I use short irregularly rhymed lines for Attis’s ecstatic exhortation to his companions; lines 73-103, where I render Attis’s long self-recriminatory soliloquy in rhyming couplets (heroic or not!); and, finally, I revert to short, irregularly rhyming lines in the coda (129-137), a prayer to the goddess from Catullus himself to turn her attentions elsewhere.
In this poem Catullus explores the ancient fascination with, and distrust of, ecstatic cults. Like Euripides’ The Bacchae, it strikes a very modern chord.
Also very modern is the concern with gender identity. It is interesting that Catullus, many of whose poems are expressions of erotic love, has chosen a protagonist who has deliberately castrated himself as an expression of his hatred of Venus. Does this somehow express his own desperate desire to be without the sexual urge that has brought him so much trouble? Or is it that his romantic obsession has--according to traditional Roman thinking--unmanned him, a victim of love in a macho society? And, paradoxically, in this act of sexual renunciation there is a frenzied eroticism, the ultimate masochism.
Even deeper is an almost existentialist panic over the loss of his own identity as a person. If he has lost his identity as a man, then who or what is he? Notice the repetition of "I" in the soliloquy.
- Ranald Barnicot
Latin | Poetry | Roman Republic
February, 2019Since 17th-century England, why has Catullus been the most translated of Latin poets? In great part, it’s because of the diversity of his poetic subjects, the virtuosic variety of his metrics and poetic forms, the richness and range of his tone and diction. All true, but what imbibes a reader of Catullus most is his ardency. No matter the theme or person or event or other subject of a poem, Catullus seizes it and holds fast with a grappling hook until he yanks the poem out from its watery depths for conspicuous display. Whether, in a given poem, he writes charmingly, hatefully, tenderly, invectively, humorously, erotically, or obscenely, the resulting poem is a huge and conspicuous spear-nosed marlin. I can’t think of another poet from any age or culture, except Shakespeare, who is more remarkable for repeatedly and variously marking the reader’s mind and heart.
- Stanton Hager
Latin | Poetry | Roman Republic
December, 2017Catullus’ poem LXVIII has perplexed many. It has survived in the MSS as one poem, but it seems to be two. In the first part, A, Catullus is in Verona and the poem is a verse epistle, a response to the request of his friend Manlius in Rome to send him the gift of a poem (possibly either one of his own or a translation from the Greek). Catullus is unable to write something original, as he is still mourning the recent death of his brother, and besides, he has left most of his books in Rome (so, probably, he has no Greek poem to translate).
The second and much longer part, B, expresses his gratitude to a certain Allius, who has lent him a house in Rome where he can pursue his love affair with Lesbia. At this point, she is still married to Metellus, so Catullus has to proceed with some caution. B contains a number of digressions, the longest being the legend of Protesilaus and Laodamia, which itself contains two further digressions, on his grief for his brother, and on a feat of Hercules and that hero’s apotheosis.
There are two issues:
- Is the poem in fact one poem or two?
- If the latter, is each poem written to a different person, or are Manlius and Allius in fact one and the same?
It seems clear to me that these are two different poems. They are apparently written to or for two different people (but see below), they describe two different situations, and they express very different moods. The clincher for me, however, is what they have in common: a passage in which Catullus mourns his brother. For Catullus to include two passages of identical or very similar wording in the same poem would be extreme carelessness.
It is quite possible that Manlius and Allius are the same. The two different names may be the result of textual corruption ("Mallius" also occurs). Alternatively, Catullus may have decided to hide Manlius’s identity by giving him a false name. After all, Metellus was a powerful man; aiding and abetting Catullus and Lesbia in their adultery was not without risk.
Catullus LXVIII, whether one poem or two, is a rather disjointed affair with its many digressions and clumsy transitions. Still, the strength of feeling throughout and the many beautiful passages make it well worth translating.
- Ranald Barnicot
Latin | Poetry | Roman Republic
February, 2017These five poems are all directed against Lucius Gellius Poplicola, who, according to Valerius Maximus, was accused of incest with his mother and plotting his father’s murder (evidence that there is such a thing as the Oedipus Complex, in some people at least!). He was, at any rate, renowned for debauchery and promiscuity. It will not therefore surprise us that he earned Catullus’ extreme animosity as yet another of Lesbia’s sexual partners. He was later to become consul in 36 BC and command the left wing of Antony’s doomed fleet at the Battle of Actium in 32 BC.
We who love Catullus love him as much for his viciousness as for the tenderness Tennyson ascribes to him!
- Ranald Barnicot
Latin | Poetry | Roman Republic
July, 2016Since the 116 extant poems of Catullus were recovered in the 14th century, his short poems (60 polymetra and 48 epigrams) have struck readers as distinctly modern. The poet grounds these works in contemporary life rather than in the mythic past. His erotic verse is as moving as his invectives are mean-spirited. His emotional range is great, perhaps shown most effectively in the portrayal of his love affair with Lesbia, a sophisticated noblewoman (likely based on the historical Clodia Metelli).
In translating, I emphasized that Catullus is an iambic poet. Dating from the seventh century BCE, the iambic genre owes its name to Iambe, a minor goddess of satire who, in the Homeric Hymns, rescues Demeter from sadness by means of bawdy jests. Invective is characteristic of iambus; accordingly, Catullus, learned poet that he was, refers to his attacks as “iambics.”
To better capture in English his manner--a blend of coxcomb and brute--I abandoned his hendecasyllables and elegiac couplets for free verse, enabling me to approximate his rhythms without sacrificing subtleties of sense.
In spite of the modern feel of these poems, written more than two thousand years ago, they differ from a good deal of lyric poetry written today in one important respect: Catullus prefers a personal mode of address to the meditative style that has prevailed since Mallarmé. Whether praising or blaming or some combination thereof, the Roman poet’s addresses to others read as genuine. T. S. Eliot believed that, for the ancients, the You of lyric was merely a formality. But with Catullus, there is no question that it is intended literally, and issues from the heart.
- Michael G. Donkin
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