Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet. Daisy Dunn
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some of Sulla’s supporters.
No man yet had been so brazen as to attempt to watch the rites of the Bona Dea, which women conducted in the presence of the Vestal Virgins. Cicero tried to assure his fellow men that this was a solemn religious event, but the secrecy and obscurity that shrouded it naturally made them curious. Some reported hearing loud music emanating through the walls whenever it took place, and tried to imagine what it signified.22 Others swam in far deeper fantasies of hip-shaking women drunk on wine, their hair loose and tangled by the blow of the pipe; of bouncing bottoms and female voyeurs; of arousal that was clear for all to see, without the need for full exposure. They wagered that these women could endure the frustration for only so long, and that they would feel compelled at any moment to summon men to the celebrations, or failing men, slaves – an ass, even; anything that could satisfy their lust.23
Such fantasy had clearly got the better of Clodius, who had long had a taste for high drama. Like his brother-in-law Metellus Celer and so many men of his generation, he had spent his formative years with his eldest brother Appius, a staunch optimate, in the East as part of the war effort against Mithridates. Though placed in the service of Lucullus, the fishpond-loving commander who was married to the youngest of his three sisters until 66 BC, Clodius had incited a mutiny among his troops, and found himself discharged.24 He had subsequently travelled to Cilicia, Syria, Antioch, and Gaul, before embarking upon a political career at Rome.
Clodius’ worldliness had put no check on his appetite for adventure. Aged thirty, he was old enough to know better, but viewed the prospect of disrupting a strangely secretive women’s festival as a thrilling game. Evening fell, summoning the beginning of the rites. Like a comic stage actor, Clodius threw on a saffron gown with purple sashes, women’s slippers, and entered Caesar’s house.25
The women had already commenced their secret rites when he arrived. Clodius, who must have known that he was chancing his luck, struck unlucky. A slave girl addressed him, he replied in a suspiciously deep voice, and the game was up. The girl swiftly sounded the alarm and Clodius was ejected. The women were compelled to start their rites anew in order to preserve their sanctity. So much for that.
The Senate ruled that a trial should take place in May 61 BC. Clodius was accused of incestum, a crime which in this context described the threat male intrusion had caused to the chastity of the Vestal Virgins.26 As the date of the trial drew near, the gossips began to speculate on the meaning of Clodius’ transgression. Some said he had been driven to his dastardly deed out of lust for Caesar’s wife.27 Caesar meanwhile lodged a divorce from Pompeia, stressing that it was not right that his family should suffer suspicion and accusation.28 Driven by a desire for recognition and pre-eminence, throughout his life Caesar would do anything to distance himself from scandal.
Lucullus, returned from Pontus, was now summoned as a witness for the prosecution. Having divorced Clodius’ youngest sister, he now took the opportunity to pounce. He decided not only to shame Clodius publicly for his mutinous behaviour in the war in the East, but to swear on oath that he had committed incest with his former wife. It was not long before people were applying the incest slur to all three of Clodius’ sisters.29 At that moment, Catullus could never have imagined that he would one day be fanning the same empty rumour.
Outraged by his juvenile disregard for religious practice, Cicero prepared himself to give evidence against Clodius. Cicero came from a family of wealthy landowners in Arpinum (Arpino), a pretty hill town to the south-east of Rome, which made them worthy enough, but none of them had ever been a senator. Although Cicero was a novus homo, a new man, he was at heart a traditionalist, who was determined to do all he could to preserve Rome’s ancient institutions: the mos maiorum, custom of the elders. Clinging to the vain hope that the Republic might flourish again after the disturbances of recent decades, he sought to strengthen the authority of the Senate. He had convinced himself, if not the population in its entirety, that in foiling Catiline’s conspiracy a couple of years earlier, he had saved the Republic from ruin. The trial of Clodius presented yet another opportunity to champion sobriety.
Cicero easily destroyed Clodius’ alibi, but the young Pulcher, living up to his family name (meaning ‘beautiful’), was alluring enough to be able to wield bribes, both pecuniary and sexual, and managed to get himself acquitted.30 If Cicero needed an excuse to engage in the distasteful incest badinage that Lucullus had set in train, he now had it.
Unscathed though Caesar was by the scandal of Clodius Pulcher, the repercussions were an embarrassment. Reluctant to dwell on the matter, or have others do the same, he had hurried off to Further Spain to take up a year-long governorship, the follow-up to a praetorship in Rome. Of the two provinces Rome owned across the territory, Further Spain – consisting of the coastal region of Baetica (including modern Baelo Claudia), swinging up in an arc to incorporate modern Portugal – was the one furthest away from Italy.
Catullus watched Caesar’s departure with a newcomer’s eyes. For all his tremendous self-belief and optimism, it was evident that the commander was feeling down on his luck. As he marched he positively jangled with the bags of money Crassus had lent him for the venture.31 Electioneering had only become more expensive since the days of Sulla, and on proceeding as far as the praetorship, one post down from the coveted consulship, Caesar had accumulated considerable debts. In 65 BC, he had dazzled Rome’s crowds with spectacular games – wild beast hunts, plays, and a gladiatorial show.32 It was in honour of his late father, he said, that an unprecedented 320 pairs of gladiators fought for their entertainment. He would buy a gladiatorial school in Campania.
Increasingly through his life, Catullus would disapprove of squander, of Romans mining the provinces and despoiling the world beyond for their own gain, but it was proving more and more necessary for those who sought power to do so. All Caesar could think about were the spoils he could acquire in Further Spain, as he worked his way towards a triumph. To qualify for this noble accolade, he would need to convince the Senate that he had reduced the province to a peaceful state with little loss to his men. Although Caesar suppressed the rebellion he encountered in the province, there were rumours that he had contributed to the chaos, his eye fixed on glory.33
It had not escaped his notice either how quickly Pompey had emerged as a force. In his younger years, Caesar had wept bitterly before a statue of Alexander the Great, in sorrow at how much the commander had achieved by the time he was his age.34 As much as he courted Pompey’s favour and support, Caesar could only feel inadequate when he looked at his precocious achievements. Normally, a man was eligible for a triumph only after fulfilling a praetorship or consulship, but Pompey had celebrated two before achieving either. What was more, he expected to be granted a third.
Pompey had returned from the East to a city in jittery expectancy over his next triumph, a grand finale to his work in the East. Fearful of Pompey’s eminence, however, the senators delayed the ratification of his eastern settlement. They would provide no closure to his victories: his veteran soldiers remained in need of land; equestrian tax-farmers and landowners began demanding rebate for the financial losses they had accrued following his restructure of Asia and Bithynia; Crassus took up their cause, but struggled to make much progress.
Now that he was back in Italy, Pompey, like Caesar, and like Lucullus before him, filed for divorce from his wife. Mucia, a sister of Metellus Celer, had already given him children, but he had in mind a politically more lucrative match with a niece of Cato, a particularly staunch optimate senator.35 Catullus knew that ambition was not the only reason for Pompey’s divorce. In a poem, he noted how, during Pompey’s first consulship in 70 BC, Mucia had taken a lover. By popular repute Mucia – or Maecilia, as he called her, perhaps to distinguish her from a sister – was sleeping with both Pompey and Caesar.36 Fifteen years later, Catullus jested that ‘the two remain, but a thousand men compete against each’ (Poem 113). Pompey was remarkably short-sighted about the repercussions of his divorce. Not only did he fail to obtain the hand of Cato’s niece, but he incurred the wrath of Metellus Celer, who could not take in good grace such an ignoble slight