Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet. Daisy Dunn
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Romans admired in a woman. But there were less tangible things that made her inferior to his beloved. Lesbia could not quite compete with Quintia for height, at least, for he sought to emphasise instead her ‘total beauty’. The line in which he described Quintia’s lack of ‘salt’ – or wit – was remarkably balanced so as to emphasise his point. Lesbia was almost aggressively beautiful. The word he used in Latin to describe how she acquired her good qualities was subripio, a sudden movement akin to theft. She was candida, both pale-skinned and ‘shining’, as well as beautiful and salty. If Catullus was satisfied that he had finally understood the cause of his attraction, his friend Calvus was left distraught. Quintia just happened to be his lover.4
While Clodia had total beauty, Catullus had his Gallic dog-face with its lazy eye, a physical shortcoming which few in society could have looked upon with much compassion.5 Catullus’ sensitivity was a worthy quality, but hardly strong enough to compensate for his appearance. If he was going to win Clodia’s heart, he would need to do so through his poetry. ‘A generous girl acts on her word, a chaste one makes no promise,’ Catullus once told a girl in Verona (Poem 110). Clodia, he prayed, would now promise.
She needed more persuading than he did to go beyond mere flirtation. A woman’s adultery, unlike a man’s, was theoretically punishable with death. As Cato’s ancestor put it: ‘If you should discover your wife committing adultery, you may with impunity kill her without trial; but if she should discover you committing adultery or having an adulterous act performed upon you, she would not dare to lay a finger on you, nor would that be lawful.’6 In practice it was exceedingly difficult to enforce such measures. The law did little to deter married women from pursuing extramarital liaisons. So it was that the first emperor of Rome, Augustus, would introduce a new law against adultery in 18 BC.
Still, there was a risk; and Catullus was anxious that Clodia should take it. He employed every bit of wit and charm he could. He might only have been writing love poems, but he believed that he was fighting ‘great and glorious battles’ for her (Poem 37). Catullus the valiant hero-in-arms sat down to compose a poem about her pet sparrow.
He decided he would capture the movement of the sparrow by using one of his favourite poetic metres, hendecasyllables, the origins of which lay in ancient song. The playful, eleven-syllable lines were as suited to flirtation as they were to invective. In hendecasyllables his poem would skip along lightly, like a tiny sparrow on its feet. Sappho had had the goddess of love ride a sparrow chariot in one of her poems.7 Meleager, the Greek epigrammatist, sought release from his heartache through a grasshopper’s song.8 Catullus sought to go several bases further.
In Verona, sparrows fluttered in and out of human life like rain. They targeted diners distracted by laughter and wine and fearlessly stole bread from their simple linen napkins. They skimmed the waters beneath Verona’s grand bridge, the Ponte Pietra, in balletic display, and hopped here and there across the parched soils of Sirmio, unable to keep pace with the scurrying lizards. The ‘Cisalpine’ genus, Passer italiae, a cross between the common and Spanish sparrows, is delicate and tame.
Inspired by the landscapes of home as much as by his poetic forebears, Catullus pictured his darling Lesbia playing with her ‘sparrow’, which nipped at her fingertips, providing her with some consolation from the ‘intolerable burning’ he liked to imagine she was feeling:
Sparrow, apple of my girl’s eye,
Often she plays with you, holds you in her lap,
Gives you a fingertip when you want it
And urges you to take passionate bites
Whenever she wishes, gleaming in desire for me,
To play with something for pleasure.
And I believe it provides a small release from her
Frustration, as then the intolerable burning fades.
I wish that I could play with you as she does
And lighten the ponderous cares of my mind …
I would be as grateful as they say the quick-stepped
Atalanta was for the little golden apple
That loosed the chastity belt that bound her long.
(Poem 2)
Catullus used the short beats in the hendecasyllables to illustrate Lesbia’s movement as much as that of her sparrow. One can almost hear her as she ‘plays’, ludere, and moves her ‘finger’ digitum:
Often she plays with you
Quicum ludere, quem
Gives you a fingertip
Cui primum digitum
Like many fantasies, Catullus’ was inconsistent. Lesbia was seductive enough to play expertly with her sparrow, yet as virginal as Atalanta, a girl from the world of myth, who was to marry the man who defeated her in a footrace after she stooped to pick up golden apples. Pre-empting Shakespeare’s Romeo, who wished that he was Juliet’s bird, Catullus longed that he would be the one to play with Lesbia’s sparrow in her stead.9
His persistence, like any lover’s, hovered over the indeterminate line between nuisance and flattery. And with time it did what persistence will – drift imperceptibly to where there lies the promise of consummation. Fortunately, he did not have to wait too long before that delicious day arrived. Metellus Celer had just succeeded in being elected to the consulship of 60 BC, alongside Lucius Afranius (a man accused of being better at dancing than politics). The husband’s back would now be turned on his domestic life, as he focused on affairs in the public arena.10
While Catullus was busy picturing Lesbia’s sparrow, Pompey was battling the Senate’s opposition to the ratification of his eastern campaigns. Its members were fearful that between the lines of his settlement lay the extension of personal powers, and with good reason.11 Pompey was trying to pass an agrarian law that would grant land to Rome’s poor citizens, not just his veterans, and win votes in the process. Lucullus, Clodia’s former brother-in-law, led the optimates in blocking Pompey.12 He was supported by Metellus Celer, who was still smarting from his sister’s divorce. As Pompey’s tribune put forward the proposals, Metellus Celer contested each point so bitterly that the Senate had him hauled off to jail. Not willing to let this stop him, Metellus haughtily asked for the debate to reconvene outside his cell. Exasperated, Pompey bade his tribune release his opponent. The settlement remained unresolved.
On the other side, Metellus had Clodia’s brother to deal with. Still exalting in his freedom after the Bona Dea trial, and fresh from serving as a quaestor in Sicily, Clodius was now plotting to be elected as a tribune: a curious ambition, considering that his patrician birth and status put him above the post. To the man in the street, he must have seemed crazy. But Clodius was no fool. As a tribune, he could strengthen his ties with the plebeians, and also propose legislation to punish Cicero for opposing him in court. Cicero was now convinced that Clodius had a vendetta against him and wanted to destroy him. Since only plebeians were eligible to become tribunes, however, Clodius needed first to be demoted in class.
Clodia was happy to do what she could for her brother. She was acquainted with Cicero, but better acquainted with Cicero’s loyal pen friend, Atticus, to whom she passed messages and reported Clodius’ plans, as if to antagonise Cicero further.13 Cicero could see that Clodia was doing her very best to help her brother succeed, even petitioning her husband on his behalf.14
Taking the bait, Cicero set about taunting Clodius over his ambitions for the lowly tribunate. Clodius asked him whether he had ever been in the practice of providing a place for Sicilians at gladiatorial shows.15
‘No,’ replied